I've decided that as long as I can use something as a weapon, I have a legal right to possess it. It's in the constitution, after all.

One less mouth to feed off the federal teet as Mittens Romney and Rob McKenna would say.

You might think 2nd Amendment rights are not absolute. And, I might agree. It's the NRA and their powerful, wealthy lobby that disagree. And, that is all that matters.

If Mr. Lee was not secured in a mental health or assisted living facility if he was dangerous, he at the least should have been under some home care supervision (possibly a relative since getting a nurse or nurses is an expensive proposition) in order to have minimized the possibility of this occurring.

I've usually been very critical of the cops for shooting unarmed people, but I'm not inclined to do so in this case. Mr. Lee was failed by other circumstances.

I would think it's a near impossibility to keep weapons out of anybody's hands. There are just too many guns out there. Mix in mental illness, drugs and alcohol and just plain anger. I wouldn't want to be a cop.

This does raise an interesting point about the rights of the elderly but first let's take away the fucking cars.

Sounds like maybe he wasn't even holding the gun? Very sad.

@1, I like this idea. How can we get weed classified as a weapon?

Another good argument for institutionalization of the mentally incompetent by the State.

If I ever get to be 77-years old with Alzheimer's, please shoot me, too.

Mildly surprised that Goldy has written a post that included the word "gun" that isn't histrionic and with which I largely agree.

Other thoughts... Who knows all the relevant circumstances? E.g. was his dementia professionally diagnosed or just something the family kinda noted by the by?

Also not generally in favor of people killing other people but if someone threatens deadly force that threatener is giving permission to be recommissioned as fertilizer.

#8

I know back in the 1940s there were abuses at the sanitariums, but that was when there were no ways to monitor remote rural locations. Now we have webcams, UAV drones, ...

@8: When do they come pick you up?

"The Second Amendment right to bear arms is not absolute. We as a nation need to have at least as much respect for the awesome responsibility that comes with owning a deadly weapon as we do for that single, caveat-filled sentence in the Bill of Rights."

Finally you make a good point on this issue. The irresponsibility toward gun ownership is the single most pervasive issue facing gun rights and the lobbies that protect it. It doesn't seem to be a priority.

Nice case of "blame the victim" here.

I agree in theory, but I can't think of a way to effectively do this without causing more problems. Only way to do seems be to set up a registry of those too mentally ill to own weapons and that seems pretty fraught with problems.

I agree. If it's true this gentleman was suffering from Alzheimer's, he absolutely should not have been armed. Of course, I'm not sure who you think is responsible enough to make that decision. A government entity, perhaps? The ones that continue to let drunk drivers back out on the street, and people so old they can't tie their own shoes?

I also think that if you asked, say, any women, or blacks, or mentally handicapped individuals alive around 1950 about the government's ability to reasonably determine 'mental health', they might have concerns. Given we used to lock up, sterilize, and otherwise abuse perfectly healthy people based on the government's determination of their fitness as members of society.

more calls for gun control when it was a misnomer in this example.

http://www.examiner.com/article/99-56-of…

Calling for some agency that decides to take peoples rights away is just one potential boondoggle here, but how would it be executed? no answers there, just blame the object.

If you want to bring back state sponsored institutionalization realize what your suggesting, it wasn't that long ago that being gay, or communist was considered a mental illness.

Magic government hand doesn't fix everything.

Most states do have laws that can prohibit mentally ill individuals from legally owning guns. However, where the line is drawn varies. Some require a legal finding of incompetence. Others require only a diagnosis and/or voluntary treatment. I'm not sure what the laws in Washington are, however. This link is from 2007, but I don't have time to do a more extensive search right now: http://www.jaapl.org/content/35/3/330.fu…

It's an interesting idea, but how do you implement it? Send in cops to confiscate weapons from people who you think are too dangerous and might do something crazy with them? I don't imagine that will go well.