Monday, December 24, 2012

That's why compassionate conservative was a thing

It's probably best to let Wayne LaPierre and the National Rifle Association wallow in their end-of-year irrelevance as they've done themselves so much damage just by speaking, but one thing may be worth noting about LaPierre's Sunday morning TV performance: the man is dripping with prejudice against mentally ill people:

We have a mental health system in this country that has completely and totally collapsed. We have no national database of these lunatics. 23 states, my ... however long ago was Virginia Tech? 23 states are still putting only a small number of records into the system. And a lot of states are putting none. So, when they go through the national instant check system, and they go to try to screen out one of those lunatics, the records are not even in the system. I talked to a police officer the other day. He said, "Wayne," he said, "let me tell you this. Every police officer walking the street knows s lunatic that's out there, some mentally disturbed person that ought to be in an institution, is out walking the street because they dealt with the institutional side. They didn't want mentally ill in institutions. So they put them all back on the streets. And then nobody thought what happens when you put all these mentally ill people back on the streets, and what happens when they start taking their medicine." We have a completely cracked mentally ill system that's got these monsters walking the streets.

Now he'll say he's only talking about the actual spree killers of the world but since we only find who the spree killers are after the fact, his preferred world is one where anyone with mental illness should be committed, if necessary against their will, and even in treatment cannot be considered to safe enough to walk the streets.

It's remarkable that the NRA has managed to select its oft-boasted 4 million members without any of them having a friend or relative who would be subject to such restrictions.