Monthly Archives: February 2004

State regulated nursing homes

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I got a call from Barb today.  She was pretty upset.  The nursing home where her mother, Joy, lives was audited by the state of Idaho and was told they have too high a percentage of patients that have railing on their bed.  Barb’s mom was one of the residents that would have their railings removed.  Joy has fallen out of bed three times and in one of those falls broke her hip.  A railing seems to be more than just a good idea, but the state has some sort of quota system and Joy was going to pay the price.  Barb called the state inspector and was told, “You are very hostile.  Calm down.”  Barb managed to get some of the anger out of her voice but she still expressed her view of what the inspector should do in regards to the stupid regulations.  The inspector told her that maybe her mother could have her bed on the floor instead of having a railing.  For some reason this helpful suggestion was not received with as much enthusiasm as might have been expected.  Another suggestion was that we take her out of the state licensed nursing home.  This is actually a rather good suggestion if it wasn’t for the fact that the state takes so much of our money in taxes that we cannot afford private care for her.  We could have provided far better care for her if our tax rate was 1/2 of what it currently is.

I explained this is the sort of thing that happens with government “provided” anything.  They take our money from us because they know how to spend it better than we do.  They then spend it according to the whims of the “central committee” and the central committee in their infinite wisdom will come up with rules such as what we are experiencing in this case.  It happens all the time.  It’s not just health care, it’s nearly everything the central committee does.

Vote Liberatarian, the party of principle. 

Gun control news

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I follow the politics of the anti-freedom movement in this country with particular attention paid to gun control.  One of my tools for doing this is google’s news alerts.  It’s a wonderful tool.  This morning I got a notice about Gun control reappears as political issue. Heavy sigh… It included this little nugget:

…the recently enacted omnibus appropriations bill rolls back the government’s timetable in tracking illegal guns. Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) sponsored in the provision in the House. It requires the FBI to destroy gun-buyer records 24 hours after a weapon is sold. The Brady law had required the FBI to retain such records for up to 90 days.

This is a commonly held belief but it is false.  The original Brady Act said:

(2) If receipt of a firearm would not violate section 922 (g) or (n) or State law, the system shall–
(A) assign a unique identification number to the transfer;
(B) provide the licensee with the number; and
(C) destroy all records of the system with respect to the call (other than the identifying number and the date the number was assigned) and all records of the system relating to the person or the transfer.

Item (C) was interpreted by the pro-freedom activists to mean they would be destroyed almost immediately.  This would allevate the concerns about creating a Federal gun owner database by default.  The Brady Act would not have passed without this provision.  The FBI didn’t destroy the records.  Janet Reno said they were being held for “audit purposes“.  Unfortunately they were also being used for other things as well.  One would have thought that if they were by law to be destroyed then they could not be legally used for tracking down gun owners that passed the initial background check.  But this wasn’t the case.  Law enforcement was using the records for far more than “audit purposes“.  The new law restores the original intent and the big fuss this created by the new law should be that law enforcement was violating the law to begin with and another law was necessary to curb them.

I wrote the author of the article a polite letter explaining things and suggested he should check any facts obtained from the gun control people carefully.  They are frequently misleading in their statements — for example there is no such thing as a “Gun Show Loophole”.  All the laws and regulations that apply at a gun shop also apply at a gun show.