starfuryzeta
Member
IMHO, a suprisingly neutral article showing that no matter how many gun laws you have, they don't mean squat unless they have the means to be enforced.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...ay/historyofmentalillnessdoesntpreventgunbuys
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...ay/historyofmentalillnessdoesntpreventgunbuys
The arrest last week of an Ohio man as the prime suspect in a 10-month string of highway shootings in the state has turned a momentary spotlight on the mentally ill's easy access to guns.
Charles McCoy Jr., who has been charged with one assault count, has a history of psychiatric problems. But, apparently, he had no record of being committed to an institution or judged mentally incompetent. So he was not prohibited from buying a gun.
Even if such a record existed, it likely would not have shown up in a required background check for a gun purchase. That's because only a handful of states make any mental-health information available to the national background databank used for checking gun buyers. Nearly two-thirds don't even compile such information. As a result, a 1968 federal law designed to keep guns away from the mentally ill is toothless.
Indifference by state bureaucrats and lawmakers and pressure from groups defending the privacy rights of the mentally ill allow this public-safety gap to persist.
In the wake of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, Congress banned anyone who has been involuntarily institutionalized or found by a court to be mentally ill from owning or buying a firearm. But for 25 years, lawmakers failed to provide any enforcement, instead trusting sellers and buyers to obey the law. Finally, in 1993, Congress mandated background checks for anyone wanting to buy a gun from a federally licensed gun dealer.
Even so, an individual who lies on a purchase application about a recorded mental illness probably won't be caught because 31 states, including Ohio, don't have any access to records of those committed to mental institutions. And only four of the 19 states that maintain records are taking steps to provide information to the national instant-background-check system that is used to approve gun buyers.
Alabama is about to become the fifth state. Its action comes after a mentally ill man was arrested in the killing of two police officers Jan. 2. The accused had been committed to a state hospital at least four times but still was able to buy a powerful assault rifle that police say was used in the slayings. The gun dealer ran the required check, but found no record of the buyer's troubled past.
Congress briefly tackled the problem two years ago, after a priest and parishioner were killed in a suburban New York church. They were shot by a man whose troubled mental-health history was in a state database but not available to federal background checkers. The House subsequently passed a bill offering grants to states that make criminal, mental and domestic-violence records available for instant checks. It died in the Senate, and no action has been taken since, even though the measure is backed by the powerful National Rifle Association.
Advocates for the mentally ill say access to these records would violate the privacy of those who have no history of endangering others. But the proposal stuck in Congress includes provisions that would limit the use of mental-health information only for background checks and respect state privacy laws and doctor-patient privileges.
That balanced approach can protect the privacy rights of the mentally ill and reduce the risk of gun violence, a promise made to the public more than three decades ago.
