“Man, I have suffered through illness caused by your brutality and persecution. I have run from your bruising foot and taken refuge here, for dust and ashes are gentler than man’s heart, these ruins ruins less melancholy than the soul of man. Be gone, you intruder from the world of misrule and injustice.

I am a miserable creature who served the son of Adam with faith and loyalty. I was man’s faithful companion. I guarded him day and night. I grieved during his absence and welcomed him with joy upon his return. I was contented with the crumbs that fell from his board, and happy with the bones that his teeth had stripped. But when I grew old and ill, he drove me from his home and left me to merciless boys of the alleys.

“Oh son of Adam, I see the similarity between me and your fellow men when age disables them. There are soldiers who fought for their country when they were in the prime of life, and who later tilled its soil. But now that the winter of their life has come and they are useful no longer, they are cast aside.

“I also see a resemblance between my lot and that of a woman who, during the days of her lovely maidenhood enlivened the heart of a young man; and who then, as a mother, devoted her life to her children. But now, grows old, she is ignored and avoided. How oppressive you are, son of Adam, and how cruel!”

Thus spoke the speechless animal whom my heart had understood.
author unknown

However, I have some ambivalence about this, as well as a general uneasiness with laws named after individuals. Is there an individual liberty issue here? If all citizens have a right to be armed, does society have a right to protect itself by assuring that all those at liberty are mentally balanced? Or are the two liberties to be crazy and the to be armed so important that we cannot trade them off against each other? The statist is always focused on the benefits of the suppression of liberty, ignoring the consequences of abuse, but I am not blind to the negative by-products of liberty. Typically my response is that planning, regulation and control have their downsides as well, and I ma willing to accept the abuses of liberty, which IMHO are usually minor in scope when compared to the abuses of government control.

A great example is the eye-sore liquor store in my neighborhood. How I wish it would disappear and return our town to a more pristine state. However, I acknowledge that Mr. Singh, the owner of this blight on 1st Street, has a right to set up his business and sell booze to a public that demands his wares. Thus I sigh as I pass, “A small price to pay for liberty.” However, one must judge events by their scope, and 32 dead students are a significantly greater consequence than minor urban blight.

So is forced commitment in a society that allows citizens great liberty of action justified?

the use of reason is to justify the obscure desires that move our conduct, impulses, passions, prejudices, and follies, and also our fears.

I was “reading” it on a audio book while driving, and I pulled over to back up the CD and make sure I heard it correctly. This observation, I thought, describes the phenomenon so common in decisions by governmental officials to bend logic and law to serve a particular desired end. It is most obvious in judicial decisions where the trail of reasoning from law to decision often seems strained, as though the jurist had worked backwards from the desired decision to select a the law that could most easily be twisted to fit the outcome.

This also happens when legislators and executives abuse their power, but I’m more disturbed when jurists do it (especially the good ol’ Ninth Circuit) because we seem to have culturally accepted courts as the most powerful wielders of governmental authority. In the case of the SCOTUS, the power is that of an absolute monarch. Of course, one could argue back, an absolute monarch is not limited by the law. Yet, from my strict constructionist POV, courts that use reason to justify desired ends are not terribly limited.

Zapata: Give me your watch.

Madero: What?

Zapata: – Give me your watch.

(pointing his rifle at Madero) Give it to me!

(Madero hands him the watch; Zapata examines it)

Zapata: It’s a beautiful watch. Expensive.

Now take my rifle.

Madero – No.

(Zapata thrusts his rifle into Madero’s arms, so that it is pointing back to
Zapata)

Zapata: Now you can have your watch back …

(hands him back his watch and points to the rifle in Madero’s hands)

… but without this, never!

Pretty powerful message. Historical note: The peasants disarmed; Madero’s government was taken over by hangers on from Diaz, and there was no land reform. However, the peasants rearmed and the revolution, in one from or another, went on until 1917.

The Wikipedia article on the films states that Viva Zapata is the favorite movie of G.H.W Bush and John McCain, but from this exchange in the film, I think you can see why a number of extreme revolutionaries on the far left embrace the second amendment as strongly as those on the right.