Posted on 04/21/2007 12:56:05 AM PDT by DeerfieldObserver
Under federal law, the Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho should have been prohibited from buying a gun after a Virginia court declared him to be a danger to himself in late 2005 and sent him for psychiatric treatment, a state official and several legal experts said Friday.
Federal law prohibits anyone who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective,” as well as those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, from buying a gun.
The special justice’s order in late 2005 that directed Mr. Cho to seek outpatient treatment and declared him to be mentally ill and an imminent danger to himself fits the federal criteria and should have immediately disqualified him, said Richard J. Bonnie, chairman of the Supreme Court of Virginia’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform.
A spokesman for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also said that if Mr. Cho had been found mentally defective by a court, he should have been denied the right to purchase a gun.
The federal law defines adjudication as a mental defective to include “determination by a court, board, commission or other lawful authority” that as a result of mental illness, the person is a “danger to himself or others.”
Mr. Cho’s ability to buy two guns despite his history has brought new attention to the adequacy of background checks that scrutinize potential gun buyers. And since federal gun laws depend on states for enforcement, the failure of Virginia to flag Mr. Cho highlights the often incomplete information provided by states to federal authorities.
Currently, only 22 states submit any mental health records to the federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement on Thursday.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
If Cho had been rejected for purchasing a gun, I wonder what his next move would have been. It seems like his name should also be turned over to the police for investigation. Otherwise, he might buy a gun through another method?
Usually nothing happens. People with numerous felonies simply get denied, in which they'll simply shrug their shoulders and buy a gun off the street from another criminal.
You mean he illegally purchased a gun? Boy is he in trouble.
The system should be modified so that the mental health diagnoses is reported.
“Usually nothing happens. People with numerous felonies simply get denied, in which they’ll simply shrug their shoulders and buy a gun off the street from another criminal.”
Which proves the utter folly of gun control legislation!! The only way to stop someone bent on using deadly force is to respond in kind, with even deadlier force! Dirty Harry comes to mind!!
My understanding is that if a mental defective is rejected from buying a gun from a licensed gun dealer, he can legally purchase a semi-automoatic from a private party. This is the NRA working for our constituional rights?
Wrong.
L
I worry about who gets to determine who is a mental defective. The left in this country would label most anyone on the right as mental defective and dangerous. I don’t see anything in the Second Amendment that limits anyone from owning a gun by whatever means possible. The problem still comes from the misuse of the gun and not the possession.
You would be incorrect. A mental defective is barred from possessing *any* firearms. Period.
Well... the exact “who” varies from state to state, but basically if a judge signs off on the evaluation by the board/psychiatrist/whatever that you are a danger to yourself and/or others, you cannot own a gun. Such a hearing requires that you have counsel present - as it is much like a trial in that one of the outcomes is the potential removal of your rights.
I don’t like all this focus on “How did he get a gun?” The important question is “What is wrong with our society that he hadn’t been locked up in a mental hospital years earlier?” It’s clear from his writings that he spent a lot of time thinking about violence in general, with no particular focus on guns. If he’d been barred from purchasing a gun from a dealer, and hadn’t managed to buy one off the street, he’d have used something else. There’s no law against people who’ve been adjudicated as mentally ill going out and buying gasoline and chains. He apparently did buy or otherwise obtain chains. Imagine how many people he could have killed by chaining all the exit doors to a dorm in the middle of the night and throwing gasoline-fueled firebombs through some windows. It’s not that people like him need to be kept away from guns, it’s that they need to be kept away from free society.
One main result of this article is that the estates of the dead students will be able to sue the State of Virginia for gross negligence in not updating the database prohibiting gun sales to people with mental problems.
This will cost them $$$ and will be a slam dunk for anyone suing the state of Virginia.
I think the article errs a bit when it talks about disclosure of medical records. In the nut’s case (or is that nutcase’s case?) it was a COURT document that needed to be put through the proper channels.
So much for background checks and gun-free zones.
That maybe so, but it still wouldn’t stop someone from having a gun. They would just come by it illegally.
I guess what I am thinking is that the only thing that would have saved those students and teachers is if someone on the school grounds had been illegally carrying a gun and would have been able to shoot the b*st*rd!!
The whole reason they were in danger was because gun control laws prevented them from adequate self protection.
What this article neglects to mention, is that; while the decision of the initial legal proceedings would have made him inelegible to legally purchase a firearm, another judge stepped in and ‘reversed’ the earlier decision.
Because of this, Cho didn’t get ‘put into the system’ and was in fact, under the law, a legal purchaser.
Don’t blame the NRA for this. Blame the judge, the lawyers and school administrators who decided to ‘give the kid a break’.
“My understanding is that if a mental defective is rejected from buying a gun from a licensed gun dealer, he can legally purchase a semi-automoatic from a private party. This is the NRA working for our constituional rights?”
My understanding is that if a mental defective is rejected from buying a gun from a licensed gun dealer, he is unable to purchase a semi-automatic from a private party, then he can buy a chainsaw from Home Depot.
I would also blame the Governor and Legislature for creating gun-free zones on campi in Virginia.
I don’t think that impractical, extreme interpretations of the Second Amendment do anything to advance its noble purposes. The framers’ outside writings on the topic of who should have the right to bear arms, in some cases stated clearly that felons and the insane did not have this right, and in all cases were written in the context of a society where common sense still ruled the day. And common sense dictates that felons (real ones, not some of the modern administrative “felonies” that have been invented by socialists) and the mentally incompetent have no business owning, possessing, or using guns. Should a person with advanced Alzheimer’s who can no longer reliably recognize family members or distinguish them from complete strangers, really have an unfettered right to go out and buy a gun and keep it at home for “self-defense”? How would that work when the person can’t distinguish an intruder from a spouse or a home nursing aide? What about a severely autistic young man who’s given to violent outbursts, but has obviously not been charged with any crimes for those outbursts due to his clear inability to control himself?
It is well-established law that ALL rights are subject to being revoked from individuals after due process — even the right to continue living, since the framers of the Constitution and Bill of Rights lived in an era when the death penalty was almost universally accepted as form of legal punishment, and did not choose to prohibit it. The process of individual adjudication, whether for crimes or mental competence or anything else, will never be perfect, but so far no one has invented a better system for maintaining a peaceful and prosperous society.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.