Mental health evaluations should be required in order to buy a firearm

Thank you very much for your very thoughtful and intelligent response! In the interest of organization, I will address each of your points and then enter my own. 1. Justification of Self Ownership You seem to have taken quite the roundabout approach to this argument. At the risk of appearing ignorant, I must concede that I am still not entirely sure what you were trying to say in that argument. I may be completely wrong in assuming this, but I am going to go ahead and assume that you mean to lay the premise that we lead our own lives. This is irrelevant. Nothing is saying that one has to get a mental health examination, you just can't have a gun if you don't. If you meant something else, please do explain clearly. 2. Justification of Property Rights I think your main point in this is that somebody steals an object (in this case, a gun), it is acquired by figurative violence, but is acquired nonetheless. This, however, is irrelevant. Though it is possible to steal guns, most of the massacres we hear about are committed by people who purchased their guns legally. I'm not saying that they couldn't steal one if they had to, but it would reduce gun violence, and hopefully they would get arrested for stealing a gun rather than shooting 12 people with one. 3. Restricting the trade of guns If you are insinuating that someone could acquire a gun by means other than formal purchase, alas, that is also irrelevant. I never once claimed that this would make it so that no mentally unstable person would be able to acquire a gun. I simply claimed that it would reduce (mind you, not stop) gun violence. 4. Mental illness cannot be defined objectively This is your first real argument. Unfortunately, it is incorrect. There are plenty of ways of evaluating whether someone has a mental illness [1]. It would not be difficult at all to allow psychologists to be licensed by the government to evaluate people seeking gun licenses. 5. Private alternatives "There is no shortage of non-coercive ways to prevent guns from getting into the hands of people who are not fit to have them." That statement, though correct, is not commonly implemented, and it needs to be. Otherwise people like Jared Loughner get guns. In a perfect world, you're right. Private sellers would do that. There is pressure to do that. But there is also pressure to make money. Often times, gun sellers give their customers the benefit of the doubt in order to make money. Besides, unless every single gun seller shows the aforementioned initiative, all the invisible hand of the marketplace is doing is allowing unethical business to flourish. That's why we have regulations against sweatshop labor, monopolies, and slavery. It's the same way with this. The gun shop that allows more people to buy guns is the one that makes more money. That's why it needs to be regulated. 6. Preventing Gun Violence is Impossible This is irrelevant. It would certainly reduce gun violence, and that is important. You claim that increased security would be a better fix, but there is completely no way to implement that without becoming a police state. Besides, I know I don't want to be spied on by the government wherever I go, so I think it would be much better to attack the root of the problem. Perhaps I was unclear in my first argument. I in no way meant to insinuate that this proposal would completely do away with gun violence. That's ridiculous. No matter what we do, people will be able to get guns. However, it seems that most cases of gun violence that we do see are committed by people with legally purchased weapons. So, it seems to me that it would clearly reduce the amount of gun violence. Source 2 is a map showing the strictness on gun laws per state. Source 3 is a map showing the gun death rate per state. It's not a perfect correlation, but note the similarities, especially in the northeast and California (as compared to its neighbors). Your idea of sellers doing the right thing is honorable, but that's just not how it works. I am looking forward to your response! 1. http://en.wikipedia.org... 2. http://sg.wsj.net... 3. http://gunlawforum.files.wordpress.com...