I think there are a lot of people looking at this FL situation and wondering how can a kid who is so obviously disturbed walk in and buy a gun. He had pictures of dead animals and things on social media and was publicly making threats of hurting people. Hence the idea of a waiting period, and background check, if done properly could have potentially stopped him.
But… maybe you guys are right. Maybe a background check is just too much. Maybe the better solution, along with the other two I posted, is to empower law enforcement to detain such an obviously disturbed / threatening individual prior to him acting. Pick your poison I guess.
But please have the main takeaway be… there is not one solution for this, we need to work together from multiple angles, and just perhaps, being willing to compromise a little bit to better protect our kids.
No one should have powers to harass someone that has not committed a crime.
And there is the problem with your plan. We cannot detain people for saying something stupid. We cannot detain people for thinking bad thoughts. We are stuck waiting for an act to be committed and then using police powers we can react to those actions.
Our society was designed this way on purpose. I do not want to live in a world controlled by the thought police. Thank God for the ACLU in this instance.
When I buy a gun, they submit an application and I wait… about 20 minutes. What exactly does this do ? I am not against it taking 3 days to do this check… if it is actually being done correctly and is effective. Nik Cruz bought his weapon from a dealer…? If I posted on-line that I wanted to be a professional school shooter and this was known to anybody with an internet connection, I would think when my form gets entered for the background check, it would say DENIED. Having 39 interactions with law enforcement as a 19 year old, I would think would be red flags. Moreover, I would think if I posted that on the internet, I would have someone knocking on my door to investigate the threat ???
How do we know if a person was not wrongly targeted by someone on a power trip? I know that does not fit the FL situation but allowing this to be a criteria opens up other situations where someone could be denied their constitutional right because someone was unfairly targeted.
The problem with these types of ideas is that they rely on someone else to make a judgement and that someone else might not be competent to make the judgement. If it is a right then it is up to the person to act accordingly or for someone directly connected to that person to raise red flags. We can’t give that power to someone else.
