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Guns and the Mentally Ill
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Guns and the Mentally IllIt's a touchy subject, but all agree current rules don't keep guns from troubled peopleBy Angie Cannon For much of his life, Otto Nuss has struggled with mental illness. Back in the 1970s, he committed himself to a psychiatric hospital, and he has long taken medication for depression and anxiety. Two months ago, the 63-year-old school bus driver, who friends say had gone off his medication, burst into the national news when he inexplicably took off with his busload of terrified schoolchildren on a seven-hour odyssey from Pennsylvania to a Washington, D.C., suburb. When Nuss was apprehended, there was a loaded semiautomatic rifle on the bus, and authorities later found 48 weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition in his home. While Nuss's alarming journey garnered headlines (and kidnapping charges), relief over the safe recovery of the 13 children overshadowed questions about his gun ownership. But as authorities know, mental illness and guns can be a tragic combination. Just a week earlier, for instance, Michael Burgess, who suffered from depression, fatally shot four family members and then himself outside Philadelphia with a 9-mm semiautomatic handgun. Among those killed: his 14-year-old stepdaughter, a standout honors student who sang in the chorus, danced ballet, and ran track. As that shooting and others show, gun control laws do little to prevent seriously mentally ill people from buying guns. But it's not just gun rights advocates, such as the National Rifle Association, who oppose substantial new restrictions. Mental health specialists worry about unfairly painting the mentally ill as violent, and even some gun control advocates fear that tighter rules would compromise privacy rights and doctor-patient confidentiality.As a result, the line remains where it was set more than 30 years ago. The 1968 Gun Control Act narrowly bars people from buying or possessing firearms if they have been adjudicated mentally "defective" or have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution. When Burgess bought the gun at a pawnshop last October, he answered no to questions on a form asking if he had been adjudicated mentally "defective" or committed to a mental institution. That's true, but he had been clinically depressed and on medication, and he later went to a hospital for psychiatric help. Last fall, David Serra, 28, walked into a federal building in Detroit, pulled a .357-caliber Magnum revolver, and allegedly fatally shot an officer at a security checkpoint. He had been diagnosed as paranoid and delusional, had been taking medication, and had sought help from a psychiatric hospital, prosecutors say. He, too, was able to answer no on the questionnaire when he bought the gun at a hunting goods store shortly before the shooting.Frustration. Even those who are supposed to be barred can evade the law because few states provide mental health records to databases used to check gun purchasers' backgrounds. "It's beyond frustrating," says Carl Marlinga, a Michigan prosecutor who recently proposed controversial state legislation to create a registry so the backgrounds of people who have been voluntarily as well as involuntarily committed could be checked when they try to buy guns. "You cannot do a background check to see the mental health history of anyone who wants to own or carry a gun." Still, he realizes the difficulty: "If you propose anything to overcome those problems, you are dangerously close to violating physician-patient privileges."Indeed, gun ownership by individuals suffering from mental illness is a complicated matter. Mental health advocates point out that studies show people with mental illness aren't more violent than the general population. Violence committed by the mentally ill, advocates say, makes up only a fraction of violence nationally. They say guns should be difficult for all people to get but that no one's constitutional rights should be deprived simply because of a mental illness diagnosis. Even gun control advocates are reluctant to raise it as an issue, though some in that camp believe it's a problem that needs attention. "There are legitimate countervailing privacy issues," says Kristen Rand of the Violence Policy Center, a gun control group. "But you need the different groups to come to a resolution about where to draw the line." Says Nancy Hwa, a spokeswoman for the Brady Campaign, a gun control group, "Mental health advocates are concerned about violating privacy rights. And yet how do you make sure a person who shouldn't have a gun doesn't get one? It's something we have wrestled with for a long time."While most states follow the basic federal law, some have put in place addi-tional restrictions. In Massachusetts, for instance, police chiefs in four communities-Andover, North Andover, Lawrence, and Methuen-recently expanded their requirement that applicants for a new gun license must get a doctor's letter stating that they are medically and psychologically fit to have a gun. Now, that rule extends to those renewing a five-year gun license. "We want to make sure we aren't giving a guy a gun who shouldn't have one," says Andover Detective Sgt. Donald Pattullo. The nra opposes such requirements. "Doctors ought to stick to medicine, not public policy," says NRA lobbyist James Baker.Connecticut, too, has a strong law that allows police to seize guns from anyone they believe poses an imminent danger to himself or others. The first of its kind in the United States, the law was passed by the Connecticut legislature in June 1999 after 35-year-old Matthew Beck went on a rampage at the Connecticut Lottery offices, killing four people before turning the gun on himself. He had been on a stress-related leave from his lottery job and had been treated twice at a psychiatric hospital.Gun dealers in 29 states rely solely on the FBI's National Instant Check System to screen customers, while gun dealers in 16 states do their own checks using their state databases and then linking into the FBI's system. Five states do their own checks for handgun purchases and use the fbi for long-gun purchases. But mental health records-as well as criminal and other records of prohibited gun purchasers-are incomplete in the FBI and state databases. Only 17 states put mental health records on their databases used for background checks. One of those is Illinois, which last year denied gun permits to 940 people reported to have been voluntarily or involuntarily committed in the past five years.Records gap. The FBI's database currently contains records for about 89,570 people who should be prohibited from buying guns because of mental health problems-though the government estimates that as many as 2.6 million people have been involuntarily institutionalized in the United States. Almost all of those mental health records in the FBI database come from people who were institutionalized in federal veterans hospitals. Only six states provide mental health records to the FBI database, and they provided a total of only 41 individual records. That frustrates the FBI. "We're constantly working with the states in an effort to get more records into our system in this category," says spokesman Steve Fischer. "In most cases, it takes legislation within respective states for that to happen. That's one reason why there has been a delay." Very few people are denied guns because of mental illness: They account for fewer than 1 percent of all denials from Oct. 1, 2001, to mid-January, according to the fbi. About 90 percent of the denials are due to previous criminal history, while fugitives make up the next biggest group of denials, 2.8 percent. "Untold thousands of people could be slipping through the cracks," says Matthew Bennett, a spokesman for Americans for Gun Safety, a moderate gun control group. NRA lobbyist Baker says his group wants states to provide records to the background checks databases. "Every time we talk about the need for these records to be in the system, civil liberties groups come unglued," he says. "We believe those records should be in there for all prohibited groups." By whatever standard, the system falls short http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/020401/usnews/1guns.htm
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