Last night on the CNN/YouTube Democratic Presidential debate, the discussion briefly touched on mental illness--in the context of if people with mental illnesses should be allowed to own guns. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson said, "Nobody who has a criminal background or is mentally ill should be able to get a weapon. That is the key, and that includes gun sales. That includes gun sales at gun shows." (See http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/07/23/debate.transcript.part2/ for a transcript of the discussion about guns).
This got me thinking. There are alarming statistics that show firearms in the home are a risk factor for suicide--but should having a diagnosis of a mental illness automatically disqualify you from the right to bear arms? Should people with certain diagnoses be held to a different standard than people with other diagnoses when attempting to purchase a gun?
I have been trying to come up with answers, but I can only think of more and more questions.
Thoughts, comments, suggestions?
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4 comments:
The Bazelon Center penned an Op-Ed on this issue a couple of years back:
"Firearms were used in nearly 11,000 murders in 2002, according to the FBI. Only a tiny fraction involved people with mental illnesses, who are far more likely than others to be victims of violent crimes...
... Statistically, inmates in state and federal prisons for gun-related crimes are more likely to be young, black or male than to have been treated for a mental illness. Yet a blanket gun-control policy targeting men or young men or men of a particular race rightly would be considered reprehensible, as should policies that arbitrarily single out non-violent people with mental illnesses.
Read the full article here.
Also--people with diagnosed mental illnesses are, as a group, probably a whole lot healthier than people with undiagnosed mental illnesses.
Of course I don't think any one should have a gun--so I doubt I would crusade for the rights of any group to have guns--but obviously as soon as people with mental illness are put in a database so that their rights can be limited, we're f--ked. It'll increase people's fear of seeking help.
Once again though the issue is with conflating people who have mental illness and people who are violent. We need to be educated on why people become violent---
And also---using mental illness as a blanket term is problematic. Some illnesses are more treatable than others, no two people with the same illness are identical, etc.
And Another thing: are we going to tell the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who return from the war in iraq who are diagnosed with ptsd that they can not buy guns?
Oooh...someone should have debated Richardson on this a bit harder. I bet it just sounds so appealing to uninformed people to deprive mentally ill people of guns, when it's so much more complex than that.
I probably should get more outraged about this, I suppose. I know this is probably a response to the VA Tech shootings. I've known I'd probably have trouble buying a gun after my hospitalization, but I've never really been worried about it. And as far as a database, I don't think I'm paranoid, but realistic, to imagine that there is some type of database where if the federal gov't really wanted to find out my past they could.
Yeah, I agree with Lizzie. I definitely felt that Gov. Richardson's choice of words in his response to the gun control issue was alienating to the mental health community. He seemed really uninformed on mental health issues and his plan simply did not do justice to the complexity of the topic. It's unfortunate that there was not a candidate with proper mental health awareness on stage to challenge and expose Richardson's flawed policy.
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