Democrats love to muddy up the gun control argument by claiming that all they want to do is enact “common sense” gun control laws.
They say that if only the public would let them enact sensible laws to prevent people from getting guns, like universal background checks and mental health reform, then crime would go down.
That sounds good to anyone who isn’t familiar with how they really operate.
In the liberal wasteland of California, they passed a law that was only supposed to take guns away from the mentally ill and people who couldn’t be trusted with the
And surprise, surprise.
It isn’t being enacted the way it was supposed to.
From Townhall via Your Central Valley:
In the quiet Southern California neighborhood of Upland, Lynette Phillips lives a quiet, ordinary life. But in the spring of 2013, it was interrupted by a loud knock on the door. Phillips was greeted by police officers.
Phillips didn’t know yet, but her name was listed in California’s Armed and Prohibited Persons Systems. She was now considered someone who wasn’t allowed to own, or be around, firearms. So, all of her husband’s guns were confiscated, but not before being laid out on the front porch for neighbors to see.
Rewind to a night three months earlier. Phillips, who tells us she suffers from depression and anxiety, had an adverse reaction while switching anti-depressant medications. So, she checked herself into a local mental health hospital for some quick relief.
Phillips says, “The first thing I said to her is I just want you to know that I am not a threat to myself or to anyone, I just can’t stop crying. Then she started asking me some really bizarre questions.”
Like what she would do if she got into a car accident, which Phillips later found out the nurse used to deem her suicidal, writing this in her notes, “You stated that if you got into a car accident you wouldn’t care and you drive yourself off a cliff.”
Phillips says, “That was never said. That was false documentation.”
Eyewitness News took a deeper look into the program, and found several cases where mistakes were made. Michael Merritt of Bakersfield had 18 of his guns seized for a felony charge from the 1970’s that no longer exists.
Merritt says, “I almost fainted and passed out when they said they wanted all of my guns.”
His guns were later returned.
In November, Clovis business owner Albert Sheakalee had his names and 541 of his seized guns put on a big display by state agents. The licensed gun dealer had previously been put on a mental health hold. The state says Sheakalee had been committed involuntarily, but his attorney argues Sheakalee sought help on his own for a temporary crisis.
Sheakalee’s attorney Mark Coleman says, “He’s never bee adjudicated by the court as being dangerous, he’s never been adjudicated by a mental health professional as being dangerous.”
According to reports and audits dug up by Eyewitness News, problems with the APPS program run deep, especially in regards to mental health tracking.
You can clearly see some major problems here.
Not only should the government not be in the business of going door to door taking guns –because they can’t even begin to determine who should have them or not — but taking guns away from law abiding citizens is never a good idea.
The government can’t keep track of terrorists coming into the country, emails at the State Department, computer hard drives at the IRS, providing clean water, running out of water, or balancing the budget.
But yet they want to be in charge of deciding who is mentally stable enough to have a gun?
You can make the argument they have good intentions but how many law abiding healthy people are going to be stripped of their guns and left defenseless all because the government can’t maintain a database correctly?
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