Also, for at least a week I consciously avoided digging into the details lest I find reason to believe Loughner more than a nut. Unfortunately it won't go away. We can't mourn the dead and address the ease with which one can legally get a gun despite a long and documented history of mental instability and criminal violence (the public suggestion that we SHOULDN'T do this is what prompted me to look deeper); instead we must focus on a former governors insistence that a comfy shoe doesn't fit. Rather than say, "Its absurd to suggest any connection" that suggestion is publicly called a malicious act. One op ed can be ignored; when a large political faction parrots it right down to the diction it must be addressed. If protesting libel charges means the shoe fits, protesting incitement charges does the same--which means it's not libel at all.

Now as for guns laws, you say established history, and I agree Loughner had an established history, yet we must keep two things in mind. First, nothing from a legal standpoint was done against him, we can hardly cry foul and demand more laws when the authority to prevent this already existed and was simply not exercised. Second, we must tread very carefully when we start talking about stripping someone's rights on grounds of insanity or incompetence utilizing the same rule of thumb we have when we say "Better ten guilty men go free than one innocent be imprisoned", because it is essentially the same thing, when you take away someone's rights, whatever those rights are, you have the burden of proof to show that it was demonstrably justified and necessary. And when you do that, you must look at each individual action, not as a group, and ask if those warranted the action you took. Oh, many minor infractions or warning signs can 'add up' but when we look at why he wasn't dealt with we have to see if any of his prior incidents actually warranted restrictions, because from a practical standpoint many really did not except in hindsight. For instance, drug usage. His details are sketchy still but the military does not routinely contact the authorities if an applicant comes up hot for marijuana, and for fairly obvious reasons. For one, the test is voluntary as joining is voluntary. Nor do they wish to scare applicants away for fear they will not only be rejected but incarcerated. Many young people, with the foolishness only youth explains, regularly show up with narcotics still in their system for their MEPS exam. Considering most of us view pot usage by young adults as trivial having thousands of would be soldiers arrested each year would not go over well. Further, were a draft re-enabled for any reason, and a requirement to report positive results enforced, it is almost impossible to imagine the number of people who would need arresting and it would also burden the military with lots of red tape and procedures for what is otherwise a relatively simple rejection process since no criminal charges are expected to be filed, same as many companies use.

Additionally, drug use is a very bad standard for denying someone anything from the Bill of Rights. We would not do it for any other right and do so for that one only because it represents a clear hazard. A patterned history of prolonged drug use seems a fair standard to remove that privilege, at least temporarily, but why on Earth would a man who got arrested for smoking pot or doing coke say five years ago and since had no run ins with the law be less viable for gun ownership and transport than anyone else? We can take this a step further, he brought a gun to class, but I don't recall hearing that any charges were filed for that, and a gun in a college classroom is not some automatic crime. Much like bringing a gun anywhere, there may be rules and restrictions in local law or for private property their own rules, but we can hardly take away someone's gun if no law was violated or if no one bothered to press charges if a law was violated. Is taking a gun on to private property without permission even a felony? That would vary from case to case and state to state, obviously hunters who enter someone else's back woods on accident are not routinely incarcerated. Nor is showing people a gun a crime, it can be, for the purpose of intimidation, but even that's slippery ground. A person with a carry and conceal permit is on pretty solid ground when they open their jacket to reveal a weapon, letting people know you have a gun is not a crime anywhere that I know of, threatening someone with it can be, as can having it. Regardless, if no criminal charges are filed it hardly permits one to take away that right. And if we get to some murky "Clearly established pattern of behavior" you then have to have rules and authority on what constitutes 'clearly established' and who gets to judge that. I'm not sure extreme new legislation which might prevent such things is warranted, considering how genuinely rare they are. It's not PC to say so but this country does not have a rash of killing sprees, we have millions of guns, millions of cranks, and 300+ million people, yet tragic as these things are, they are relatively uncommon on that scale. You are hugely more likely to be killed or injured in a car accident, and a license is not a constitutional right, why would we want laws more restrictive than those existing for drivers? Say 30 people die a year in spree killings, this is high, but represent only 1 in 10 million people, rounding up again to assume a 100 year lifespan, the average persons chance of ever being killed under such circumstance are a mere 1 in 100,000, 20 times smaller than your odds of being struck by lightning in your lifetime, and we boosted our numbers twice to get that figure. We don't need more panic legislation for something like this which can cause for greater harm.