To play devil's advocate, I wonder if the adults in these cases are just using the child porn conviction as an excuse to make these kids an example so that their peers would think twice about taking nudie shots of themselves. Kind of like with drinking and smoking and tattoos and having sex - they are considered too immature to responsibly handle it.
Oh, I agree. I was just trying to come up with reasons why anyone would enforce the letter of the law like that when it is pretty clear that it isn't anywhere near the intent of those laws.
What are the chances that Joe Arpaio will end up in criminal court after his contempt-of-court hearing today? http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news...ief-deputy-practically-admits-perjury-7703851 http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/...stify-in-contempt-of-court-hearing-1.10906877 Joe Arpaio allowed his officers conduct immigration patrols 18 months after he was told to stop them by a federal judge G. Murray Snow. He had this to say: "I want to apologize to the judge that I should have known more of his court orders," Arpaio testified during an initial round of contempt hearings in April. "It slipped through the cracks." Let's see. Arapio and his department find themselves in a protracted legal battle in federal court, with enormous consequences whichever way the decision goes. The judge issues a ruling. The man in charge of the department's day-to-day operations doesn't think it's important to open email messages about the ruling. It more than strains credulity.
I'm a lawyer here in Australia and I do some pro bono work in youth law. This problem comes up a LOT. As in, underage girls seeking help because someone is blackmailing them with nudes of them makes up about 25% of all the matters we do. The Federal Government here has come up with what I think is a pretty good solution. The laws still exist and allow for a person to be prosecute and convicted for having underage nudes of themselves. However, Government policy requires that prosecutors have to get permission from the Federal Attorney-General to prosecute anyone who is underage for possessing child pornography. It means that politicians don't have to look soft on child porn, but in practice they can ensure that only young people blackmailing others or keeping their nude photos against their will get prosecuted.
There was another shooting in the US today, this time in Oregon. I've heard of at least one major one every month this year. What is a realistic solution? One side says "get rid of all the guns" and the other side says "fuck you, I didn't break any laws, don't take my guns". Let's say someone finally did say "alright, turn in all the guns". What is the likely outcome of that scenario? Many people value personal liberty over public welfare and vice versa so I'm genuinely curious as to likely scenarios. Edit: I'm not sure of where to go with this, but I found a neat quote "The public's welfare does not always trump the individual's natural rights."
A massive second amendment court case. Or a massive court case getting shot down really quick. I love this country. We either burn it down or ignore it. No one wants to take the middle ground where people with certain records, psyche holds, and the like are barred from ownership like convicted felons. Further, we could use resources of the ridiculously inept ATF to see which family of exempt/mentally unstable individuals who own weapons properly secure them. Not confiscate, not monitor number of weapons, just accessible to only the owner. Like CPS monitoring. Sorry, them's the breaks when your kid is a nutter. This is by no means effective, but it is a non-invasive start for the gun owning majority and the people who would very much like to not get shot in a gun free zone.
There is a specific reason that I'm asking. In Mexico, blood and silver reign. I'm originally from there and keep up with underground news and have family down there. Nobody here in the states ever gives a shit about the civilians being slaughtered by the government or the criminals down south, yet I see the exact same thing happening here if a similar situation of banning guns arises. Am I being unrealistic here? How do you address that when like you mentioned no side is willing to make ANY concessions? You guys know I'm a very staunch second amendment supporter until the bitter end, but seeing all these people die senseless deaths is awful.
Realistically, I think that people would just hide their guns and ignore it. There may be a few real gun nuts (and I mean crazies) that would make the news, but overall 99.999% of the people would just cary on, business as usual. We saw some of that here in Canada with the recent Long Gun Registry. Just about every gun owner I know, myself included, only registered a few of their guns so as not to be red flagged and appear like we were complying. We didn't start shooting anyone, but from a logistics point of view, there was no way the government was going to be able to force us to register them, so we didn't. Eventually the registry was struck down and destroyed, at a cost of just under a BILLION fucking dollars, all said and done. Most people seem to forget that legislation is all fine and dandy and, for the most part, easy to draft. It's the enforcement that's a bitch.
Well theres more than gun laws at play here. HIPAA is a huge impediment to mental health checks for gun licenses, driver's licenses, etc. These kind of events are what happen when you close the majority of mental health facilities 40 years earlier and have little to no recourse to dealing with it. Its one of the few things our society has completely regressed on over the last half century. As a pretty avid gun owner, I would be perfectly fine with strengthening gun laws to prevent crazy people from getting guns. If it means me having to fill out an additional form, or surrender to an additional step in the check process, no problem. Another issue is, there needs to be federal gun laws that override all state laws. Hell, in this states its easier to get guns from one town to the next, its up to the police chief's discretion. Its very difficult to get a carry license in Boston. 3 miles to the west? I can get one without much issue. 300 miles away? You dont even need a background check. There really needs to be some consistency and some real stop-gaps in the process.
This is pretty much how I feel on the subject. There wouldn't be any effective way to enforce what's on paper. If we haven't yet eliminated provisions in HIPAA privacy that prevents those records from being included in NICS searches, I think it needs to happen. The Department of Health and Human Services issued a proposed rule change last year but I don't know if it went through. Now the criteria for being flagged could be another debate, but at least removing barriers between HIPAA and the NICS seems obvious to me. I don't think there should be any loopholes for purchasing handguns without going through NICS too. On top of that, the ATF needs to get their shit together in the first place so the Dylann Roofs of the world don't fall through the cracks like they shouldn't.
We cannot stop people (larger than guns) or drugs from being smuggled into our country so some of those likely to do harm and those with the means and connections to complete their gun collections will have unregistered guns. This is not an excuse to say do nothing because there are some serious issues with who has guns and what they are doing with them, I just don't think a "turn in your guns" program is going to work. All of the guns I've bought from a gun shop are registered and I passed the background check to purchase them and my CCP I do think that a waiting period is fine, I didn't have to wait for mine but so what if you have to wait five days, a week, or whatever? There are reasonable steps we could take to strengthen the back ground checks. The fact remains that there will always be a black market for the weapons we aren't allowed to purchase legally and that will have to be addressed before guns are taken away from those who purchased them legally.
Do you remember Cliven Bundy and all the gun nuts that came out against the law enforcement? That was just for cattle. People in Arizona are armed to the fucking teeth, go to a gun show here sometime and you will see. I am not talking shotguns either, most people here don't hunt they just get jacked up assault rifles just in case shit goes down. From my cold dead hands is not just a catch phrase.
Which is kind of my point. I think they'll just hoard and hide them, unless confronted. I see no real way that any law enforcement agency would be able to enforce anything like that.
Don't forget one of the oldest, most significant laws of this country is gun ownership. The country and guns go hand in hand. The idea there would be some mass recall of weaponry is not only highly illegal, never even considered by a court on its unconstitutionality, but absolutely ludicrous as well. In reality, we can mitigate damages. But like dewers said, there are some nutty, gun fetishists out there.
Even if they got rid of all the HIPAA laws preventing disclosure, why do you think this would have any effectiveness? It wouldn't catch anyone who never sought mental health treatment, and would only discourage people from seeking treatment - which is the opposite of good public health policy. Furthermore, what kinds of diagnoses would disqualify a person from gun ownership? Who's going to make that decision, and would those decisions be backed up by science? Frankly it sounds like an enormous waste of time and money for very little, if any, benefit.
When a patient is a danger to themselves or others, a mental health practitioner is obligated to notify authorities. That is sort of within the confines of HIPAA and is recommended by the APA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duty_to_warn#Clinical_psychology What law enforcement does with that information once it becomes "public" is something else entirely. Ostensibly people placed on a mental health list would either have a record already, or have been investigated by police at the behest of a mental health practitioner. Breaking doctor-patient confidentiality has already been held up in courts. We're not talking about recording the private details of depressed individuals or people seeking typical counseling, not even violent offenders seeking care, but psychotics disposed to imminent violence or deluded individuals in the midst of a psychotic break. Who decides this? Licensed medical doctors discretion. What is keeping something like this from spiraling madly into overreaching hysterics? Lawsuits. It would be a field day for lawyers bankrupting practitioners who filed claims on non-violent patients, or retroactively on once violent patients during confidential sessions. I don't see this as a huge expenditure of time or money. These types of cases are not frequent. People still go to shrinks fully aware of the "duty to warn" caveat. The NICS database already exists. It'd be a matter of redirecting ATF's duties to something actually useful. Actually, isn't this already part of ATF's duties?
I remember several years ago, there was a big article in Time Magazine, I think. It was a proposal and defense of eliminating the penny from US currency. A bunch of people wrote in to say the penny was stupid and useless; another guy (college guy, maybe? Little fuzzy on all the details) wrote in to say that everybody who hated pennies could mail theirs to him. I think he got several thousand dollars. So, maybe I could do that and have everybody mail me their guns. I promise not to shoot up a school or church.