I’m a Second Amendment absolutist. By that I mean the courts should apply strict scrutiny when it comes to all gun laws, just as they do speech laws. There’s simply no compelling state interest to ban or license firearms. Stripping felons of their rights is acceptable and people declared mentally unfit has always been an acceptable reason for the state to deny citizens their rights. There’s nothing wrong with that as we apply that standard to all rights, not just guns. Otherwise, it is none of the state’s business if I own a gun or carry it around with me.

Even if you don’t care that much about the issue, the perversions that naturally arise from gun control efforts infect all aspect of life. Here’s a good example from the Cult Times.

A newly created database of New Yorkers deemed too mentally unstable to carry firearms has grown to roughly 34,500 names, a previously undisclosed figure that has raised concerns among some mental health advocates that too many people have been categorized as dangerous.

The database, established in the aftermath of the mass shooting in 2012 at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and maintained by the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, is the result of the Safe Act. It is an expansive package of gun control measures pushed through by the administration of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. The law, better known for its ban on assault weapons, compels licensed mental health professionals in New York to report to the authorities any patient “likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others.”

But the number of entries in the database highlights the difficulty of America’s complicated balancing act between public safety and the right to bear arms when it comes to people with mental health issues. “That seems extraordinarily high to me,” said Sam Tsemberis, a former director of New York City’s involuntary hospitalization program for homeless and dangerous people, now the chief executive of Pathways to Housing, which provides housing to the mentally ill. “Assumed dangerousness is a far cry from actual dangerousness.”

Since there is no such thing as “mentally unstable” this gives the fascists in the bureaucracy carte blanche to put anyone they don’t like in the system, thus stripping them of their rights. Humans can be deemed a danger to themselves or others. They can be deemed to be incapable of caring for themselves. These are all things with objective definitions. Mental stability is purely subjective and ripe for abuse.