Mental Health: The New Front in the War on Gun Rights

By: Zach McCormick
www.zjmlaw.com

5/7/14


Hillary Clinton recently told a body of mental health professionals at the National Counsel for Behavioral Health that the United States should "rein in its gun culture". Her perspective should hardly come as a surprise to anyone but what was noteworthy was how her actions coincided with the latest strategy in the war on guns.

The latest battleground is mental health and groups on both sides of the gun debate have actually unified in saying that people with mental health issues shouldn't have guns. Lets be clear; people with serious mental health problems shouldn't have guns, but who exactly has a mental health disorder? That question may have been easy to answer in days gone by, but today, the list of people that have diagnosable disorders has grown by leaps and bounds.

In fact, the psychiatric bible known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual  or "DSM" has been expanded considerably since its creation over 50 years ago. Under the latest parameters, as much as 26% of the adult American population could be considered to have a mental illness. Yet, in comparison, only 6% of Americans are deemed to suffer from "serious mental illness" according to the National Institute of Mental Health's numbers. These numbers are staggering given their sheer scale.

This reality might be easier to accept if these new categories were created in a totally unbiased vacuum. Yet, it appears that financially interested parties (pharmaceutical companies) have considerable say in deciding what should be called a disorder these days.  (See: PLOS Medicine Article by Krimsky and Cosgrove). In its most simplistic sense, this ties Americans' gun rights to a body whose members may stand to profit from deciding to call something a mental health disorder.

Complicating things further, is the fact that over diagnosis appears to be at an all time high and although we are now better equipped to spot and treat mental illness, the drugs that are being prescribed may be causing their own problems. In fact, this controversy has caused considerable disagreement within the mental health community.

It is important to acknowledge that technically, in Florida, there are legal safeguards found within Statute 790.065 that are designed to prevent abuse. Yet, despite these safeguards, the practical reality is that mental health patients get churned through a few underfunded, and overworked institutions where the attending doctors have very little time to spend with each person. Additionally, it is extremely rare for a patient to get the chance to fully present a defense at the short hearing that occurs in each case. Finally, once a citizen is branded, the burden shifts to him to reverse the finding of mental deficiency.

This process stands in stark contrast to American legal tradition of "presumed innocent" and it forces the citizen to submit himself to a potentially humiliating and time consuming process of seeking "relief from a firearms disability".

Given how important this issue is, we should carefully scrutinize all matters relating to mental health and gun rights.