Crazy People & Guns

My "what the fuck are they thinking" moment of the week came last night when I was watching an episode of '60 Minutes' from 2 weeks ago.

I the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, 60 Minutes was investigating the current laws preventing mentally ill folks from obtaining firearms. One might think that there's a decent system in place to keep the crazies and the guns separated... You'd be wrong.

The problem is that currently the law that restricts people with mental illnesses from buying guns has really no solid way of checking to see if that guy at the Wal-mart or at the pawn shop has a mental illness. The law doesn't require the release of records about someone's mental illness. So, there's only about a 1 in 10 chance that the law will prevent a disturbed person from buying a gun.

After realizing this loophole, you'd think that everyone would be on board with getting this fixed, right? Again, you'd be wrong. Check out this excerpt from 60 Minutes where anchor Steve Kroft is interviewing Gun Owners of America Executive Director, Larry Pratt.

The most vocal (opponent) is Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, which has 375,000 members and sees nothing wrong with the mentally ill buying guns.

"We think this is simply another way of eliminating another large group of people from gun ownership in this country," Pratt argues.

"That large group, two million-plus...are people who have been involuntarily committed," Kroft remarks.

"We think those are two million people who you can't say that, you know anything about what their future behavior is going to be," Pratt says.

WHAT? Did you say 'this is another way of eliminating a large group of people from gun ownership'? ... Uh, yeah! CRAZY FUCKING PEOPLE! What the fuck is this guy thinking?

And his second quote is even more priceless... You don't know what their 'future behavior' might be? Isn't that that the exact fucking reason we don't let FELONS have firearms, asshole?

Of course, Mr. Pratt is the same crazy bastard who immediately after the Virginia Tech shootings made a press release saying:

"The latest school shooting demands an immediate end to the gun-free zone law which leaves the nation's schools at the mercy of madmen. It is irresponsibly dangerous to tell citizens that they may not have guns at schools. The Virginia Tech shooting shows that killers have no concern about a gun ban when murder is in their hearts.

Holy Christ... you just can't argue with crazy. This guy is obviously a couple of beers short of a six pack. I guess that's why he's so opposed to banning nut-jobs from having access to guns.