Increasingly there is talk of passing strong laws to keep guns away from the mentally ill, but don’t hold your breath.
Most mentally ill people are not violent. Some may be very troubled, but as a group they seem to present far less danger to the public than the Incredibly Stupid. Yet both are entitled to equal protection of the laws, including the 2nd Amendment that, as the dearly-departed-may-he-never-return Justice Scalia might have noted, contains no express mental illness or stupidity exception.
But, surely, we should be able to keep guns away from Really Crazy Bastards, right?
Maybe. But how much good would it do? Only about 1 percent of accused felons plead insanity as a defense. While some (or their lawyers) may be too crazy to realize they’re crazy, this at least suggests that 99 percent of felons are, for the record, sane.
As to identifying the dangerously crazy, consider that in California criminal defendants can be declared “not guilty by reason of insanity” only if, because of a mental illness, they: could not understand the nature of their criminal act, OR could not distinguish between right and wrong.
This insanity yardstick — the McNaughten Rule — is named for a 1843 Brit, Daniel McNaughten, who suffered from paranoid delusions and believed the government was out to get him (sound familiar?). He shot at the Prime Minister, missed, but was found not guilty of attempted murder because his mental illness rendered him incapable of understanding that what he did was morally wrong.
In court, psychiatrists opine on the defendant’s sanity, after which a judge or jury decides if he/she is ‘McNaughten crazy.’ Remember: The accused can be mentally ill yet not meet either part of the McNaughton test. If they don’t, they go to prison where (by FBI estimates) over 50 percent of inmates are mentally ill. If they do, they go to high-security hospitals where all inmates are mentally ill.
However, when Joe Gunnutt walks into Al’s Guns & Grenades he usually hasn’t killed anyone yet, and no shrinks are waiting to make sure he’s not a Really Crazy Bastard trying to buy a gun. Even if there were, there are practical questions: How crazy can he be before he can’t own a gun? Who decides if he is or might become that crazy? (Bonus question: If he’s sane but later goes bonkers, can he keep the gun?)
Gun-shop psychiatrists might disagree on the likelihood of violent behavior by someone they otherwise agree is mentally ill. The NRA will surely note that just because Joe suffers from raging paranoia, for example, doesn’t mean he is too crazy to have a gun to defend himself against Tyrannical Government’s jack-booted thugs who are coming in black helicopters to take his gun away.
The issue seems clear: In good conscience, can a country seething with hatreds and awash in firearms leave the mentally ill defenseless against supposedly sane biker gangs, violent Trump supporters, KKK clansmen, militias, gang-bangers, Cliven Bundy patriots, wife-beaters, NRA apologists, open-carry nuts, bullies, bigots and trigger-happy cops, all armed to the teeth?
Some say that with such people at large, any person would have to be crazy not to keep a gun handy. But if crazy people couldn’t own guns, those sane people couldn’t get one anyway. If you think “Guns and Mental Illness” is complicated, wait till we get to “Guns and Stupid.”
Awesome.