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Then they should not be walking around in public. If they are a risk to the public to own a firearm, they are a risk to the public. If they are walking around in public, they can get their hands on a firearm (don’t have to do background checks) and it would be no different than if they weren’t added to the database. Just like criminals, if they want a gun bad enough they will get one.

I am not happy about the current situation. It is bad for the general public, and bad for many of the mentally ill. The rate of Americans freezing to death (largely a problem of the homeless mentally ill) more than doubled from 1974 to 1984 because of deinstitutionatlization. But this is the hand we have in front of us, and we can either play this hand or fold.

Mentally ill persons are a bit different from criminals in one rather important way. At least some psychotics are so scary that no one will sell them a gun, out of fear of being a victim.

Let me tell you a little story about mental illness and persons that shouldn't be walking around in public. Some years back, my pastor asked me to talk to someone that had been showing up at church, who was camped out in the fields outside of town.

This guy was clearly mentally ill--very confused, disconnected thinking, as is symptomatic of schizophrenia. He had this tale of governmental oppression, how his kids had been taken away from him, compared it to Waco, etc.

Then he showed me the paperwork--and the fact that he showed me this paperwork without trying to explain the claims in it was a pretty good indication that he was mentally ill.

He had two children. His wife had been committed for physical abuse of the kids. His children had been taken away from him because he was showing them pornographic movies and molesting them.

So why was this guy out on the streets? Why was he not locked up in prison? The children were 4 and 6. My guess is that a prosecutor had looked at the trauma of putting these children on the stand, and concluded that it would have been hard to get a conviction. It was simpler just to have the courts permanently terminate his parental rights. (This is not something that courts do lightly.)

Should this guy have been out wandering the streets? No. But our current legal system doesn't give us a lot of good alternatives.