Not surprisingly, the expert quoted in the last post (one James Alan Fox), is a gun control advocate. Elsewhere, when he was specifically asked whether or not armed citizens might help prevent criminal rampages, he ducked the question:

Yazoo City, Mississippi: As Chief Medical Examiner/Investigator for Yazoo County, Mississippi I have investigated a work place homicide and know the child and family of the Pearl, Mississippi school shootings. The shooting I investigated was the result of 2 men in love with the same woman. The victim saw the shooter coming outside of the workplace and crawled under a vehicle, where he was shot. Even though it may not be politically correct, I believe that citizens carrying handguns could help prevent this as well as other crimes. What are your thoughts?

James Alan Fox: There have been moves to arm teachers as a way of deterring school shooters. There have been communities that have enabled public workers to have concealed weapons also to deter violence.

These are understandable but very illogical. Workplace avengers and school shooters are typically suicidal. The threat of counter-attack will not deter them.

What are the negative consequences of having schools and workplaces filled with weapons? Surely not positive.

But isn't a citizen armed with a gun more than a threat? By its nature, can't a gun be used to do more than threaten? A gun can deter an attacker in three ways: it might function as a mere threat, which means the attack is stopped. It might stop the attacker by wounding him. Finally, it might kill him. In all three cases, the attacker has been successfully deterred. While it may be that truly suicidal attackers will not deterred by the mere display of a gun, how can anyone (much less a distinguished professor) maintain that wounding or killing will not act as a deterrent?

In the same interview, Dr. Fox discusses the problems caused by mental illness in the workplace, although he does not discuss the role of the ADA -- which prohibits discrimination because of mental illness.

What about the man accused of knifing people in the subway -- a guy who imagines that everyone is watching him? Would you hire him? If you were a landlord, would you rent to him?

Stop laughing. If you didn't, you might be guilty of discrimination.

Not only are they no longer allowed to consider the tenants' sources of income, California landlords may not reject applicants for being palpably (even frighteningly) insane. The following comes from a checklist for landlords titled "Six Tips to Avoid Discrimination" written by a Berkeley landlord:

The fact that a landlord does not discriminate is no protection against being charged with discrimination and forced to spend a huge amount of time and money defending himself. In the end, even if the landlord is completely innocent, he may lose anyway. Although there is no way to completely protect yourself from being charged with discrimination, there are a number of thing you can do to greatly reduce your risk.

When showing an apartment to prospective tenants:

...

5. Let everyone apply. If some one asks, "Do you accept applications from...", say "Yes!" It doesn't matter what follows the words “accept applications from/" California law now prohibits housing bias due to source of income.

6. If an applicant tells you he is disabled, you better assume that he is. The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) does not define "disability." We are not really sure who is and isn't covered. The Supreme Court hears a lot of cases over what constitutes a "disability" and what is a "reasonable accommodation" required by a landlord. The mentally ill are protected by the ADA . This can be a big problem for landlords in Berkeley . It is sometimes hard for me to tell whether I am interviewing a seriously mentally ill person or a sane college student with a strange sense of humor.

Well, maybe you could give as a reason for not renting to him that you don't want a tenant who catches invisible fish, because if he left them lying around, after three days the stench of the imaginary fish would be overpowering to the imagination . . .

Seriously, though, common sense is gone. In the name of abolishing discrimination.

Everything now constitutes discrimination. The inmates are literally running the asylum.

My advice? Pray if you believe in God, and buy a gun whether you believe in God or not.

(Little wonder the Democrats still can't be assured of winning elections, despite huge dissatisfaction with Republicans.)