Obama administration proposes new executive actions on gun background checks

[Vaquero]

I am curious, since there seems to be a vehement opposition to this topic, what suggestion opponents would offer towards repairing the mental health system. When the Adam Lanza's of the world commit mass shootings, I recall the gun supporters, at least a vocal portion, repeating the mantra that it is not the gun, but the mental health system.

We seem to oppose any legislation regarding firearms, at al.

Legislation seldom fixes anything. You are correct, however, I am opposed to any legislation regarding firearms.
I'll share a story with you.

My nephew is autistic. He functions well enough to hold a menial job and take reasonable care of himself.
At about 10 years old, his father (who was still in denial) gave him a rifle for Christmas. When his grandfather(my dad) found out, he told the boy why and took the rifle and put it away. All the while hoping against hope to give it back when the boy was ready. The boy is 25 now. He's not ready and never will be.

That decision was made at the level it should be made at. Family and those closest to the situation.
Our Capitols are too far removed to be successful in dealing with all issues. Painting with a broad brush is not the answer.

I understand that there are those who won't make a tough call for the good of their family. Those who don't even care.
I don't have the answers for their situations. I'm not familiar enough to make a good call.

I'll do right by me and mine and wish to be left alone to do so.

 

[Shotgun Jeremy]

Umm, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Yea, something like that

 

[Flewda]

Problem isn't that we have an adult problem, we have a problem with kids living in adult bodies. Too many parents these days are still kids. It doesn't help that society says that adolescence doesn't end until the age of 25? Seriously? Back in the day, if you weren't mature by 14 or 15 you'd probably not live to 25. Our society is quite a lazy one and continues to make excuses why it's "okay" for adults to act like children.

So as a result, too many parents are still so focused on their wants/desires that they don't give a crap about their children's actual needs. And when problems arise, we'll just make laws that strip liberty in lieu of safety.

As people have said before, the issue with mental healthcare starts with the family, and should really stay in that realm if at all possible. "Outsourcing" the situation to a psychiatrist who is going to prescribe pyschotropic drugs to a kid who has some anger issues is going to fix the problem for a very short time before it becomes something catastrophic.

 

[Gopher711]

But what if ??? You went thru a divorce and got really depressed ? lost a loved one ? Doc perscribes some happy pills ! Now its on your record that you have taken Mood altering , mental treatments !!! OOOH you may have a relapse !!! You dont need a gun your mentally ill and we can prove it !!! Turn your guns in or be locked up !!

 

[TheDan]

Yea, something like that

Hutto's obsession with hippos is a bit kitschy, but I guess they are kinda cute.

...that is what we're talking about, right?

 

[Charlie]

But what if ??? You went thru a divorce and got really depressed ? lost a loved one ? Doc perscribes some happy pills ! Now its on your record that you have taken Mood altering , mental treatments !!! OOOH you may have a relapse !!! You dont need a gun your mentally ill and we can prove it !!! Turn your guns in or be locked up !!

Stay away from doctors!

 

[benenglish]

... as a healthcare attorney ...

... I have been screaming this all day long. ...

Yeah, I understand that I'm going to sound dumb. Again.

The language on a 4473 says "Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective (which includes a determination by a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority that you are a danger to yourself or to others or are incompetent to manage you own affairs) OR have you ever been committed to a mental institution?". Why is any medical professional doing any reporting? By the standard, as stated on the form, shouldn't the reporting be done by a court and ONLY a court? I realize that doctors can commit people to a mental institution; I have personal experience with someone in my family who voluntarily went into a mental hospital for treatment and was then informed that if she wanted to leave, she had to give the hospital two business days notice. Her doctor told her in no uncertain terms that he now had her under his thumb; if she tried to leave, he'd use that two business days to get a court to rubber-stamp a recommendation for involuntary commitment.

Bottom line, doesn't everything covered in that language on Form 4473 require a legal ruling from a court before it applies? If so, my doctor doesn't adjudicate anything...

OTOH, has the language covering "...board, commission, or other lawful authority..." been expanded to include a wider group of folks than I previously understood?

 

[Wiliamr]

The whole thing is the ( I hate to use the term Liberal ) Socialist mindset is to have control over the population. The ability to direct what they will or will not eat (example - Bloomberg and NYC ban on large sugary drinks along with other similar actions in other towns) What you will learn ( example the now widely accepted education field lesson plan and teaching Common Care), Where who and what your health insurance can or can not be (example The Affordable Health Care Act- Obamacare) There are several other topics I could go on about, but the time is soon coming where the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave will be Land under Control and Home of the Subjects.

 

[Pilgrim]

Seems like the language of the proposal assumes that you have been deemed unfit by the courts or committed to an institution. A preponderance of evidence that you are a danger to yourself and others would have to be in place before this can happen. I'm not saying that the criteria cannot be twisted in the future such that even the slightest infraction can be used against you but the current wording seems pretty stringent...

Sure, these matters could (and should) be best left to the intervention of family and local community but in this day and age when most people are apathetic and detached from social responsibility is that really a viable solution?

 

[rushthezeppelin]

Hutto's obsession with hippos is a bit kitschy, but I guess they are kinda cute.

...that is what we're talking about, right?

When i went to that Texico the other day someone had stolen the bikini hippo.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S III

 

[dustycorgill]

Legislation seldom fixes anything. You are correct, however, I am opposed to any legislation regarding firearms.
I'll share a story with you.

My nephew is autistic. He functions well enough to hold a menial job and take reasonable care of himself.
At about 10 years old, his father (who was still in denial) gave him a rifle for Christmas. When his grandfather(my dad) found out, he told the boy why and took the rifle and put it away. All the while hoping against hope to give it back when the boy was ready. The boy is 25 now. He's not ready and never will be.

That decision was made at the level it should be made at. Family and those closest to the situation.
Our Capitols are too far removed to be successful in dealing with all issues. Painting with a broad brush is not the answer.

I understand that there are those who won't make a tough call for the good of their family. Those who don't even care.
I don't have the answers for their situations. I'm not familiar enough to make a good call.

I'll do right by me and mine and wish to be left alone to do so.

Exactly, legislation solves little to nothing. The morons that are so far removed from reality up there are so out of touch with real life they dont know anything. Give them this "little" piece of legislation and 6 months from now they will add to it or create more. Little by little folks, thats how they do it. Blows my mind how people are so willing to give a little here and there until it is gone.

 

[FlashBang]

"Universal Background Checks" are neither universal nor true background checks.

They're not universal because any two people can transfer a gun and no one will know about it unless that gun is used in a crime and recovered. The only way it can be universal is through universal registration and frequent renewals, with police verifying continued ownership of the guns. And with millions of firearms in circulation already, there is no way they will all be voluntarily registered.

They're not background checks because they only stop people who have been identified (to one extent or another) by the state as a criminal. And what's the rate of unsolved violent crimes? 40%? The rapist/murderer who could buy a gun in a private transfer could buy one from an FFL, too, unless he was already caught and convicted. A background check that might catch "possible" criminals BEFORE they act would involve interviews with police, psychiatrists, family, neighbors, co-workers, searching financial and academic records, etc. And the fact that any of those people could stop the transfer is a definite infringement of the right to keep and bear arms.

And once we create the registration and Soviet-style background checks, ask the liberals if we could do all of that on prospective parents to make sure they don't abuse their children, and then on the children themselves to find any potential criminals as soon as possible. And if the liberal really wants to live in a country that would do that, they can save themselves a lot of time and work by moving to North Korea.

 

[M. Sage]

Haha, got that right, since it's actually spelled HIPAA. Lol, as a healthcare attorney I couldn't resist nor deny the irony of your statement.

You are 100% right and I have been screaming this all day long. I sincerely worry what kind of affect this is going to have on: a) confidentiality of patient records; b) the doctor-patient relationship; c) people's willingness to be treated for mental health issues; d) most of all veterans who seek treatment (which they absolutely deserve) for PTSD; e) the legal liability for a hospital/doctor who fails to report mental health treatment for someone who later goes and kills someone with a firearm.

Think about it... In 2012 there were just over 11k homicides committed with guns. I've read statistics that state almost 1 in 3 adults have received treatment, of some kind, for mental health (be it anxiety to full blown multiple personality disorder, etc.) If 1 in 3 of those families, whose loved ones died, gained the ability to file law suits based off a doctor/hospital's failure to disclose mental health treatment, it would wreck our healthcare system. And that's just homicides. Presumably any crime victim where a gun was used, whether the victim was shot or not, would theoretically have the same legal recourse. It's just stupid. It's the death of medical privacy AND the physician-patient privilege/relationship.

I know veterans who don't seek treatment for PTSD because they're afraid the VA is going to do them wrong.

 

[M. Sage]

I am curious, since there seems to be a vehement opposition to this topic, what suggestion opponents would offer towards repairing the mental health system. When the Adam Lanza's of the world commit mass shootings, I recall the gun supporters, at least a vocal portion, repeating the mantra that it is not the gun, but the mental health system.

We seem to oppose any legislation regarding firearms, at al.

First, we need an actual mental health system. What we have now is a joke. It's not based in science like real health care, and it needs to be. I know, you don't believe me... go do some research on the upcoming DSMV (and how the previous versions were written) and how mental illnesses are diagnosed.

What passes for mental health care is currently no better than holistic medicine or visiting a witch doctor.

 

[M. Sage]

Whoops, wrong thread.

 

[Mreed911]

Bottom line, doesn't everything covered in that language on Form 4473 require a legal ruling from a court before it applies? If so, my doctor doesn't adjudicate anything...

This is the "problem" they're trying to fix. Folks that are involuntarily committed, not found to be dangerous enough to hold against their will or to get a formal commitment on, then released.

The flip side of the coin is that there's no federal registry of the mentally ill... no "no-gun list" (a la the no-fly list). In that context I don't think there should be. There is a middle ground, however, where someone willing to be professionally accountable (a court, a doctor, etc.) should be able to denote a mental health diagnosis fitting certain criteria but there should also be a civil process to challenge and remove that notation. It's a quagmire between being safe, being private, and placing either too onerous or unmanageable burdens on an already-strained healthcare system.

Take me, for example. As a paramedic I have a personal responsibility to report dangerous or abusive conditions to DHHS in Texas. It's up to me to determine what dangerous is, how I describe it, etc. and kick off the process, but there's a criminal liability if its determined that I failed to report. I'm always careful to report only what I saw and not draw conjecture and my report just starts a chain of events and investigation, but it wouldn't be hard to either put undue emphasis on certain things to attempt to sway an investigation, or to imagine an investigator "on a mission" looking to use my report as a springboard. It makes me very, very careful to only write what's necessary and what's substantive, period, without opinion... because I know what can happen.

I will say that the last time I got APS involved in a dangerous living situation, they a) helped the family fix the house, b) helped them get medical equipment they needed to safely live there and c) move their prescriptions to a county pharmacy that can help keep them on track for refills, etc. It worked out very, very positively. Frankly, I wasn't expecting that... but I'm glad it happened!

 

[M. Sage]

Seems like the "outpatient" commitment thing would fail pretty hard on a 5A challenge.

... or it should, at least. Can't say I trust the courts to make the right decision anymore.

 

[benenglish]

I did say I was going to sound dumb. You were warned.

This is the "problem" they're trying to fix. Folks that are involuntarily committed, not found to be dangerous enough to hold against their will or to get a formal commitment on, then released.

...there should also be a civil process to challenge and remove that notation. It's a quagmire between being safe, being private, and placing either too onerous or unmanageable burdens on an already-strained healthcare system. ...

Assuming well-thought-out procedures, I'm having trouble understanding how this is such a quagmire. Yes, like anything, it can be made so idiotically complex that it becomes a quagmire and a burden. However, I don't see why that's necessary.

If I'm involuntarily committed, I'd have no problem with the court (not the doctor, no one in the healthcare system) notifying a central or state registry. Any court that does that should, however, automatically require the persons bringing the commitment action to the court to follow up with a definitive diagnosis that the person truly is permanently or temporarily mentally defective or incompetent. Such follow up should be required within a reasonably short time span, extensions to be granted only under extraordinary circumstances.

Failure to file the follow-up report should cause the person to be automatically removed from the central or state registry. Every database record should have an expiration coded in.

Continued follow-up reports should be required, no less than annually, to keep someone on the registry. Those reports are done to the court, on the orders of the court, and accepted by the court, thus removing liability from the healthcare professional who is merely providing an advisory opinion to the court. Like any opinion given to a court, the subject of the opinion should be able to challenge it at any time.

In a system like that, the determination of defect or incompetence is made by a court. A presumption of competence is built in and kicks in automatically via simple inaction. If you went through a bad time but got better and got discharged, the black mark preventing you from buying a gun would simply disappear in a year.

This doesn't seem like a conceptually difficult problem although, I'm quite sure, people would find ways to screw up the implementation. Still, couldn't something like this remove (most of) the liability from healthcare professionals while not permanently branding the mentally ill with some indelible Mark of Cain, all while helping keep guns out of the hands of real nutcases?

Those of you (Scott, Mreed) with real-world experience, please tell me how this is completely unworkable. I'd really like to know.

If you know, contrast this with how it's done now. Frankly, I don't know the procedures whereby the NICS is informed that someone is, for their purposes, "adjudicated mentally defective" or "incompetent".

 

[RetArmySgt]

First, we need an actual mental health system. What we have now is a joke. It's not based in science like real health care, and it needs to be. I know, you don't believe me... go do some research on the upcoming DSMV (and how the previous versions were written) and how mental illnesses are diagnosed.

What passes for mental health care is currently no better than holistic medicine or visiting a witch doctor.

Under the new definition you can now get PTSD from hearing stories of traumatic events that might cause the person who lived through it to be diagnosed.

 

[Mreed911]

Under the new definition you can now get PTSD from hearing stories of traumatic events that might cause the person who lived through it to be diagnosed.

Citation, please?

That would make CISM teams qualify almost immediately (note: I'm strongly against CISM if applied as mandatory in a post-event situation as the science shows CISM to be detrimental vs. helpful).