As we discussed earlier, the Justice Department issued a statement after the passage of state laws legalizing marijuana that they would not affected federal enforcement. Obama officials also stated after the election (after being silent during the campaign) that marijuana policy would not change. Now, President Obama has given an interview that the federal government will not make enforcement a “priority” against recreational users. This is being billed as a major scope on “Obama’s pot problem.” However, there may be less than meets the eye here. He does not address the organizations and distributors of legal marijuana, which his Administration has cracked down on for the last four years. It also raises an interesting contradiction with other fields where Obama had insisted that matters are left to the Justice Department on questions of enforcement.
Obama told ABC “We’ve got bigger fish to fry . . . It would not make sense for us to see a top priority as going after recreational users in states that have determined that it’s legal.” His use of “recreational users” is telling. The state police generally goes after recreational users. The controversy for the last four years has been the Administration’s crackdown on distributors and growers who supply legal marijuana for medical use etc.
The statement also contradicts the statements of officials in the Administration. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Seattle (the highest Justice official in the state) issued a public warning after the election that “[r]egardless of any changes in state law, including the change that will go into effect on Dec. 6 in Washington state, growing, selling or possessing any amount of marijuana remains illegal under federal law. … Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress.”
As I noted earlier that the Justice Department statement is a curious statement since the Obama Administration recently did precisely that in the immigration area — it declared that it would no longer enforce the express law with regard to certain illegal aliens. It also refused to defend such laws as the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Moreover, the Justice Department routinely makes decisions on the allocation of resources and priorities. Likewise, soon after taking office, Obama notoriously went to the CIA and assured CIA employees that they would not be prosecuted for torture, even though he admitted that water boarding used is torture. The President’s statement would reflect that he is going that route, but only for recreational users.
He remains uncertain, however, on how he can refuse to enforce this federal law despite his promise not to prosecute torture at the CIA or refusal to enforce immigration rules: “This is a tough problem, because Congress has not yet changed the law,” Obama said. “I head up the executive branch; we’re supposed to be carrying out laws. And so what we’re going to need to have is a conversation about, How do you reconcile a federal law that still says marijuana is a federal offense and state laws that say that it’s legal?”
He can clearly make marijuana enforcement a non-priority and I agree with that move. Yet, such statements on “users” avoids the primary question. Will he continue his controversial policy of cracking down on distributors and growers in these states?
Source: ABC
“Peter Lanza, a vice president of taxes for GE Energy Financial Services, is the father of the alleged shooter, Adam Lanza, 20, who is also suspected of killing his mother, Nancy.
Read more: http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Father-of-Newtown-shooter-lives-in-Stamford-4119559.php#ixzz2F5Fmj3jH
OS,
I saw earlier that he also had a semi-automatic bushmaster. He also reportedly had a bullet proof vest on. Would it be reasonable to outlaw non-military or police access to bullet proof vests? Make these “heroes” go in unprotected may make a couple think twice.
DonS, you and I know as well as anyone here, that jails are the new mental “hospitals.” Back to Bedlam, we have come.
Swarthmore,
That is where we need to start. Serious mentally ill must not be allowed access to guns.
raff, information leaked as of just a little while ago indicated he had at least one 9mm Glock, which is a common pistol. One report said he had two of them. Glocks are standard issue for most police departments and used in target shooting as well as home defense. Most Glock pistols have a standard magazine of either 10 or 17 rounds. High capacity magazines are available, but are unreliable and known for jamming. He allegedly also had a hunting rifle.
This may turn out to be incorrect, but that is what has been leaked. Official statements by the police are not yet forthcoming as far as I have been able to find.
The Colorado shooter was under psychiatric care, but merely seeing a psychiatrist, even for a serious case of mental illness, would not trigger any of the safeguards for gun purchases, which are governed by federal law, said Daniel Gross, the president of the Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “There are no federal restrictions on the purchase of firearms for the mentally ill unless the person has been adjudicated by a court as being dangerously mentally ill,” he said.
Gene,
The choice of weapon does matter. When someone who may have had mental health issues is able to get guns of this magnitude, it endangers everyone that comes into his path. Knives and swords are no equivalent or anywhere near as dangerous as a semi-automatic weapon. Reasonable gun control is not only needed, and allowed by Supreme Court decisions,it must be discussed now. After which mass shooting are we allowed to discuss reasonable gun restrictions? After Columbine, after Virginia Tech, after NIU, after Gabby Giffords and now after 20 angels have paid the price of a society so in love with the idea of owning a gun that they refuse to discuss rational and reasonable restrictions to limit the ability of people who are mentally ill to get any gun. Reasonable restrictions to limit the kinds of semi-automatic weapons that civilians can get access to, not to mention the high capacity magazines. These weapons are not designed to hunt with. They are based on military designs and are designed to kill people. OS and others are correct that we need better mental health care and we must pay for it. However, we also must have better restrictions on who has a gun and what type of gun that they have.
I have to respectfully disagree. It does matter what type of weapon is used along with preventing the wrong people from having access to it.
You can protect the 2nd Amendment while at the same time agreeing to basic common sense restrictions. But we will never prevent another massacre like this one unless we start now. By the way, can you lend me some of your Nyquil? I could use something to soothe the savage beast within!
The Aurora shooter sent letters and his journal outlining his plan to a psychiatrist at his school. This person was on vacation and did not see them until after the shooting, unfortunately. I do not know how anyone could live with that missed connection as a professional.
Great, points of agreement on the mental health quagmire.
While a really well functioning MH system might seem a luxury to some, I think there are studies showing it’s cost effectiveness, certainly when compared with the aggregate cost of several of the inadequate alternatives, e.g., homelessness; waste of human potential and loss of productive capacity; incarceration in jails and prisons; multigenerational syndromes. And it goes on.
DonS wrote:
“But, you know, no one wants to pay for that kind of system. They only want MH services on a kind of “just in time” basis.”
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Yup, that is the elephant in the room that no one is willing to acknowledge. It costs money to provide effective mental health care. Six visits a year limit is not going to do the trick. Mental health care needs to be either free or nearly free, easily accessible and plenty of inpatient care for those who need it.
Unfortunately, that is not going to happen in our lifetimes. It is far too easy to blame the tool rather than the carpenter.
DonS,
Don’t get me wrong. What I say about MH is not a silver bullet solution (although I can see where you might have gotten that by how I framed what I said). In implementation it would exactly as you say and even then, some would get through the system to commit horrible crimes simply as a statistical matter. You can’t legislate a perfectly safe world. Chaos prevents it as a matter of mathematics. However; ” But, you know, no one wants to pay for that kind of system.”
I do.
And an analogous public medical care system as well that covered preventative medicine as well as remedial and palliative care.
reasonable gun control. I don’t think we are anywhere near 2nd amendment territory. Not even the camel’s nose under the tent which is another scare tactic, I’m afraid. For the record, I don’t think having a gun is going to be the means to prevent the continuing erosion of our democracy..
I’ve got a couple of guns. I don’t feel safer from the those forces, except maybe to shoot myself if it get’s bad enough 😉
Responding to Gene’s point about making legislation under the influence of emotion, pretty much I agree. For example, the scurrilous Patriot Act as cited. But then you look at the Voting Right’s Act of 1964; not likely it get’s passed without the emotion behind the JFK assassination, so that’s not so clear. My point would be that I don’t feel particularly emotional about gun control. I think progressing to reasonable gun control is an eminently logical thing. But I freely admit that it is possible (even inevitable) that agendas get moved by the manipulation of [what appears to be] emotion.
As far as the mental health system stopping potential massacre killers, that’s not how it works, although in the usual magic bullet thinking, that’s the way Monday morning quarterbacks would like it to work. It’s about having a robust enough MH system to provide adequate services for individuals with emotional problems and needs long before any aberrant trajectory is identified. But, you know, no one wants to pay for that kind of system. They only want MH services on a kind of “just in time” basis.
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008)
McDonald v. Chicago, 561 US 3025 (2010)
The Constitution does mention a WELL REGULATED militia.
Does someone shooting up a school or a theatre on a killing spree look like a well regulated anything?
Yes. Act based on emotion and not reason and get another Patriot Act – brought to by Fear in conjunction with Panic and co-sponsored by Bad Causal Analysis.
And what OS said.
You complain about your rights being eroded . . . unless it’s a right you don’t like.
They’ve got a word for that. Starts with “h”. I’m a liberal for reasonable gun control and maintaining the 2nd Amendment. Why? Because some defense against tyranny is better than none. I’m not for pissing on the Constitution because you don’t like part of it. That’s what Bush and Obama did and do. The Constitution is not a salad bar. You don’t pick and choose. You order the whole entree. If you think you can muster consensus to repeal the 2nd Amendment? Be my guest to try. You’ll find a lot more people like me than not in their opinion of firearms. You won’t even come close to the votes for amendment even without the NRA in the picture. Unless, of course, you want the 2nd stripped by Executive fiat.
The China comparison is facile logic. Just because a crazy person in China wasn’t smart enough to use a knife efficiently is merely good luck for the victims, but his choice of weapon was not causal in the comparative lack of deaths. If he’d been slashing throats or aiming for their hearts or liver or stabbing femoral and/or brachial arteries like a trained knife fighter, he’d have killed everyone he aimed for. I know guys, mostly ex-military, who could kill twice as many with a knife in the same time as this guy did with a gun. I know swordsmen (and women) who could kill everyone they came into contact with. I know people that if they went nuts could kill 20 people with their bare hands before you could stop them.
Sun Tzu once said, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” The enemy is killers, not their tools. The Great General also said, “Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across.” In this case, proper free mental health care to drive the enemy across the bridge into harmlessness.
It’s not the weapon that is relevant.
It’s identifying the potential killer and intervening before they have a chance to act on their impulses.
That’s not just how you stop gun violence.
That’s how you stop violence period.
. . . and it’s just incidental the number of gun-related killings? I don’t think OS said a word about gun control, so there is really no juxtaposition with more adequate mental health,
I don’t think this is a matter of either/or? Gun control or mental health services.
It’s both, and . . .
And btw, of course, mass killings are only one species of gun violence, but they get our attention.
And adequate mental health services need not, and should not be used as a foil to avoid the separate issue of gun control. But it is.
I’m with OS on this. It’s true that guns are much too easy to get but most of the horrific incidents are due to mental health issues of the shooter or to the meds they are taking.
*People do not just “snap” one day and decide to go on a killing spree.* [os]
“Accusing people of “politicizing” tragedy is a gun lobby ploy to keep us from acting against gun massacres. Don’t fall for it. Act. ” Roger Simon