One of the positive consequences of this weekend's "Safeway Massacre" in which Judge John Roll was killed and Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords critically injured -- if it is even possible to speak of silver linings after such a horrific event -- appears to be a backlash against hateful political rhetoric. Another should be an increased effort to keep firearms out of the hands of mentally-unstable individuals. The easiest way to prevent psychotics from obtaining guns, in a manner that is low-cost, constitutional and minimally infringes upon the prerogatives of law-abiding gun owners, is to require a brief psychiatric examination and a prescription in order to purchase a gun.
The Gun Control Act of 1968, passed in response to the assassination of Robert Kennedy, bans gun ownership by anyone who "has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution." In a rare act of bipartisanship in 2008, following deranged student Seung-Hui Cho's murder of thirty-two people at Virginia Tech, Congress passed legislation that essentially required states (through threat of lost funding) to provide data on psychiatrically-unfit individuals to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). These efforts are certainly commendable, but they have done far too little to protect the public. If we continue to stand back and wait for psychiatrically-disturbed individuals to come to the attention of authorities through their own actions, we will continue to have massacres like those in Virginia and Arizona.
More...
0 comments
Post a Comment