Reader and commenter Menckenlite concerning guns and mental health.

Control freaks love psychiatry, a means of social control with no Due Process protections. It is a system of personal opinion masquerading as science. See, e.g., Boston University Psychology Professor Margaret Hagan’s book, Whores of the Court, to see how arbitrary psychiatric illnesses are. Peter Breggin, Fred Baughman and Thomas Szasz wrote extensively about abuses of psychiatry. Liberals blame guns for violence. Conservatives blame mental illness. Neither have any causal connection to violence. The issue is criminal conduct, crime. Suggesting that persons with legal disabilities are criminals shows the nonsensical argument of this politician and his fellow control freaks. Shame on them.

Oftentimes my readers can say things better than can I.  The above quote is a perfect example.  Obama now wants guns from these 47,000 people.

Leaving the federal government in charge of anything is the surest way to screw it up.  I’m sure it is indeed a problem for the air marshals.  But the biggest issue for me isn’t related to errors and screwups, as prolific as they may be with the *.gov.  Another thing this conversation suffers from is confusion of the terrorist watch list with the no-fly list.  They are not at all the same thing.  Obama wants you to be confused, he revels in it, he will use it to his advantage.

If a terrorist is inside America, deport him.  If a terrorist is trying to get in, bar him.  Close the borders immediately and completely, and the issue of ne’er-do-wells perpetrating crimes and terror via our border will go away.  But since we won’t close the borders, we aren’t serious about this problem, at least not yet.

In the mean time, Obama doesn’t really want 47,000 people to turn in their guns.  He doesn’t care in the least about errors and screwups.  He wants so-called anti-government types on the list, or in other words, people who believe in God, people who believe in the constitution, people who believe in their right to bear arms, and people who think the *.gov is too intrusive and the executive branch too powerful.

And therein lies the problem.  Under Obama’s schema, the executive can put anyone on the list for literally any reason.  I sometimes disagree with Volokh, but in this case I think he nailed it.

… we don’t deny constitutional rights based just on suspicion? If you think you can prove someone is a terrorist, lock him up. If you have probable cause to think he’s a terrorist, and think you can develop proof beyond a reasonable doubt, arrest him. Even if you have only suspicion, follow him, ask people about him, and so on. But if you don’t have enough to prosecute or even arrest someone, you can’t take away his constitutional rights, even if you suspect he’s a terrorist (or if you suspect he’s a drug dealer or a gang member or whatever else).

This is the nexus between mental health and terrorism.  Unfortunately for those who suffer from mental health issues, they are misunderstood and badly characterized, in large measure because everything that occurs due to the existence of evil in the world is falsely ascribed to mental health.

The nexus has to do with the how the progressives treat them.  The commonality is an end run around due process, and the progressives no more regret that for believers in the constitution than they do for those who suffer from mental health maladies.  In fact, the progressives would likely see everyone cast into the same boat – those who suffer from mental health maladies, a category including all conservatives or libertarians.

Don’t fall for the rhetoric.  It’s a smoke screen, a ruse.  Obama and his ilk don’t really care about terrorism in the way you do.  They want to take your guns.  Isn’t it telling and ironic that while collectivists want to ban people from buying guns by executive fiat, Donald Trump is open to the idea.  Or was I being redundant by saying “collectivists” and Donald Trump?”