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Comment by ccozan | Hacker News Reader

Look, a normal, mental healthy person can get a gun almost everywhere in the world. He/She is checked, screened and if the reasons are not outwordly, the lethal weapon can be owned.

But I don't get how can a FBI suspect, or with a histoy of mental issues, can just simply walk to a weapon store and buy an assault riffle?! Just like that!

USA scares the shit out of me.

EDIT: to make things clear: histoy of mental issues=medical records of mentall illness.

And regarding the idea that the laws are by men and I have to protect myself from the abuse of the law: have you heard of democracy? Next time you vote, choose the ones that can revert/improve that law. I much prefer to oblige the law , bad or good, than to be "protected" by random shooters.

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What you said sounds perfectly reasonable, if you have a normal functioning government that executes the law in a normal and reasonable way. The US was founded, however, partly on the idea that laws are executed by humans, and humans are fallible, and if the laws of our country were ever abused, they couldn't unjustly damage or harm the lives of the citizens subject to those laws. With the current proposal regarding terror watch lists, Donald Trump wants to put all Muslims on a terror watch list just because of their religion. Does that sound fair to you? Should those Muslims have their right to self defense taken away because of their religion? This is what our Constitution was designed to protect.

Any legislation relating to mental illness does nothing but create a subclass with less rights. You can either be honest and argue for full restriction of firearms or nothing. I had problems with depression in my early 20s, am I too mentally ill? All a law like this would do is incentivize people to never get help, never see a doctor, and never get medication. The mentally ill don't commit most gun violence. Most mass shooters are not mentally ill, that is a comfortable lie repeated mindlessly by scared people. They're just murderers.

People who just want to take rights away from the sick because they demonize them are literally going to make things worse.

Mental health legislation is a mess. Decades of Freudians spreading misinformation doesn't help, but we also do a horrible job of educating children. We're worse at that than we are at educating children about sex, which if you think about it is no wonder why we have these bizarre nonsense national discussions about how we need to treat all mentally ill people as potential criminals.

Legislation relating to mental illness already creates a subclass with no rights. Apparently Americans are fine with that so long as it doesn't specifically target their right to buy guns (so stripping them of all freedom is a-OK).

A FBI suspect shouldn't have their rights infringed. If there is actual evidence, the FBI should make an arrest. Due process and all. Also, "assault rifle" is misleading anti-gun propaganda. A semi-automatic rifle that's called an "assault rifle" is only cosmetically different but generally functionally identical.

For the former - due process? How many times has the majority of HN argued against 'blame the terrorists' and unwarranted surveillance?

And for the latter, the sibling answered it very well - a subclass of people, and where do you draw the line at "enough" mental issues?

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