Most of us will agree the "problem" is not the guns, it is the person wielding the gun. How many of the recent shooters has sought medical assistance for their mental health issues? How many had been prescribed serious psychotropic meds? We will never know because the media want the guns and the privacy of the "patient" is more important that the safety of the public. IMHO HIPPA is the biggest stumbling block to addressing the issue. If someone was hospitalized for mental illness, prescribed anti-psychotic meds, committed to a hospital for a short length of time til meds could be administered and the patient stabilized, that person was likely not "adjudicated" mentally defective and can still purchase, own, possess firearms. Even those locked up for extended periods, against their will, at the order of a judge can still purchase firearms because there is no way to track these people. This will rile some folks up, but here it goes; Perhaps it is time for EDP control. Emotionally Disturbed Persons are the ones committing these horrendous acts. They are "protected" by HIPPA. Perhaps it is time for us to be protected from HIPPA. I am not saying every person taking anti-depressents be barred from firearms ownership. Most of America has suffered from depression at one time or another. I am saying the diagnosed schizophrenics, severe bi-polar affectives, personality disorders. The "really sick" ones. I know this opens the door to "owning guns" being called a mental illness. Anyone could be labeled insane at the whim of a totalitarian regime. The pendulum has swung. I believe it is time for it to swing back and more reasonable steps be taken to prevent EDP's from comitting these horrendous acts. Flame away!
No flame here. I agree wholeheartedly. The only pitfall in my mind is that it provides a LOT of abusable power to an individual doctor or care provider. I recall a story about one of the guys from the first season of Doomsday Preppers being labelled as "mentally deficient" or somesuch by his primary care physician. The guy went to buy a new shotgun, and was denied at NICS. He had no clue why, or that his doc had done such a thing. It's years worth of hassle to have such a mark removed or reversed. I'd hate to see a doc with an anti-2E agenda marking folks without repercussions. There has to be some form of oversight to such a system, which of course bloats the beaurocracy even further, and I can't think of a good way to combat that. Mental health diagnoses are also really hard to pin down. If we legislate that anyone with illness X, Y and Z is "deficient" for the purposes of owning firearms, we need concrete and rock-solid definitions of X, Y, and Z. Sadly, mental health professionals tend to diagnose based on opinions and fuzzy clinical guidelines. Doctor A might diagnose Patient A with X, while Doctor B says it's diagnosis W. There's a lot of work to be done in the mental health arena, which isn't an answer the antis want to hear.
