WASHINGTON – Horrific events over the last six years have re-ignited the gun control debate and raised questions about severe mental illness and gun ownership.
While lawmakers spar over gun control measures on Capitol Hill, it has become increasingly difficult to agree on the rights of mentally ill persons in relation to their access to firearms. The topic poses hard questions: Who has the authority to call out the mentally ill? What is the definition of a mentally ill person in terms of being disqualified from purchasing a firearm? How will any changes affect privacy?
The shootings in Tucson, Virginia Tech, Aurora and Newtown are directed attention to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, a database of individuals disqualified from buying a gun. The suspects in those shooting sprees have been linked to mental health issues.
- On Dec. 14, 2012 Adam Lanza fired 154 shots in less than five minutes at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. Lanza was diagnosed with a Sensory Integration Disorder at the age of six and later diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. The guns he used were not purchased by him, but owned by his mother.
- James Holmes, wearing a gas mask and body armor, opened fire in a Colorado movie theater killing 28 people and injuring 58 on July 20, 2012. After the shooting, mental health experts suggested he might be schizophrenic although he has not been officially evaluated in the process of adjudication. He was not flagged by mental health professionals as having a proclivity for violence and would not have shown up in the NICS. Holmes, who is awaiting trial, is expected to plead insanity.
- Jared Loughner killed six people and wounded 12, including former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., outside a Tucson, Ariz. grocery store in 2009. He used a pistol with a large-capacity ammunition magazine. Despite being previously diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Loughner would not have shown up on NICS and was able to purchase the guns.
- On April 16, 2007 Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and injured 17 at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. Cho had a background of mental illness and was found by a Virginia court on Dec. 14, 2005 to be a danger to himself. This disqualified him from being able to purchase firearms and it should have shown up in the NICS. The state of Virginia failed to report Cho’s mental illness to the national registry.
The lack of attention given to the Virginia Tech shooter, Seung-Hui, Cho was particularly disturbing to many in Congress.
“We let Mr. Cho slip through the cracks,” said Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., at a May hearing of an Oversight and Investigations subcommittee. “Not only did he not get the help, but he was never placed on a list of folks who were not able to buy guns.”
Drawing the line between prevention and privacy has become increasingly difficult in the wake of these mass shootings.
“That’s a tough question — drawing that line,” said Jack Donald, a former cop who works for the Maryland Small Arms Shooting Range in Upper Marlboro. Donald said he thinks once a court has adjudicated someone as mentally ill or dangerous then that person should show up on a list.
Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., agrees that it’s up to the courts to decide who is mentally ill for the purpose of determining who belongs on an ineligible list that bars certain people from buying firearms. At the oversight hearing, Murphy said it’s important for a legal procedure to take place before a name goes on the national instant background check data base.
Donald, the shooting range official, worries about the government requiring a central registration of firearms. “If the only way to track these sales is to set up a government registry then I have a real problem with that,” he said.
According to section 102 of the stalled Manchin-Toomey bill, Congress “supports and reaffirms the existing prohibition” on a national gun registry.
But Washington area preschool teacher and gun control activist Barbara Elsas argued that, “The government can come and get you in so many ways — and it’s not going to happen from a gun registry.”
And it’s not just a privacy issue. Ron Honberg, director of policy and legal affairs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said that individuals who suffer from mental illness are deterred from seeking treatment when they might end up on a database. “All of this has a really detrimental impact on the willingness to seek treatment,” he said
The national alliance — or NAMI — is the country’s largest grassroots advocacy organization for people with mental illnesses and also their families.
“For those living with a mental illness, 40 percent did not seek treatment in the last year,” said Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., at a recent hearing for the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Honberg said that the gunmen behind the most recent gun-related massacres did not fall under the existing statute’s “mental defective” category.
Section 102(c)(3) of the federal NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007 (18 U.S.C. 922 note) already provides for a list of “prohibited individuals.”
“The State shall make available to the Attorney General, for use by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the name and other relevant identifying information of persons adjudicated as a mental defective or those committed to mental institutions to assist the Attorney General in enforcing section 922 (g)(4) of title 18, United States Code.”
“Adjudicated as a mental defective” is a phrase that mental health advocates take issue with right off the bat.
“We would never tolerate terminology like that for any other disorder,” Honberg said.
Mental illness should be treated like any other health condition – such as heart disease or epilepsy, Honberg said. “If someone falls over in the street, clutching their chest — we rally around them,” he said. “If someone acts in a weird or bizarre way because of mental illness in the street we run away from them.”
At a conference on mental health in June, President Barack Obama said, “The brain is a body part too; we just know less about it. And there should be no shame in discussing or seeking help for treatable illnesses that affect too many people that we love. We’ve got to get rid of that embarrassment; we’ve got to get rid of that stigma.”
To the point in the gun debate, the White House said that it is increasing its efforts to make more states accountable for reporting mental health records to the background check system.
But Honberg also said Washington needs to slow down in the wake of so many mass shootings before coming up with new laws.
“The quick enactment of laws based on sort of knee-jerk reactions is never a good way to engage in lawmaking – especially with something as complicated as this.”
And this is a complicated issue. Even gun-law activists say it’s difficult to decide what should be done.
“The mother of the Newtown shooter — she had guns, right? Legal guns. But she knew her son was mentally ill,” the preschool teacher Elsas said. “There just has to be some big, huge data bank that brings up certain things when you’re not going to arrest the person, but you are going to look twice.”
And according to Honberg and Rep. DeGatte, most folks who live with a mental illness are not violent.
“Do I believe that every person who goes to see a therapist should be on a database?” asked Elsas. “No, I do think that’s a privacy issue.”
Honberg said that people who provide treatment are in the best position to assess potential threats. He thinks that institutions, such as the shooters’ colleges should be held to a greater accountability.
“Does the obligation of the college end by simply ridding itself of the problem or should there be an obligation to try to get that person help?”