the gun-control lawsuit that isn't

A family is suing walmart because the store sold a gun to their mentally-disturbed daughter  who has a mental-health history and is on prescription drugs to control that which are purchased through the same walmart.  That daughter killed herself with the weapon.

Some are concerned that its a "gun control" lawsuit.  but it isn't.  its a privacy rights lawsuit, and its directed at the wrong defendant.

The truth is that the lawyer who took on their case didn't do his homework.  The restriction of mental-health records to the FBI is a Texas law (which 37 other states share), so the FBI had no way of having her name on the "don't sell a gun" list.  The restriction of a store using its prescription records for *any* other purpose is a federal law passed in 1996.  Walmart followed the law in both cases (well, by deferring to the FBI for the background check, and not looking up prescription records).

So Walmart was in no way at fault as they followed the law properly.  Even an appeal can't redirect the issue to the laws in question because they aren't aimed at the right defendants, nor could either law be overturned on constitutional issues.  Both would have to be changed through legislation.

And personally, I don't think they should be.

I do think there should be a way for parents or caregivers of mentally disturbed patients to at least  be able to petition to the FBI to have the patient put on the "don't sell a gun to them" list,, allowing some restrictions without having to have full-disclosure of the private records.  However, the FBI policy on this should be scrutinized carefully and personal interviews conducted to verify the claims of the guardians, lest it be subject to an NRA legal attack.

In the end, a suicide is a suicide, and regardless of how it was done, it likely would have happened anyways.  Continual intervention is the only real way to stop it; if you leave a person alone who wants to die, they'll find a way.

wow, St. Augustine and I actually agree on something

I'm not a huge fan of St. Augustine, as his Ciceronian-driven writings opened the dark ages and middle-ages recover to much of the intolerances that drove the crusades and inquisitions.  However, there were, apperantly, times at which he himself urged caution when holding to a strictly literal biblical interpretation:

Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances, . . . and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, lest the unbeliever see only ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn." -- St. Augustine, "De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim" (The Literal Meaning of Genesis)