Originally published at: Michigan mom charged with buying guns for son who threatened Biden and Gov. Whitmer | Boing Boing
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I don’t know … maybe she’s a violent right wing nutjob like her son, but it’s also possible that the answer to why she bought him the guns is in that quote. If she had been abused or was under duress it would be tragic to imprison her.
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Gun sales are intentionally difficult to trace for law enforcement on a national scale due to NRA meddling.
Thus giving rise to a vigorous and virtually undetectable illegal interstate smuggling trade (aka The Iron Pipeline)
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Yeah… Same thing happened here in Brazil… And is happening again.
A Cop from a city where I worked as a receptionist at local public ER said me once I only know two people that need guns: cops and criminals. And another one, even shooting with everything Brazilian police forces can use aside sniper guns said she prefered, with all safety issues, to not have guns at home, because the dangers for small kids
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I’m sure her lawyer will use exactly that defense, whether or not it’s true. Either way, “I bought him guns because he threatened to kill me if I didn’t” is going to be a hard sell.
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Randall Berka II was involuntarily committed for mental health care in 2012 and declared incapacitated,
So, what does that mean? If someone is so dangerous they shouldn’t posses firearms, shouldn’t they be in some sort of treatment facility or at least some sort of supervised program?? I know, I know, our health systems are absolute shit, there probably isn’t a program like that unless you have money to put them in one. But there should be.
And shame on the mom for doing straw purchases for her obviously troubled son who is prohibited. Severe lack of judgement there.
U.S. Attorney Dawn Ison gave credit to Google for notifying federal authorities about the threats on YouTube.
This was in an article linked from the AP article. I wonder how wide spread these reports are, because you see a lot of crazy shit like this on YT comments and other places. 
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… being “scared” that somebody is likely to harm people hardly exonerates anyone who assists such a person to commit such harms
on the contrary, it’s evidence of intent and premeditation
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That is such a disingenuous take. Of course not.
There are millions of people that suffer from one form of mental illness or another who aren’t “declared incapacitated”. Clearly there was some condition that made someone go, “This person could be a danger to himself or others, and they shouldn’t have firearms.”
So if that is the case, shouldn’t we be helping them beyond adding them to the list of prohibited persons?
The mother said she was scared of him, and it looks like he was getting SOME help, as she said she “does not think the mental health treatment is working”. But clearly if the guy is making threats online, scaring his mother, and somehow convincing/threatening her to buy him firearms - the guy needs more help than he is getting.
What I’m saying is that you should re-examine your phrasing. You start from the rhetorical assumption that someone so dangerous that they’ve had their right to own firearms revoked must be so bad off that they require hospitalization. That throws all the stigma on people with mental illness and by implication exonerates the people who don’t, yet commit firearm violence every day.
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if someone, or something, is so dangerous that …
you’re almost there, we can hear the gears grinding
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