JSThane wrote:cb1000rider wrote:The way we have it today, the mentally ill can buy guns, but in order to do so they need to lie to an FFL or buy through an individual. Although I support the concept of keeping firearms from the mentally ill - and perhaps taking them away in extreme cases, I can't fathom a way that our government could possibly do that correctly without a bunch of other implications that are restrictive and non-intended.
Once labelled mentally ill, even for something temporary like depression, what doctor is going to sign on the dotted line that you're cured? The liability is massive for that type of statement in the USA.
In terms of keeping people from "getting help" - I believe it happens with pilots. Each visit to the doctor has to be reported. Each pill reported. It's a real pain. One way to deal with it is to simply not go.
Couple "corrections." The "mentally ill" can buy guns all day long, legally, through an FFL. It's those who have been adjudicated mentally incompetent or mentally defective that can't. When one thinks of "mentally ill" these days, they conjure up a media-created picture of someone with no grasp of reality, who hears homicidal voices and feels compelled to obey them. This... is not the truth, but a red herring, one designed to induce us to pigeon-hole mental illness as a certain, tiny, subset of the whole, dismiss it, and feel justified in doing so.
Now, we all know this is so much hogwash. Mental illness is not a causation, or
even a correlation to violence. I can guarantee you, there are people around you who deal with bipolar disorder, but are never violent. We may shy away from them if they forget their meds, or have a flare up, but they don't blow up the building.
The guy in the cubicle or office down the hall that always yells at his computer, or gets easily frustrated? We all know at least one guy like that, or we ARE the guy like that. Anger management disorder. But instead of killing people, Mr. Anger finds something else to vent at, annoying his coworkers instead of murdering them.
The dude with schizophrenia? He may hear the voices, but by and large, neither he nor they are violent. Self-destructive, maybe, but violent? Not usually.
All these are what's typically thought of, when one brings up "mental illness." But not only are these portrayals inaccurate of what bipolars, schizophrenics, and people with anger management disorder are really like, and not only are these portrayals inaccurate as to what these conditions
are, but they pretend as though "mental illness" is limited to these inaccurate depictions.
In addition to schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, and violent delusions, other things are classified as "mental illness" that, if applied/diagnosed "by the book," would render -everyone- ineligible. Bipolar, ADD, ADHD, anorexia, bulemia, "oppositional defiance disorder," they'd all fall into it. And the psychological "industry" keeps expanding the definitions, and coming up with new diagnoses and new disorders, all of which, being "mental illnesses" are never cured, but only "in remission." And as you pointed out, no doctor worth his insurance payment will ever sign off on a patient being "cured" of a "mental illness."
Remember your teenage years? Remember the rocky hormone-driven roller coaster? Yeah, you were bipolar, and you could regress
at any time. So you're ineligible. Were you ever addicted to caffeine? Addicted to nicoteine? Addictions are classified as half mental, half physical illnesses. Ineligible. Ever lost your temper? Anger management problems, ineligible. And it goes on. And on. And on.
There are even those who propose diagnosing the very state of -liking firearms- and other weapons as a mental illness, and therefore rendering all of us "sick," and ineligible.
If you're older and don't think quite as quickly, as on-your-feet as you used to, then you've got "decreased mental capacity" and are ineligible; never mind the fact that age, wisdom, and experience have combined to allow you to make far -better- decisions than you used to, you're "impaired" because you make slow good decisions, not fast bad ones. My wife points out over my shoulder that DSM 5 classifies pregnancy as a mental disorder for some reason. She's also discovered that DSM 5 classifies a lack of other mental illnesses itself as an illness. IE, "normality" is an "illness."
Restrict the right from one, and you have started the restriction on us all.
The answer is not to restrict it from anyone for any "condition," "illness," or what have you. The answer is to lock up those who commit unjustified, unprovoked violent acts, whether in jail or a psychiatric ward, and leave everyone else the heck alone. If you're too dangerous to own a gun, you're too dangerous to be walking around freely.
