• SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 year ago

    The passive voice in the second sentence is very telling. Who should have flagged him? Who should have taken steps to restrict his access to guns? Who had access to that information in order to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and take action? Our society and government doesn’t have a proactive mechanism to so. It is explicitly not the duty of the police. Our system is reactive; some private citizen could have petitioned a court of law, but who has the time, money, and interest to do it?

    • 9thSun@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 year ago

      I mean, there are states that will deny someone a firearms license if they have been to a mental facility within a certain period of time. Even after that amount of time is up, you have to take a psych eval before being able to reapply for the license. So, the way I see it, what I’m saying isn’t too far off from being implemented.

      • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, it’s not impossible, nor necessarily all that difficult. States just need to make it somebody’s job, and set up a system that funnels them the information about troubled people, and gives them the resources and authority to act on it.

      • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        It sounds like the whole community knew, given the reports that everybody in town knew to avoid the guy. It’s just our society and legal system makes it everybody’s responsibility to deal with it, and near-impossible to actually do anything useful, which in practice means it’s nobody’s responsibility. Kind of like climate change, or car crashes.