The idea that mental health information should be a part of background checks is a pretty tough row to hoe.
So tough that many states still absolutely refuse to supply their relevant mental health records to the NICS "instant" background check system. And then there's the screwups, the Virginia Tech shooter should have been stopped by the gun store (and who knows what would have happened after that), but Virginia hasn't forwarded his involuntary treatment order to the NICS due to their confusion and/or sloth.
Or take the Colorado theater shooter, he so alarmed his university psychiatrist that she reported him to its threat board, which she was also a member of. But he soon withdrew, and they washed their hands of any further responsibility WRT to him.
I'm sure it's a "hard-line" stance to take, but if you want to make gun violence a public health issue I'd be far, far more supportive of the idea that we have a mental health problem here in the US than an access-to-guns problem here in the US.
Indeed. My mother's RN residency was just before the original anti-psychotics came into widespread use, and she did 3 months in a psych ward. After she was finished and then working in the same hospital, she was amazed to see a "hopeless" (for thousand of years) case working in a custodial or the like function at that hospital.
Where I suspect he got some extra help to keep on that nasty class of drugs and otherwise manage his life. Little did she suspect they, and lithium for bi-polar disorder, would be used as an excuse to dump the mentally ill on the streets, saving money that could be better used in other ways to buy votes.
So tough that many states still absolutely refuse to supply their relevant mental health records to the NICS "instant" background check system. And then there's the screwups, the Virginia Tech shooter should have been stopped by the gun store (and who knows what would have happened after that), but Virginia hasn't forwarded his involuntary treatment order to the NICS due to their confusion and/or sloth.
Or take the Colorado theater shooter, he so alarmed his university psychiatrist that she reported him to its threat board, which she was also a member of. But he soon withdrew, and they washed their hands of any further responsibility WRT to him.