AHunter3 knocks it out of the park.
The crowd roars.
My name is Doc Cathode (well not really, but don’t bother me with details.). I am diagnosed with Bipolar Affective Disorder, Chronic Depression, Social Anxiety Disorder, General Anxiety Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (I think that’s the whole list.).
I am not a threat to myself or others. I don’t want a gun. BUT, I want that to be my choice. Back to the slippery slope, what other rights do you want to take away from those diagnosed with DSM conditions you find dangerous? Would you like to take away their right to drive? Their right to live near schools? Would you like to have the law require them to take medication?
Within living memory, ‘mental defectives’ were forcibly sterilized right here in the USA. They could also be forced to undergo Electro Convulsive Therapy (shock treatment). But wait there’s more! They could also be lobotomized against their will.
Johnny LA You want to keep your depressed friend from owning a gun for fear of suicide? I find that hard to believe. Wouldn’t a sharp thing to slit his wrists, or poison, or rope be easier to obtain? No, you seem worried that folks like me pose a danger to others. We generally don’t. Psychiatric diagnoses aren’t always right either.
To sum up, very bad idea.
How do you propose solving the issue that there are armed home invasions and armed robberies? Pass a law that says you can’t use a gun in a crime?
I’ve shot an air gun. An M1 Garand is about 100 times the fun.
Pretty sure the way it actually works is, you fill out a form for a security clearance. The form for Top Secret is a big form with a lot of questions. At a certain point, the form will demand to know if you ever have been treated for mental health…I think it may be all medical records, period…and it will demand the name, address, phone number, diagnosis, everything, for every doctor you ever saw.
The form warns you that lying or omitting information is a felony. I suspect they only rarely, if ever, prosecute anyone when they find information missing or straight lies.
Anyways, at that point, there is a background investigation done. For “mere” top secret clearances, the government probably only actually checks : information you disclosed. If you admitted to mental illness, they may actually ask the doctor in question for the records (if I recall correctly, you have to submit the records). If you gave the name of someone who knew you, they might call em up. And of course they run automated checks of the usual databases : criminal records, credit records, that kind of thing.
At some clearance level they may actually give your file to a detective and they actually spend real resources running down leads, such as actually visiting the school you claimed to go to high school at or trying to actually find neighbors you didn’t mention who knew you, etc. I’m not sure how much of that they actually do, that sounds like it could get expensive fast.
Anyways, do you see what they don’t have easy access to? If you went to a mental health doctor, didn’t disclose on the form, then it’s going to be hard for them to find out at all. They can’t go to every clinic in every city you lived in asking if they have any records on you. Not feasible. Maybe they could find out by getting it from the medical insurance providers who covered you at the time? Even that’s hard, there are hundreds of insurance companies and I don’t think the form asks for who covered you at each part of your life.
As you can see, you can trivially get away with it. Even if you did the most onerous investigations, the ones they must do if you are about to become director of the whole CIA or President, they might not find out if you’d seen a psychiatrist and didn’t mention it on the form. So, basically, the same thing applies for gun ownership. They can’t afford to do this detailed an investigation on everyone who asks for a gun.
Do any of you that think it is an invasion of privacy even know how NICS checks work?
- You fill out the 4473.
- Dealer calls the NICS number.
- Dealer gives pertinent information.
- Sale is approved or denied.
- NO explanation is given.
The dealer doesn’t know why you are denied, and doesn’t care. He simply gives you the information required to appeal the decision. The people on the other end of the line? They handle millions of calls a year. They don’t care either.
Do you guys think they keep a list of denied people so they can post them on the bulletin board at work and laugh at you, or otherwise do something with your information? They have everything they need to steal your identity right there at their fingertips, if you’re ineligible for a gun you’re not even an appealing target.
Nobody’s privacy is violated to any meaningful degree whatsoever. Hell, I was denied once for something, and the dealer didn’t even flinch. Nor did I. There’s no stigma. Nobody knows anything except for you and your doctor. And if you know you’ve been adjudicated “mentally defective” (their term, not mine), you already know you’re going to be rejected, even if you lie on the form.
So a guy like Cho goes to buy a gun, having already been identified as someone with mental problems. He is rejected. Virginia Tech maybe doesn’t happen. And in the meantime, nobody knows anything. Not the dealer, not the guy on the end of the line, nobody but Cho and his doctor.
I can’t understand why there’s so much pushback on this.
No, I had no idea how the process of acquiring a gun worked. I’ve never had any interest in guns, didn’t like them, didn’t want one.
What is the NICS?
The push back is IMHO probably because most people don’t know how the system works and after a crazy guy shots up some place, someone somewhere will say we should lock up all the mentally ill, you know just to be safe.
There is also a lot of concern about how secure our private info is these days.
NICS is the National Instant Check System. Holders of Federal Firearms Licenses, police, and civil authorities have the ability to call the NICS call center to determine instantly whether or not you are eligible to purchase or otherwise possess a firearm. They enter your name and SSN if you give it to them and they get one of three immediate answers: yes, no, or delay. Yes and no are self-explanatory. Delay means that there is some question, usually identity related. If they delay you they have three days to deny you. Otherwise, the sale can be completed without further delay. If there is no problem they typically just let the delay expire. If there is a problem they call back with a no and the sale is halted.
Th vast majority of people with mental health problems are no threat to anybody, except perhaps, in some cases, themselves.
Psychiatry only works on people who have willingly sought help for their problems. People who are only there because the government compels them to be there are unlikely to be frank about their state of mind, especially once the word about the ‘right’ answers gets around.