"Mental Illness" and Gun Ownership Laws

After a local man who had been identified as being "mentally ill" (through various previous contacts with the police) had obtained several guns and used them to kill his mother, the newspapers and legislature began discussing the importance of prohibiting "mentally ill" people from getting guns.

The first problem is that all people with "mental illness" are lumped together as unfit for gun ownership.  Does this mean that people who are being treated for an anxiety disorder can't buy guns to protect themselves?  If you've ever had a depression and gotten treatment, are you prohibited from gun ownership?  Exactly what do we mean by "mental illness" and which illnesses render us unfit?

The second issue is that the Federal database used to screen people for suitability to own a gun has to have that data available for all gun sellers.  Where do they get their data?  Are psychiatrists and psychologists going to be required to report any patient to the state or Feds in case they might want a gun?  How much is going to be reported?  Who will have access to these mental health records?

We have always treated medical records as private, and mental health records as especially private and privileged.  We did not want to discourage people from seeking mental health treatment by threatening to make their private problems public.  Where we have not taken such precautions we have created a disaster.  Consider the military situation as regards depression and other  mental illnesses.  When a pilot sees a military psychiatrist, he effectively ends his career.  He will not advance in rank; he will not fly military aircraft; he will not likely be promoted. So he elects to go untreated.  And often this scenario ends with suicide.

In past years I saw military officers in my private practice, which they chose rather than see a paid-for military psychiatrist or psychologist.  Still, they were very concerned about the risk they ran of being "outed" as a "mentally ill person", and in addition they felt it necessary to lie about their treatment status on annual medical evaluation forms.

I think we can consider limiting weapons to people whose judgment is seriously impaired enough to require the state to act as parental supervisor.  Clearly some forms of mental illness are not consistent with gun ownership or flying military airplanes.  But the vast majority of such disorders are consistent with gun ownership.  We can't and shouldn't put all mental illnesses in the same stereotypical bag. 

Since our Constitution guarantees all citizens to have the right to keep and bear arms, are we going to decide that people with a "mental illness" do not have the same rights as other citizens? Are we going to change the Constitution?  How are we going to protect privacy and encourage people to seek needed help, and at the same time protect ourselves against gun owners whose judgment is critically impaired?  The appropriate criterion might be an appraisal of the prospective purchaser's judgment, not of their psychiatric diagnosis.  Perhaps some form of formal mental status procedure evaluating basic judgement, carried out by a mental health professional, resulting in a pass/fail finding, would protect people's right to medical privacy while at the same time not lumping all mental health issues into the single category "mental illness".