Huh. I got the impression he knew what he was doing, per the legal definition of the insanity defense, but I wasn’t the one examining him. Not that things are really much easier for him down this road.
Maybe if he had another gun he’d be fit to open carry.
But most fanatic anti-choice fanatics are mentally ill.
Will they all avoid prison?
In my professional opinion, he was clearly a half a bubble off plumb.
But those guys who did the edited PP hit job video should certainly be held responsible.
It makes you wonder how it would be possible for a lunatic like this to have easy access to weapons.
No, actually you don’t have to wonder how.
This, BTW, was Carly Fiorina’s most notable contribution to the 2016 election cycle.
Since “a warrior for the babies” is an official plank in the GOP platform every card carrying Republican has a 
If he’d not killed anyone (yet) he would have been. Lovely how that works, isn’t it?
Whatever the legal wrangling, he’s locked up now and unable to murder people at the command of his disordered brain cells. And given his age, he’ll probably be confined somewhere – prison or a hospital for the criminally insane – for the rest of his life.
EXCELLENT!
Now Trump can pick him as his V.P. Candidate!
The precise legal definition of insanity varies from state to state. The article doesn’t give us much beyond he is mentally incompetent to stand trial. That could mean he lacks the competence to assist in his own defense.
I’m not saying anyone needs to feel compassion for him, but the convergence of his madness with a political agenda we despise isn’t a reason to want more than incapacitation and, if possible, treatment for him.
The insanity defense and capacity to stand trial (separate things) always raise troubling issues because they highlight the inconvenient truth that a very high percentage of felons have some kind of severe mental disability yet very few of them get mitigation of sentence or treatment. It’s a glaring injustice built into our justice system that lies at the complex junction where law, morality, philosophy, and social contract intersect. The severely limited circumstances where the law acknowledges mental disorder or disability as relevant to culpability or accountability make us uncomfortable because the severe limitations themselves highlight the fact that our solution to this ethical snarl is based almost entirely on expedience and Bronze Age notions about punishment.
Yep, ability to assist in his own defense, or ability to understand the nature of a trial are the two rationales that have compensated (for people with the right lawyers) for the fact that actual “not guilty by reason of insanity” is generally a pretty high bar. (IANAL, but IIRC in some jurisdictions you have to truly not know what you’re doing, in others you can get away with knowing what you’re doing but not knowing that it’s wrong.)
So is this a one-shot deal, or do they re-examine him every few years to see if he’s gotten any better?
Shooter’s Defense: I watch FOX news.
If so, does anyone who ascribes their motives to the will of an invisible sky daddy equally incompetent? If so, is the entire goddamned cult of Christo-fascists unaccountable should they engage in Trumpian cleansing of the populace?
No problem for him to get as many guns as he wants, but NO CAN DO when he has to face the consequences.
Selling guns is more profitable than incarceration.
This is too glib, since there were so many victims.
OT: Is anyone else having problems with the Commenting for the newer articles?