The front-page article “A Mass. hedge in FBI gun checks: State law prevents sharing of records on mental health” (Jan. 28) adds to the stigmatization of people with mental illness that has been on the rise since the Newtown tragedy. The underlying premise is that mentally ill people are responsible for America’s exceptionally high rates of gun homicide as compared with other developed countries.
While Massachusetts has refused to violate the confidentiality and privacy rights of people with mental illness by adding their names to a federal database, it should be noted that the Commonwealth ranks 50th in gun homicide rates of all the states and the District of Columbia (only Hawaii ranks lower).
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The premise that statistics prove the theories is false.
Gun violence has been on the decrease nationwide for years. MA gun violence follows the trend with little deviation. It is not due to the gun laws. Indeed, gun ownership in the state supposedly has dropped from 1.5M registered owners to 120K over the years.
However, day after day "unregistered" guns continue to pop up all over the state after all these years. It is typical of what has happened wherever restrictive laws were put in place. People just refused to register guns. That is why the rate in MA has followed the national trend, no real reduction in number of guns, no real response to gun laws.
Others argue that the guns come from out of state. That is also true, but primarily in the case of rifles and shotguns, since those can be purchased in other states legally. The buyer is then supposed to register them when they enter MA. Guns used by gangs are an entirely different matter, those are brought in from out of state, but then criminals could care less about any laws that are enacted anywhere.
I do agree that the way people are looking at the mental health issue is entirely wrong. Suddenly they want to view all people with any mental health issues as potential killers. That is just not the case and they do not know what they are talking about. They should shut their flapping ignorant mouths. Once again, it is very convenient to point a finger and say "Yup, THERE is the problem, we fix it by passing a law, blah, blah, blah" It just does not work that way.
But like I have said before, people in this area are known for conducting witch trials, it is what they do best, why should they change?