Lawmaker wants checks on private gun sales

[Dog Gone at Penigma]

37. Jared Loughner

was known to be mentally ill. That would seem evident by the fact that two armed police officers delivered the letter from the college requiring he get a mental health check to his parents in person.

That was not the normal delivery procedure for letters from his community college to parents and/or students.

He had previous drug arrests as well, and was known to law enforcement as a person who was a problem. Clearly, his school should have done more to alert that he was dangerously nuts. He would also have appeared on the NICS data base for his military application that was rejected for drug use.

But at the time that Loughner shot Gabby Giffords, Arizona had only submitted 400 - 800 names of those who were prohibited people had been submitted by Arizona. Some 30 states had submitted few if any names.

Not that it really matters when the data base drops drug user names after 1 year - another change made by the NRA through conservative legislators.

Screw that, lets make the NICS data base permanent for drug users with multiple arrests. Given the problems with alcohol relating to bad gun use, I think we should also expand that area of prohibited people to include arrests relating to alcohol, like multiple DUIs. If someone is showing a pattern of alcohol abuse I don't think they are good candidates for guns.

We have laws; but what we know is that the states with stricter laws have fewer gun deaths and injuries. So what we really need is a national set of laws, so that gun rights are the same from state to state. That means restrictive carry permitting processes, and getting rid of the NRA sponsored laws that make it easy to get back guns for felons and the dangerously crazy.