Saturday, March 2, 2013
The Complexity and Urgency of the Problem of Gun Violence | Capital Commentary
The Complexity and Urgency of the Problem of Gun Violence | Capital Commentary by Ted Williams III. MGB: As long as we treat gun violence as a crime, including possession, we leave it in the old and outdated Anglo-Saxon legal system. Guns should be treated as a public health issue. Quite simply, if an area is prone to gun violence, a state of emergency should be declared and every house searched for all firearms, legal or not. They should then be confiscated as a public health measure rather than a criminal one. If a store consistently supplies the area, ATF agents should come in every week and buy out their entire stock, or just buy out the store and put in a monument to all the Chicago dead - something with their names. Likewise, the mental health system needs to catch alcoholics, addicts and the mentally ill before they get to the point of criminality or suicide - although this should be done with better hospitals than Geraldo Rivera went after in the 70s. I suggest contracting it out to Catholic Charities. There will be plenty of money to do this once we transfer current prisoners whose main problem was mental or literacy.
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Is this post meant to be taken seriously?
ReplyDelete"There is always a public health exemption to the power of search and seizure."
ReplyDeleteI take it that you are referring Quarle. I think your interpretation is overly broad. The threat needs to be immediate and direct. A claim that an "area" is "prone to gun violence" is not sufficient.
Beyond that, Heller recognizes an individual right to firearms. You will not be able to get around these facts.
Beyond that, it's just terrible policy, even if you could do it. Mass gun confiscation is the sign of an authoritarian government, not one that is representative and trusts its citizens.