The Virginia Tech shooting clearly
illuminates the flaws in our background check system, more specifically on the
question of a person’s mental health.
The Gun Control Act we currently have in place restricts people from
purchasing a firearm if they have been involuntarily committed to a mental
hospital or adjudicated as a mental defective (which today has almost no
clinical meaning and is offensive). With
such an obvious loophole in the area of mental health, it seems as though it
should be easy to mend this, right? The main
thing to think about is how do we amend the disqualifications? What happens when we do?
When talking about people with
severe mental illness, we must keep in mind that it is a statistically rare and
virtually unpredictable event. Furthermore,
even when comparing crimes committed by people with mental illness only chalks
up to 3-5% of all total crimes (not just gun-related crimes). So what could we change? What could make it so that people like Cho
don’t slip through the loopholes of background checks? If we change the restrictions to anyone with
a mental illness or on medication cannot purchase a firearm? That would be a huge part of the U.S. being restricted;
keeping in mind that depression is considered a mental illness.
“Mental disorders are common in the United
States and internationally. An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and
older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in
a given year.1 When applied to the
2004 U.S. Census residential population estimate for ages 18 and older, this
figure translates to 57.7 million people.”
According to the National Institute of Mental Illness. If we put ‘flags’ on people because they have
a treatable mental health issue, what would that do to the person? That’s like saying a person is never allowed
to go outside again once they get the chicken pox, because it is contagious
when you have it. It’s absurd! This would cause a sense of alienation, loss
of privacy, and could potentially cause someone to not seek help for a
treatable health condition without the “social cost”. The right to privacy is there for a reason,
and with so many conditions being considered a mental illness, it is hard to
put specific guidelines on what needs to be shared. Gun violence in mental health patients is
practically impossible to predict who to watch more closely.
http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1707738
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