Mental Health and Government

There’s a couple of bills that have been introduced in congress that would make gun ownership a function of mental health. The source article says:

“Another major provision of both bills focuses on the mental health issues of those seeking to possess firearms.

Apart from further defining and stipulating who qualifies as a “mental defective” both bills call for the development of mental health assessment plans for institutes for higher learning. Both bills would require federally funded colleges to develop a plan for the institutes to address risks posed by students who appear to need mental health help. Colleges must have a mental health “team” ready to assess potentially dangerous students as well as procedures in place for making voluntary and involuntary mental health referrals.”

Now, I have to admit that this is probably well-intended. It is a direct result of the attempted assassination of Senator Gabrielle Giffords. But there are some very serious implications to any such legislation, that should be carefully considered:

Who gets to decide if you are “mentally defective”?

What are the criteria for this judgement?

Are those criteria such that for any given person, it is clearly either “yes” or “no”, or would it be based on someone’s opinion?

What if you fail once, but pass later on?

How long do you think it would be before the government decides that wanting to own a gun is sufficient criteria to declare you mentally unstable? There are certainly enough anti-gun people who would push for that idea.

In short, it’s down to this: if this law is passed, the government would get to decide if you are mentally stable. In addition, yet another expensive federal bureaucracy would have to be put in place to determine this. And the U.S. would then have “thought police”. You would potentially have your rights restricted because the government decides that you might do something.

Want to bet which political party would seek to pad that particular bureaucracy with their people?

Welcome to the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Let’s say you were tagged as someone mentally unfit to own a gun, even though you have a perfectly clean record and no history of violence.

Do you think being on that list might affect your ability to get a job?

Think it might affect what kind of job you could get? I mean, if the government can’t trust you with a gun, do you think a company could trust you with, say, a delivery truck? After all, you might lose your temper!

How about insurance? Would you be able to get medical insurance?

What if somebody that really was violent, who wasn’t on the list, attacked you; and you defended yourself; how do you think it would go with the jury when it comes out that you are on the list and he wasn’t?

Any such bill would be extremely dangerous to our personal rights and freedom; because they could take away your rights based on what they think you might be thinking! In short, it would give the government unlimited power over the individual.

After all, how do you go about proving that you are sane and stable?

All of the things above wouldn’t happen at once. It would start out very mildly, with just a few people on the list. The problem with things like this is that, over time, they become more and more intrusive, just a bit at a time, until they are in your face all the time.

NO law should EVER be passed that is based on mental state. We should be judged on our acts, not our thoughts.

Big Brother is Watching You!

-Popgun