mental health and guns

[briannell]

silly me, I thought this would just be a given. why would you want mentally unstable people buying guns.


Mental health records not in gun database
Most states bar such information from being shared with law enforcement

The Associated Press
Updated: 2:10 p.m. ET Nov. 26, 2005


WASHINGTON - In Alabama, a man with a history of mental illness killed two police officers with a rifle he bought on Christmas Eve.

In suburban New York, a schizophrenic walked into a church during Mass and shot to death a priest and a parishioner.

In Texas, a woman taking anti-psychotic medication used a shotgun to kill herself.

Not one of their names was in a database that licensed gun dealers must check before making sales — even though federal law prohibits the mentally ill from purchasing guns.

Most states have privacy laws barring such information from being shared with law enforcement. Legislation pending in Congress that has bipartisan support seeks to get more of the disqualifying records in the database.

In addition to mandating the sharing of mental health records, the legislation would require that states improve their computerized record-keeping for felony records and domestic violence restraining orders and convictions, which also are supposed to bar people from purchasing guns.

Similar measures, opposed by some advocates for the mentally ill and gun-rights groups, did not pass Congress in 2002 and 2004.

The FBI, which maintains the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, has not taken a position on the bill, but the bureau is blunt about what adding names to its database would do.

“The availability of this information will save lives,” the FBI said in a recent report.

Many records incomplete
More than 53 million background checks for gun sales have been conducted since 1998, when the NICS replaced a five-day waiting period. More than 850,000 sales have been denied, the FBI reported; in most of those cases, the applicant had a criminal record.

Legislation sponsored by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., says millions of records are either missing or incomplete. “The computer is only as good as the information you put in it,” McCarthy said.

In the Alabama case, police say Farron Barksdale ambushed the officers as they arrived at the home of his mother in Athens, Ala., on Jan. 2, 2004. Barksdale had been committed involuntarily to mental hospitals on at least two occasions, authorities said.

Facing the death penalty, he has pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental disease and defect.

The shootings led Alabama lawmakers to share with the FBI the names of people who have been committed involuntarily to mental institutions. But just 20 other states provide NICS at least some names of people with serious mental illness, a disqualifier for gun purchases under federal law since 1968.

Shayla Stewart had been hospitalized five times in Texas, twice by court order. Yet Stewart was able to buy a shotgun at a Wal-Mart in 2003 because Texas considers mental health records confidential.

The same is true in New York, where Peter Troy was twice admitted to mental hospitals but bought a .22-caliber rifle that he used in the shootings inside a Long Island church in March 2002. Troy is serving consecutive life terms for the killings.

Legislation introduced
As a result of the church shootings, McCarthy and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., introduced legislation that year to close the gaps in the background check system. The bill would have required the states to give the FBI their records and provided $250 million in grants to cover their costs.

The bill passed the House without opposition but stalled in the Senate. In 2004, the measure again had the support of lawmakers who support gun rights, but it did not pass Congress.

McCarthy, whose husband was among six people shot to death on a Long Island Rail Road train in 1993, has introduced it again this year, but it has not yet been taken up by a House Judiciary subcommittee.

Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, a National Rifle Association board member, was a sponsor of the bill in the last Congress and continues to support it, spokesman Dan Whiting said. The NRA supports the concept, but it has not taken a position on McCarthy’s legislation, spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said.

‘Singling out people’
Michael Faenza, president and chief executive of the National Mental Health Association, said forcing states to share information on the mentally ill would violate patient privacy and contribute to the stigma they face.

“It’s just not fair. On the one hand, we want there to be very limited access to guns,” Faenza said. “But here you’re singling out people because of a medical condition and denying them rights held by everyone else.”

Several states have determined that they can flag residents who should not be allowed to buy a gun without compromising the privacy of mental health patients, said Matt Bennett, a spokesman for Americans for Gun Safety, which supports the bill.

Larry Pratt, executive director of the Gun Owners of America, said adding records to the database is the wrong idea. “Our idea of improving NICS is to abolish it,” Pratt said. “There is this continuing assumption that a gun buyer is guilty until proven innocent.”

The states that provide some or all mental health records are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, New Jersey, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming.

———

On the Net:

National Instant Criminal Background Check System: http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cjisd/nics/index.htm

Americans for Gun Safety: http://www.americansforgunsafety.com/

Gun Owners of America: http://www.gunowners.org

Information on the bill, H.R. 1415, can be found at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D ... query.html|

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

© 2005 MSNBC

['93HonoluluCat]

silly me, I thought this would just be a given. why would you want mentally unstable people buying guns.

[SNIP]

I know BAC, et al, are expecting me to use the age-old statement of "guns don't kill people, people kill people," but I'm not.

I see this as a perfect example of a bureaucracy that has grown too big for its own good.

[briannell]

guns don't kill people, people kill people,"

By the way, I agree with this statement. I just think that if you ensure mentally "healthy" individuals are the ones purchasing the fire power, you'd have less gun violence.

Yes I do shoot. I love the Glock I shoot (at targets only).

I also know that it's better left where it is a few days a month, when , well, we as women we are not so "mentally sound".

[Hell's Bells]

silly me, I thought this would just be a given. why would you want mentally unstable people buying guns.

[SNIP]

I know BAC, et al, are expecting me to use the age-old statement of "guns don't kill people, people kill people," but I'm not.

I see this as a perfect example of a bureaucracy that has grown too big for its own good.

sooo you are saying that it takes a human to pick up the gun and shoot it?

man HC my bad i just went on assumeing that guns just floated in the air smiting people at random

[SonomaCat]

I see this as an interesting issue on many fronts.

First, that the article suggests that the NRA supports the idea of limiting gun ownership, yet they haven't actually endorsed the bill. The reason most common sense gun laws aren't on the books is because the NRA is such an effective political lobbying group. If they wanted the law on the books, it would be on the books. I don't necessarily blame them for opposing any and all gun legislation -- that's their role in society. It's just unfortunate that any lobbying group can be that powerful. I do hope they formally support this bill (as opposed to what I fear, which is limited public lip service to the bill, but behind the scenes blockage of the legislation), which will ensure its passage.

The reason they would oppose the bill deals with the famous (and sometimes legitimate) "slippery slope" argument. If there was a database of people who were considered mentally unstable who could not buy guns, there would be some level of subjectivity involved in creating such a list. It would be based on one person's assessment of another person's ability to safely own a gun. Well, what if the person making those decisions was aggressive in their application of their authority (and maybe a touch anti-gun as well) and used this power strongly?

Could this sort of no-gun list extend to anybody on any kind of medication that could affect decision-making? Would anyone who has had alcohol or drug issues in past be on the list? Could the theory be extended to include anyone who has a tendancy for violence or rage (and could angry posts on Bobcatnation.com qualify many of us as too dangerous to own a gun?).

I totally agree that crazy people shouldn't own guns, and I personally don't really think many people should own guns (but I am not a big gun control person -- I just don't have a personal taste for firearms). But I do see how laws like this could make people nervous, even though the upside is so obvious.

Therefore, I wouldn't be shocked if this bill gets quietly killed by powerful gun interests. I don't think the National Mental Health Association will be a big player in deciding the fate of this legislation, despite the gratutious quote from them.