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I got aggravated reading this story.
In 1992, a guy bought a gun from Wal-Mart. The employee filled out the proper paperwork and had a supervisor review it, then sold the customer the gun. This is normal.
The guy later took this gun to a courthouse and shot five people, killing two of them.
Now the family of one man who was killed, and another man who was wounded, are suing Wal-Mart.
Peter Scharf, a professor at the University of New Orleans, testified that the videotape, together with psychological reports and interviews with Lott, made it clear that Lott was mentally ill.
If Wal-Mart had trained its employees to identify those personality traits visually and verbally, it could have used that information to deny Lott the gun, he said. Other gun dealers in 1992 used such methods, he said.
I think it is ludicrous to suggest that Wal-Mart employees should make subjective judgments about one's mental health based on visual observations. And it's even more ludicrous to suggest they should refuse a gun sale based on that subjective judgment.
We could just do away with psychologists entirely and let the minimum-wage guy in the sporting gods department make all the calls.
Posted by Robert at April 19, 2002 08:21 AM