Currently, mentally ill persons are prohibited from owning firearms but they must be adjudicated to be mentally ill, or found to be insane in a criminal case.
Both of these findings are the result due process of law.
Due process applies to persons. Individuals. OTOH, administrative polices apply to people in general, or specific groups of people. What we must guard against is allowing the determination of mental state to become an administrative decision.
I used the following to start another thread that didn't go over too well. I'm reposting here because I think it is on point.
This is what could happen if we allow the determination of mental illness to become an administrative question rather than a judicial one:
Assume we're going to get UBCs. These will come with an expanded and detailed NICS database. The expansion will focus on newly required mental health information
This mental health information could come from mental health evaluations to be mandated under an amendment to Obamacare. OR it could come from expanded access to electronic patient records. There is currently a big push in the medical community to make all
patient records available electronically with online access.
This mandate will come because the CDC has been tasked by Obama with studying gun violence and could easily identify irrational fear and paranoia as a causative factor in gun violence. The diagnostic indicators for this irrational fear might be a need to own firearms for self defense, a preference for military style weapons and high capacity magazines. owning several of these weapons, stockpiling ammunition,
Any physician or mental health professional who observes these indicators (minimum number to be determined by CDC)could be required to note them in the patient's record and/or report them to the FBI for inclusion the NICS database. Such an entry in the database would result in non approval.
And because there are already a lot of these irrational paranoids out there with firearms, we will have to have a national registry to find them and get them out of dangerous hands.
Think about it. This could easily happen if we are not careful. The laws may eventually fail under SCOTUS scrutiny, but that would depend a lot on the make up of the court when the cases reach it. In the meantime, think of the damage that could be done to those firearms owners affected (and that could well be all of us).