IF LOONIES KILL THEMSELVES IT'S SOMEONE ELSE'S FAULT

Near the end of her short life, Shayla Stewart, a diagnosed manic-depressive and schizophrenic, assaulted police officers and was arrested for attacking a fellow customer at a Denton Wal-Mart where she had a prescription for anti-psychotic medication. Given all those signs, her parents say, another Wal-Mart just seven miles away should have never sold her the shotgun she used to kill herself at age 24 in 2003. Her mother, Lavern Bracy, is suing the world's biggest store chain for $25 million, saying clerks should have known about her daughter's illness or done more to find out....

The Bracys said Wal-Mart's gun department could have checked Wal-Mart's own security files or the pharmacy department's prescription records before selling her the weapon. Wal-Mart spokeswoman Christi Gallagher declined to comment on the lawsuit. But pharmacy prescription records are confidential under a 1996 federal law, so stores cannot use them when deciding whether to sell a gun. Also, Wal-Mart did a background check on Stewart, as required under federal law, but through no fault of its own, her name did not show up in the FBI database. The reason: The database contains no mental health records from Texas and 37 other states. Texas does not submit mental health records because state law deems them confidential, said Paul Mascot, an attorney with the Texas Department of State Health Services. Other states have not computerized their record-keeping systems or do not store them in a central location for use by the FBI.

Federal law prohibits stores from selling guns to people who, like Stewart, have a history of serious mental illness. Would-be buyers must fill out a form that asks about mental health. Stewart, who had been involuntarily committed to an institution and declared dangerously mentally ill by a judge, lied on that form, according to her mother's attorney's office. Wal-Mart ran a background check anyway, as required by federal law.

More here. (Via Right Thinking)






A BIT OF HISTORY

"One useful fact all Americans should keep in mind is that they have no "right" to be protected by the police. American police are reactive, not proactive. They don't usually "prevent" crime. They catch lawbreakers after they have committed a crime. This was by design of the Founding Fathers. Because, as we see today with the anti-terrorism laws, in order to "prevent" crime, police would need all sorts of obnoxious powers that would trample all over our rights of life, liberty and property.

Instead, Americans were intended to have the means of self defense. Put another way, the Constitution does not grant the federal government the authority to restrict American citizens from keeping and bearing arms. Rather, the Second Amendment clearly instructs those in government that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers #46: "Americans have the right and advantage of being armed -- unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms."

Thomas Jefferson also recognized the need for citizens to be armed: "A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks." (Encyclopedia of T. Jefferson, 318 [Foley, Ed., reissued 1967])

As late as the 1960s, members of Congress agreed that the American people have an inherent right to keep and bear arms. Even the most liberal Democrats recognized that right: "Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be carefully used and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible." That was Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, later to become Vice President under L.B. Johnson.

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