“…the last time there was a massacre at Ft. Hood, back in 2009, the perpetrator was a provider of psychiatric care, not a patient. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was not clinically insane, unless the religious zealotry that drove him to kill 13 people can be classified as lunacy. And, given that much of the Republican Party base is made up of religious zealots with guns, no Republican will be tempted to make that diagnosis.” –  David Horsey in Ft. Hood shooting is part of the scenery in a gun-crazy nation [at latimes.com]

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

77 COMMENTS

    • Hey now, I have a doctorate! I believe in God, vote Republican and collect guns. Granted my doctorate is not in medicine though.

  3. One with an opinion…why are you giving it weight? We all know anti-gunners exist, report on how to take them down or present counter points. Do some reporting…just not cut and paste.

    • Not to be a troll, but quote of the day is pretty much a copy and paste thing. Maybe research to find a better quote for sure, but not much you can do to a quote other than put some ” “and call it a day.

  4. In the article, Mr. Horsey says:

    What needs to be studied is how to get members of Boehner’s Republican caucus to put aside their fear of the NRA and other gun-rights groups and vote for an effective background checks program.

    He then admits such a program wouldn’t work:

    Admittedly, it would be no easy thing to identify potential killers among the millions of Americans who struggle with some form of diagnosed mental problems….The reality is that no background checks system can be drawn so narrowly that it only catches those few truly sick people who plan to use their guns for random, mass mayhem.

    Which leads to him to this gem of a conclusion:

    We either follow the lead of the rest of the civilized world and make gun ownership a “well regulated” activity for everyone, as our Constitution says it should be, or we accept that we have become a country akin to Somalia or Iraq where massacres are just part of the scenery.

    Mind you, he’s not willing to explicitly say that he wants virtually all civilians disarmed…like most gun grabbers, he couches his rhetoric in language pretending to support the 2nd Amendment.

    • Horsey thinks they’re afraid of the NRA.

      No, they are afraid of their constituency voting them out if they support anti-gun policies, because most GOP supporters are also in the same group that would be NRA members and pro-2A.

      Horsey, like most antis, simply cannot admit this. It always has to be about “the gun lobby” bullying and intimidating politicians.

    • And while going on about the precious background checks, he doesn’t even approach the question of how they would change anything at all. I used to think that was always the case because the antis were so stupid they did not realize that it would change nothing, but I don’t any more.

      I think now that they refuse to go there because the real answer would expose them as fruitcakes. They actually WANT the effective registration which would ensue, since the goal of anyone who advocates “universal background checks” is actually confiscation of all firearms. That’s confiscation by SOMEONE ELSE, of course, they aren’t planning to try it their own precious selves! Might get an owie!

    • “…given that much of the Republican Party base is made up of religious zealots with guns, no Republican will be tempted to make that diagnosis.”

      People have been going on for many years now about: “Liberalism is a mental disorder.” Now a Liberal turns this around and claims that Republicanism is a mental disorder. I note he does not say Conservatism, but targets rather his obvious sworn political enemies, the GOP, many of whom many of us also have problems with.

      But I should like to point out that the agreed definition of insanity is: “Doing the exact same thing over and over again, each time expecting a different outcome.” I think history will show that the Liberal attempts to create Utopia, and the Liberal/Progressive attempts at civilian disarmament have been tried over and over again, each time with EXACTLY the same result, not the result they expected, but they keep trying the same things over and over again.

      So which group, sir, is most in need of psychiatric evaluation?

    • If he wants gun ownership to be more “well regulated”, we’ll need more shooting ranges, range time, and subsidized ammo wouldn’t hurt 🙂

  6. Since when are “republican religious zealots with guns” shy about calling islam a “form of lunacy?”

    • This is the first time I’ve seen anyone who *wasn’t* a Republican or a conservative call Hassan what he was: a Muslim terrorist fanatic.

      Progressives like this Horsey ass only came around to Hassan’s religious fanaticism because it’s an angle they can play. These people don’t have actual arguments or evidence — take away the fervid emotion and personal attacks and they have nothing. It’s all blind fanaticism.

  7. So, this college educated jacka$$ has no clue that there is already and effective and functioning background check system in America? Really? How much crack does this a$$wipe smoke in a day?

    • Whatcha mean by “effective”? We spend billions on it every year, and what started his piehole moving was a shooting by a man who passed a vaunted background check just weeks earlier. Billions every year for fewer than 50 prosecutions, and I’d bet money those were about something other than their attempted purchase of a firearm. Like, maybe they donated money to the wrong party.

    • “…there is already and effective and functioning background check system in America…”

      Yes, there is in fact an “effective” background check system, IF you understand that its effect is to erode the sanctity of the “…shall not be infringed.” prohibition included in the Second Amendment. The effectiveness of the background checks is that we have tacitly agreed that the government does in fact have the authority to decide who may or may not exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, to create a set of standards as to who the government will allow to exercise their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected RKBA, to create a registry of those prohibited persons, administer that registry, and enforce those restrictions.

      I’m reasonably certain that this is NOT what the writers of the Bill of Rights had in mind when they wrote “…shall not be infringed.”

      • Why aren’t you in Congress ending this, then? Are you really all for handing out guns to mental retards like Horesy here and Obama? Wow, you really showed me!

  8. Wait…Horsey is a cowboy for a few weeks each year in Montana.

    From his bio:

    “For escape, he spends a few weeks each year working as a cowboy in Montana.”

  9. One other slight problem with his logic is that it’s not religious right wing republicans perpetrating these massacres. It’s Muslim fanatics and or people who seem to have strong left wing beliefs. Maybe progressives should see why their people seem to be the ones going nuts and killing large amounts of people. It’s why the media immediately tries to link every mass shooting to a right wing nut only to have to later admit there were no ties to the right.

    • It’s called projection; he’s placing on us his own feelings about the “lunacy” of his belief systems, ie (liberal/progressive), that encourage the worst aspects of human nature; jealousy, anger, envy, helplessness, victimhood, all leading to murderous rage; which is why most of the mass murderers are of the left type bent.

        • Your welcome.

          As I’m thinking about where I got that particular idea; I realize I read something like that a couple of different times on a 2nd amendment web site, it made sense. It’s hard at times to give proper attribution to a particular idea, especially one; once one hears it, is so obvious.

  11. Texas is nice, civilized place. It is unfortunate that the Federal government had to place a 158,706 acre Gun Free Zone right in the center and bring in Nadal Hasan and Crazy Ivan to f’ it up. The Federal government made this problem and can fix it anytime it wants. So kindly take your advice and stick it in your caboose, Mr. Horsey’s ass.

    • Simplest solution on a military base doesn’t require a change in law, just military regs. Require a sidearm for officers and NCOs in fatigue uniforms.

      And, BTW, make that “on base or off”, and even more problems would be solved!

  12. Perhaps someone here can help me with understanding his logic. He wants private sales to have background checks because they already passed a background check at a gun store?

  13. A “Religious Zealot” willing to blow themselves up to murder a bunch of defenseless men, women and children in the name of their Allah(god), A bunch of people willing to murder(abort) millions of defenseless babies, mostly by Liberal/progressives; hundreds of millions murdered in the name of no god by communists/marxists (These are the ones that progressives look to for guidance)

    In the support of hundreds of millions murdered in the last hundred years by these people; is it “lunacy”? or is it just plain evil?

  14. Another libtard cartoonist chuckling at his own material.

    What these losers don’t have the brains to figure out is the larger picture of corruption and treason hanging over the country’s head. These “sheeple” are still luxuriating on some political Love Boat cruise, totally oblivious to the reality of globalization, militarization of the police force, and erosion of our very way of life. So long as they can watch the network news and still afford a new Prius to sport their Hillary 2016 bumper sticker, these people are as blind as a bat.

    THAT is why Boehner’s depicted constituency are all carrying guns, not because they’re lunatics, but because they know enough to come in out of the rain ……. as opposed to this horse’s ass Horsey nitwit. No doubt, when the time comes, he will willingly go off to a gas chamber or at least a detention camp and will even bring his own jar of Vaseline.

    • Oh trust me, Horsey is fully aware of all of those problems, but he fully forgets about them as soon as a D takes the White House. I used to read his shmaltz in the Seattle PI during the Bush years, and most of his typical subjects and arguments, all of which were equally applicable to Obama, simply evaporated overnight in 2008.

      • Yup.

        There was a time when he make a few amusing points in his cartoons, mostly back in the 90s. He’s never impressed me as a columnist or op/ed writer.

  15. I believe in God, but I do not attend church. I can not quote a Bible verse nor do I try and convert anyone. I am also a gun owner and vote Republican. How do I fit into his hierarchy of political actors? My gut tells me that to him, anyone who is not an atheist or anyone who believes in natural rights is a “zealot”.

      • When it comes to atheists who aren’t Liberal/progressive dingbats and own guns they call us “crazy anarchists” and other inflammatory crap. Liberals love projecting their mental illness upon others, it’s a symptom of their disease and if you’re a “minority” be it racial, religious or philosophical, but aren’t marching in-step with Liberals insane, braindead rhetoric, expect a torrent of bigotry heading your way, as we’ve all seen from how liberals attack black conservatives, republican women or gay sheriffs who want to enforce border security.

        • Left-libertarian here.
          Before I ask the state to do anything about a problem I demand personal responsibility and personal accountability, i.e. I want the government out of people’s personal business–women’s bodies included–and I want corporate welfare queens put under as at least as much scrutiny as every other welfare recipient.

          Left-libertarians are *certainly* not welcome in the statist, elitist, corporate socialist Democrats. They stand for Wall Street gays, limousine liberals, their rigged portfolios and their sheltered college professor propagandists. I can only hope they get the drubbing they deserve.

  16. So . . . Christian religious zealotry is a “diagnosis”, but the religious zealotry that drove Hasan to kill 13 people doesn’t make him clinically insane or a lunatic. Got it. Thanks for clearing that up, David.

  17. It is unbelievable to me that the outfit like LA Times is the ‘paper of record’ for so many people here in Southern California. They are barely one step past the NY Post, a thin cut above a tabloid…

    I heard they were broke and were going to sell off ownership. I wonder what happened to that?

    • Many years ago (1995) when I lived in Orange County I got a solicitation call from the LA Times regarding a subscription offer. I told the guy I was a registered Republican (at that time) and had no use whatsoever for the Liberal LA Times.

      His response was to the effect that they knew Orange County was mostly Republican and that the LA Times was producing a special Orange County edition aimed at conservatives.

      Which tells you all you need to know about these people – they have no real political position other than what they think will sell the most papers. That may have changed in 19 years, maybe they dropped the conservative edition nonsense, but it struck me as hypocrisy of the first order back then.

      • I worked at a metropolitan daily for 13 years, and I can verify that you are 100% on the money. They don’t really hold opinions. They play to their (perceived) readership. And the public senses this, at some level.

        That’s why daily newspapers are going the way of the dinosaurs.

  18. Well, to be fair… they think we’re nuts; we think they’re nuts. They don’t have guns, we do.

    What’s the problem?

      • Yes. Their bodyguards have guns:
        – Military: 2.7 million (small arms)
        – Police: 1.15 million (small arms)
        – Civilian: What was that figure again? I forgot.
        (GunPolicy.Org)
        Percentage of households with guns: 43 – 47%
        What’s the problem?
        If the problem isn’t resolved at the ballot-box it’s going to get ugly however it turns-out.
        It’s up to us to turn-out on 2’nd Tuesday every November to see to it that things don’t get ugly.

        • What good does voting do? Both parties run nearly identical candidates, minus cosmetic differences.

          If voting could really change anything, they’d do away with it. We need more parties on the ballot. That’ll scare the piss outta them.

          • I’m as frustrated with the Republican party as anyone.
            The problem with 3’rd parties is that they split the vote of the opposition and guarantee the election of the populists. Take the last Virginia Gov’s race. The Libertarian Party candidate drew just enough votes from a perfectly-good conservative Republican to ensure a perfectly-awful liberal Democrat won the election. (The Libertarian candidate’s principal backer was a Democrat; who wou’da thunk!)
            In your own Congressional District/State you can back the conservative Republican in the primary against the RINO. You may very well lose consistently; however, you will drag the RINO to the right.
            The most important thing we can do is to donate to conservative candidates in other States/Districts. It’s much less important to get our own representatives/Senators to be Right; it’s much more important to get ANY representative/Senator who is Right elected from ANYWHERE.
            Once the Republicans take a chamber, then write to your RINO representative/Senator and threaten to vote for his Democrat opponent because he is just-a-RINO. Now, we can do this with our representatives. Hopefully, once the Senate flips to Republican control we can do that with our RINO Senators.

            • “The problem with 3′rd parties is that they *split the vote* of the opposition and guarantee the election of the populists.”

              Only if people vote for Democrats or Republicans! Is this a difficult concept for some people? Yeah, sure seems like it.

  20. Why are you even giving this individual coverage. We know the anti gun crowd exists. The only way they have to gain attention is to say something so controversial, that it gets them coverage. STOP giving them the time of day. MAKE THEM IRRELEVANT !!

  21. Sooooo Mr. Horsey, how many of those Republican religious zealots with guns have been the perpetrators of a spree shooting in the last, oh, ten years? OK, how about 20 years? Thirty?? Seems to me the spree shooters, to the extent they have politics at all, tend to spring from the , ahhh, progressive end of the spectrum–or from some progressive-beloved “oppressed minority”, like, say, Muslims….

    • If you research the definition of “Fascism” you will discover that it is in almost every case a far-left political concept wherein they believe that they are so absolutely right (and you are SO wrong if you oppose them) that they are fully justified in using whatever level of coercion or physical force is required to either convert you to their cause, intimidate you into not opposing their cause, or kill you.

      They see their political goals as so important that to achieve them fully justifies these means. And since their goals are often ridiculously Utopian and in violation of personal liberties the oppression they represent meets strong opposition and they will at some point resort to violence to suppress this opposition. One only needs to look at the history of these Progressive sociopaths to see this truth played out over and over. Every murderous Progressive/Socialist/Communist Utopian regime in history has ended in the same oppression of the masses and slaughter of the political opposition.

  22. Whither to Regulate Mental Illness

    The LA Times puts the question starkly:

    “The reality is that no background checks system can be drawn so narrowly that it only catches those few truly sick people who plan to use their guns for random, mass mayhem. We either follow the lead of the rest of the civilized world and make gun ownership a “well regulated” activity for everyone, as our Constitution says it should be, or we accept that we have become a country akin to Somalia or Iraq where massacres are just part of the scenery.”

    http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-fort-hood-shooting-20140404,0,34520.story#ixzz2y1B1UjjN

    I have to agree with the first two conclusions the LA Times expresses, while taking exception to the last conclusion.

    Let’s prescind from the 2’nd, 4’th and 5’th Amendments restrictions – to say nothing of the right-to-privacy of Rowe vs. Wade – to explore the implications of the “background checks” remedy to mental illness. Before any of us embark upon this remedy – whether gun-controllers or gun-rights advocates – we ought to see where it leads.

    It’s not difficult to envision, now that we have ObamaCare and the NSA spying on e-mail and phone records. All it takes is the will and the money; of which the latter can still be borrowed at low rates. We simply gather all:

    – records of phone calls to psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers
    – pharmacy records of prescriptions
    – DSM-V diagnosis codes from medical insurance records and physicians’ (now electronic) records
    – arrest records which could be scanned for words referencing abnormal behavior, drug or alcohol use
    – school and employment discipline records

    Forgive me if I’ve overlooked other useful stores of data. All this data goes into a National Mental Health Database, connected to NICS of course. Now, we have very nearly the universe of individuals with signs of mental illness.

    The NYPD’s Active Shooter report from 2012 conveniently shows us where most mass-shootings occur:
    Location Number
    Type of Incidents Percentage
    ———— ————– —————-
    School 68 24%
    Office Building 31 11%
    Open Commercial 67 24%
    Factory/W’rhs 33 12%
    Other 80 29%
    —– ——
    Total 279 100%

    It’s clear that academic and work-place environments represent a plurality of venues for such incidents: 24 + 11 + 12 = 47%. Obviously, the first step is to make available to school administrators and employers sufficient information from our “National Mental Health Database” to prepare them to deal with identifiable heightened risks. Of course, that introduces a risk of likely discrimination against individuals in education, employment and provision of essential services. Therefore, we will need laws to protect individuals with mental illness against such discrimination.

    The next most important category of venues is “Open Commercial” with 24%; these include such places as shopping malls. All that is required here is legislation requiring “Open Commercial” venue operators to screen individuals entering premises under their control for weapons. To make this manageable, we will need a national Mental Health Certification ID card which will expedite at least 50% of patrons passage through check-points. (There isn’t much that can be done to cover the “Other” category of 29% of incidents because these venues include public highways, streets and other venues where only governments have responsibility for policing access.)

    Naturally, our system of a National Mental Health Database and a Mental Health Certification ID card will require a labyrinth of regulations detailing precisely which nuggets of mental-health information are to be disclosed to law-envorcement, school administrators, employers and what is to be encoded on ID cards. Heavy penalties must be imposed on non-governmental recipients of such information for unauthorized disclosure. Nevertheless, under the 1’st Amendment, nothing whould prohibit the publication of any such information should it be leaked to a government-credentialed journalist.

    Let’s assume that the regime we contemplate here is 100% successful. How much might we have accomplished: The NYPD’s Active-Shooter report is informative. For the period studied from 1966 to 2012 the NYPD found 230 incidents reported on internet sources. They tallied an average of 3.1 killed and 3.9 wounded. So, we could hope to have saved:

    – 230 X 3.1 = 713 killed
    – 230 X 3.9 = 897 wounded
    1,910 total casualties
    divided by 46 years = 41.5 casualties per year.

    This figure – 41.5 casualties per year – is apt to be a gross under-estimate of positive benefits that would accrue from a really aggressive program. Let’s suppose if we count the number of suicides-by-gun and homicides-by-gun (private affairs not counted in the “Active Shooter” report) the total were 10 or 100 times this figure. We might actually reduce the number of casualties by 415 or 4,150 per year. At the very outside, imagine 41,500!

    What would the public reaction be to such an aggressive program? Having prescinded from the 2’nd, 4’th and 5’th Amendments restrictions we can also summarily dismiss any judicial scrutiny or legislative response. We need only consider the private reactions by individuals.

    Gun owners and those who serve in our armed forces are already aware of the rule: “See a shrink, lose your 2’nd Amendment rights for life”. So far, this rule has impacted mostly our servicemen. Because their medical care is provided by the DoD, they have essentially no right-to-privacy of their medical records. In pursuit of our aggressive program, we could easily survey service members or recently discharged veterans to ascertain the impact on their propensity to seek psychological or psychiatric assistance. To what extent have servicemen refrained from seeking help for mental health issues for fear of losing their 2’st Amendment rights or inhibiting their career advancement in the military? Some subset of these servicemen/veterans must also be considering a post-service career in civilian law enforcement. No doubt, any military medical record of mental health issues is apt to introduce a risk of discovery when they pursue post-duty careers.

    Whatever we might learn from servicemen and veterans would inform us in projecting the impact of an aggressive National Mental Health Database program. We would need to know – before instituting such a program – the extent to which individuals’ private responses would be to avoid seeking mental-health treatment. Would the impact be confined to individuals suffering from targeted diagnoses such as anxiety and depression? Or, would it be broader, encompassing a majority of DSM-V codes? Would it creep from an initial narrow set of targeted diagnoses gradually approaching a majority of DSM-V codes? Would the distribution of individuals’ mental health data begin by being carefully guarded as it now is in NICS? Would it expand to disclosure of DSM-V codes to school administrators and employers? Would an individual’s DSM-V codes be disclosed on his Mental Health Certification ID card?

    However little our 2’nd Amendment rights might mean to the voters at large, I think the political implications of a National Mental Health Database are far-and-away more profound. Let me put this more pointedly. Let’s address the voters who have some sympathy for more mental-health controls over those who would keep and bear arms. To what extent are you willing to sacrifice the privacy of your medical records? The records of your relatives and friends? Your prospects for education or employment? Do you really trust your Federal government to keep your medical records private while under a mandate to use those records to control the risk that you might injure or kill anyone at school, work or a shopping mall?

    There is no sharp line that confines the use of mental-health records to doing a background-check at a gun-dealership or in a private transfer. Even if we naively believed that such a sharp line could be maintained, there is nothing to stop any individual bent on homicide from stealing, buying on the black-market, or making a gun. The gun-cat is out-of-the-bag and it will not be put back-in. The issue we are debating is not “universal background checks”; rather it is whither to have a National Mental Health Database.

  25. Funny how these twist want to talk about the long-haired, self-serving, but the simplest one of all, they want no part of.

  27. (sarcasm)Christians in this country are so radical, trying to adhere to courts of law and legislative process to get their way, it’s the Muslims who strap bombs to themselves and blow them up to, murder school girls, behead apostates, hang homosexuals, shoot up malls full of those who don’t believe their storybook who are just misunderstood and victims of cultural oppression by those who suffer from Islamophobia(/sarcam)

    Liberals who espouse this bullshit insult everyone’s intelligence and ability to observe what’s going on around them. If you are a Liberal/progressive you suffer from delusions, disconnects from reality, incapability to critically think, irrational fear of anything you don’t understand, severe hypocrisy, violent and criminal thoughts, and a megalomania.

  30. I don’t mind the editorial, what I mind is I can’t shake the mental image of his stupid haircut bobbing as he types, with a little wise-ass smirk as he puts that zinger in.
    The internet, the editorial pages of papers, etc etc. There was a time on this planet where people actually tried to make their point without being swarmy. More specifically, people like this Robert Redford wannabe, because they liked having most of their teeth, and wanted to keep it that way.
    I wonder which Marriott in Montana he heads up to for…..ahem….cowboy-ing once a year. And I wonder where he takes him to dinner when they’re done.

  31. “much of the Republican Party base is made up of religious zealots with guns”

    Stereotypes make a complex world simpler for stupid people.

  32. It’s sickening watching the army trying to come up with a non-answer to this. Every ranking officer throwing their rank around pointing away from themselves. I’ve witnessed first hand how the army makes mental health problems worse. This shooting comes down to two questions. 1) How does a normal soldier react to not getting approved for time off? 2) Did this person act rationally when denied time off? The answer to number 2 is no, therefore acting irrationally equals mental health problem. It’s isn’t rocket science. Why make it look like it?

  33. Davis who??? Oh, LA Times – I get it now.

    “We either follow the lead of the rest of the civilized world and make gun ownership a “well regulated” activity for everyone, as our Constitution says it should be, or we accept that we have become a country akin to Somalia or Iraq…”.
    You could say the same thing about the First Amendment [substitute “journalism” for “gun ownership”] and not lose the underlying concept. Hon. Ms. Feinstein backs that too.

    Pathetic…

  37. Let me guess… another person who bemoans guns and gun culture without providing ANY real ideas that would have physically stopped these attacks. Even if it were an idea I was against on constitutional grounds, I’d like to see some proposals by these people that would have actually worked in the case they are talking about. But no, they’re just going to talk… and talk… and talk… because it’s easier than coming with anything of substance.

  38. The antis are going to have a bad time trying to avoid the realization that the word “regulated” as used in the constitution does not mean “restricted” and in fact means something closer to “optimized” or “not restricted.”

    In other words, to “regulate” firearms ownership as he misunderstands the constitution to mean, could actually be reasonably construed to mean government must give guns to citizens who cannot afford them or to provide ammunition to civilians.

    It certainly does not mean that the government gets to decide who can and cannot own firearms.

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