From: donb@igor.tamri.com (Don Baldwin)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Re: Background Checks on Mental Illness
Date: 23 Jul 92 15:32:12 GMT
Organization: TOSHIBA America MRI, South San Francisco, CA

In article <viking.711858657@vincent1.iastate.edu> viking@iastate.edu
(Dan Sorenson) writes:
>>>Now, what about the psychiatric aspects of the background check?  Maybe
>>>involuntary commitment shouldn't be a selection criterion, as people are
>>>sometimes commited for the wrong reasons.  Maybe things like making a
>>>serious threat in conversation or using the insanity defense in court
>>>would be better?
>
>	I like the latter idea of the insanity plea -- if you went insane
>enough to do the crime once, there is little reason to believe it won't
>happen again, and thus gun ownership (operation without supervision?)
>might be warranted.  "Making a serious threat in conversation" I have
>a problem with.  Casual conversations (read: male-bonding macho-bullshit
>with abusive-language) often has threats in it.

I wasn't talking about that kind of threat.  Califoirnia law specifies
that your RKBA can be suspended for making a serious threat to a
psychiatrist...as I believe Purdy did?  Or maybe muttering to a Secret
Service agent, "Excuse me, I have to go shoot the Preident's lungs out"

>>It's my understanding that mentally ill meople are no more violent
>>than normal people, but I assume that involuntary commitment is
>>usually used only against people with violent tendencies or those with
>>a dangerously weak grip on reality.  I could be very wrong about this.
>
>	A data point only: my step-father suffers from a chemical
>imbalance in the brain.  His temper has always been fairly quick to
>activate, but he never crossed the line into abuse (though I did get
>some really good beatings as a teenager, which a social worker might
>have seen as abuse).  Anyway, he always thought that having a temper was
>unnatural, and so would simply leave the house and drive for several
>hours, or do some more work on a project, until he had calmed down.
>That he had to control his temper was the part he hated most.  My mother,
>being a social worker type and fairly good at spotting this stuff, took
>him to a specialist who diagnosed the problem.  He was started on some
>drugs to cure the imbalance, and his temper was reduced.  At the same
>time, he had extensive psychiatric counselling to deal with the idea that
>having a temper is normal, and that controlling it is normal too.  When
>he feels "abnormal" he admits himself for counselling and medication,
>though job pressures (when ya gotta plant corn ya gotta plant corn!)
>may make him wait for a week or so.
>
>	The first time in was involuntary, all others have been voluntary.
>He might have been dangerous at one time, but so long as he has the proper
>medical care he is no "time bomb."  Perhaps individual cases should be
>judged by the psychiatrist and a judge?

I agree that this criterion should be used VERY carefully.  Minors can be
committed by their parents, when they're acting in a manner that the parent
has a problem with.  And look at all the political dissidents who've been
sent to Soviet asylums!

      don