Mental Health and Gun Background
Checks
By Carl R. ToersBijns
According to a news story
in the Main newspaper Sun Journal, that state has a horrendous record of
maintaining mental health records for such a purpose. It is likely that you
will find this symptom occur in many other states as it reveals a serious
breakdown or linkage in sharing important information that could prevent some
of the tragedies occurring today.
Staff writer Bonnie Washuk
writes “When it comes to sharing mental health records with safety officials
for gun background checks, Maine is among the worst performing states,
according to a national group promoting gun control.” She refers to a report
that reveals how the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)
is flawed because of submissions omitted or lacking to make the process work
better.
Ms. Washuk adds “Under
existing laws, the Maine court system is required to send mental health records
to the Maine Department of Public Safety, then to the federal NICS, in three
cases: When the court has involuntarily committed a mentally ill person, when a
person has committed a crime and been found not responsible because of mental
illness, and when the court finds a person not competent to stand trial.”
In their report, the
Mayors Against Illegal Guns report “August 16, 2012 - Mayors Against Illegal
Guns has launched an interactive map showing how many mental health records
each state has submitted to the National Instant Criminal Background Check
System (NICS), and comparing this performance with the best-performing states.
Based on new FBI data updating the coalition's
November 2011 Fatal Gaps[1]
report, the map shows that 21 states have each submitted fewer than 100
records. The report writes “Since its creation in 1999, the National Instant Criminal
Background Check System (NICS) has blocked more than 1.6 million permit
applications and gun sales to felons, the seriously mentally ill, drug abusers
and other dangerous people who are prohibited by federal law from possessing
firearms.”
“Completing the
necessary paperwork for a background check takes a gun buyer mere minutes, and
more than 91 percent of these electronic screens are completed instantaneously.
And, amidst a polarized national debate about gun control, the background check
system enjoys nearly universal public support. Despite its relative success,
NICS has serious gaps and limitations that still allow firearms to be sold to
dangerous people, including some of the nation’s worst mass murderers.”
But, for complex
legal and logistical reasons discussed in this report, records about the kinds of
serious mental health and drug abuse problems that disqualify people from gun
ownership have proven more difficult to capture.
Legislators need
to assure that there are no barriers within existing laws that prevent the
transfer of such information. Legislators must ensure funding for
establishing a sound and efficient electronic infrastructure is created for
civil and criminal records to improve background checks specifically for those
who have a mental illness or disability as well as those convicted of felonious
crimes and have established criminal histories.
This is not to imply that
all mental health persons are a threat to society or posses a propensity to be
violent. It is likely that only a small percentage actually fall into this risk
category but since this is about preventive measures and identifying those
ineligible for such firearms purchases, it must be included in the criminal
information system to disqualify them from purchasing a firearm.
Legislators could amend
the laws to include mandatory reporting by the Corrections Department to
forward all names of those felons incarcerated and having a mental illness on
file.
This database could be
incorporated with the Department of Public Safety and strengthen the NICS report
status giving them more access to two additional sources for the database. The first being an ex-felon convicted and the
second being an ex-felon with mental health illness on file.
The fact is we are
already doing such reporting under the law called Megan’s Law for sex offenders
throughout the state. It would take another stroke of the keyboards to add this
data to the system and make our communities safer.
In addition, closing
loopholes in the background checks for every state is essential to maintain
adequate control over information sharing and validating the criminal justice
information process to be effective and instrumental in the prevention of
having guns fall into the wrong hands in our communities.
There are currently
federal grants available to make such changes if the state wants to apply for
such additional funding resources.
Sources:
www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/.../maig_mimeo
http://www.sunjournal.com/news/lewiston-auburn/2012/12/19/report-maine-shares-few-mental-health-records-back/1296712
No comments:
Post a Comment