The article on Massachusetts firearms laws and the reporting of mental health information provided a useful discussion of this complex issue (“A Mass. hedge in FBI gun checks,” Page A1, Jan. 28). However, as a psychiatrist, I am concerned with the repeated references to “mental health history” and “mental illness,” as if these are precise terms that point us to people at high risk for gun-related violence.
First, the term “mental illness” is broad and could apply equally to a person diagnosed with well-controlled, adequately treated panic disorder or to a person with a severe psychotic disturbance and concomitant substance abuse who refuses to accept treatment.
Comments
Good Points, thank you.
I'm wary of the Mental Illness argument that's being rasied since Newtown. We've come a long was as a society in the way we treat the mentally ill (as far as allowing them into 'normal' society). I don't believe that most of the pro-2nd Amendment people arguing this really want to go back to a time when we 'put 'em all in a home', but how would it work?. If we can define which mentally ill Americans cannot own guns, what else will we do with/to them? Can they 'get better' later in life - and be allowed guns? And who will determine this? Talk about a slippery slope!
Extreme anti-gun legislation aside - sane, law-abiding citizens are being asked to give up 'some' of our 2nd Amendment right to help stem the tide of gun deaths. Will we ask mentally ill, law-abiding citizens to give up theirs completely for the same reason?
Any: Take note that no one is willing to give up a few bucks to pay for any real solutions like security in schools. They dodge that issue with convenient excuses like "oh, I think that will have a negative effect on my child". Meanwhile, said child goes home to video games that award points for killing people, goes to movies that are nothing but a series of action violence scenes strung together with a thin plot, and then has no problem being groped at airport security on his way to Disney World.
Who is zooming whom in this incredibly stupid "debate"?
Are you crazy?