NRA Letter to the President, and My Reply

The below ABC News story has a link to the PDF file of the NRA letter to the President dated March 14, 2011. There is another letter dated March 15, 2011 on the NRA web site. Here is my letter to the NRA.

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March 15, 2011
Wayne La Pierre
Executive Vice President
NRA

Chris W. Cox
Executive Director
NRA-ILA

National Rifle Association of America
11250 Waples Mill Road
Fairfax VA 22030

In your letter to the President dated March 14, 2011 you say,
"In the case of Tucson, a man clearly bent on violence was not reported to the proper authorities by those who had good reason to believe he had serious mental problems. That's not a deficiency in our gun laws, it's a deficiency in our mental health system -- and should be treated as such.
[. . .]
We welcome any serious discussion on policies that focus on prosecuting criminals and fixing deficiencies in the mental health system. Any proposals to the contrary are not a legitimate approach to the issue."

I support your efforts defending the Second Amendment. I know about the research in John R. Lott Jr.'s book More Guns, Less Crime.

Your general statement regarding the mental health system is problematic. Psychiatry is personal opinion masquerading as science. It is a large and growing boondoggle. Mental illnesses are created by consensus, not science. There are no pathologies for mental illnesses. Only psychiatrists can see mental illnesses. They diagnose symptoms, i.e., speech and behavior that are protected by the First Amendment to US Constitution. Speech and behavior that psychiatrists do not like or do not understand is declared mental illness. Psychiatry is a means of social control with no due process protections.

The Constitution protects citizens from arbitrary abuses of government power. Stalinist and Nazi psychiatrists made good use of the arbitrary nature of psychiatry. Yet many believe the genes of American psychiatrists have been cleansed of mendacity, greed and sadism.

Why do psychiatrists have an exception to the protections? Why do courts allow psychiatrists to predict the future? American jurisprudence defines crime as an act accompanied by the knowledge that the act is wrong. Taking freedom based upon personal opinion (psychiatry) is government abuse.

Your refer to "those who had good reason to believe [Loughner] had serious mental problems," without explaining who "those" are. Journalists regularly cite "a history of mental illness," when reporting crime. They suggest and share the fantasy with prosecutors that mental illness causes crime. Politicians believe that guns cause crime. It is just as nonsensical to blame mental illness for violence as it is to blame guns. But that is what your letter appears to do.

The psychiatric industry and the drug companies use their enormous influence promoting psychiatry and drug treatment. They control legislation and most editorial positions regarding mental illness and taking freedom based upon personal opinion and irrational fear.

The current focus is turning prisoners into mental patients, which is good for the drug companies and the psychiatric industry but bad for citizens. There is no appeal from a medical diagnosis. It was the Nazis who medicalized social problems. Research shows that fatherless children are much more likely to have problems with the criminal justice system than those with fathers. That is the source of much of the problems in the US today. But there is little focus on solving that problem. Instead fatherless homes are celebrated.

Why does the NRA divert attention from one scapegoat to another? People do bad things. It is impossible to identify violent civilians. Everyone is a potential criminal.

I hope you will reconsider your stated assumption regarding psychiatry.

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http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2011/03/nra-to-president-obama-the-problem-isnt-guns-its-law-enforcement-media-and-the-mental-health-system.html

NRA to President Obama: The Problem Isn’t Guns, it’s Law Enforcement, Media and the Mental Health System
ABC News
March 14, 2011 8:27 PM