Flaws in the System, and “Progressive” Mentality

This is an interesting story:

The Washington-based Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence brought the suit on behalf of Janet Delana, who said she warned the gun store not to sell any guns to her daughter, Colby Sue Weathers, because of a long history of mental illness.

…An employee who answered the phone at Odessa Gun & Pawn on Thursday said no one at the store had comment on the lawsuit, which names the store and three managers. The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday in the Circuit Court of Lafayette County in Lexington.

Weathers developed a high level of paranoia in 2006, was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2011, and hospitalized on several occasions for suicidal tendencies, the lawsuit said.

The Social Security Administration determined she was “severely mentally ill,” the lawsuit states.

“Delana emphatically and urgently requested that Odessa not sell Weathers a gun because of the great likelihood that Weathers would use the gun to shoot herself or others,” the lawsuit states.

According to the lawsuit, a gun shop employee told Janet Delana that the store had “little control” over whether to sell her a gun. But the lawsuit says Missouri law allows a gun shop employee to use “individual judgment” in refusing sale to some customers.

Now overall I’m going to call this a frivolous lawsuit. Even if the shop owner does have discretion to not sell to somebody with a clean NICS check, the bigger question isn’t asked. What was the shop’s relationship with the mother who requested they not sell to her daughter. Did they know her previously? How did she conduct herself with the request? How did she know THIS would be the shop where her daughter was going to buy a gun?

If they didn’t know the mother from Adam, how are they to know the DAUGHTER is the crazy one, and the Mother wasn’t off-her-rocker with her request? They just as likely could be on the receiving end of a lawsuit for refusal to sell, and given that they have zero access to private health records, nor can they tell a person’s future state of mind, I could see this being just as big a lawsuit fodder as those bakers who refused to bake a cake for a gay couple. I mean doesn’t ANY store have the right to refuse service to somebody they don’t want to serve? Not in America they don’t, not anymore.

Now the bigger issue is what I consider the “Progressive” Mentality. Notice it was somebody ELSE’S responsibility to keep her daughter away from guns, and given that this woman is working with the Brady Campaign with her lawsuit, I suspect even before her daughter showed signs of mental illness, she probably wasn’t friendly with ANYBODY who sells guns legally.

In a perfect world the Mother should have been able to take steps to get her daughter committed against her will which would have eliminated FFLs as a source for her to get guns. These avenues exist, and there is no mention if she had attempted those options.

Still an involuntary commitment is damn near impossible to do these days without the person committing a serious crime while in an insane state.

That’s something we need to have a dialog about, not if some honest business man should lose his shop because he doesn’t take every request off the street at face value.