Would it be bad to prevent people from purchasing firearms if they are taking psycho drugs?
I seriously thought it already was against the law to buy guns if you were being treated for certain mental illnesses.
A friend of mine had developed schizophrenia at the age of 35. He lost his job teaching math in high schools.
He told me himself that he would not be able to keep his small collection of guns now, so he took them back to the family home in Illinois. This was about 20 years ago.
I don’t know how that could be enforceable. Background checks now can barely cover being involuntarily committed to a mental hospital, or if a court or government body declares him mentally incompetent.
I’m sure the government would go for that since almost half the population is on some sort of anti-depressant or anti-anxiety med.
The NICs form has a section about being mentally defective, but it has to be done through a court (adjudicated)
People have a right to defend themselves. Keeping guns out of the hands of the insane makes sense but it has to be done the right way. Not everyone on antidepressants is insane or defective. I’m not sure how you arrange “the right way” outside of more court cases to adjudicate someone as defective. The government would absolutely love to turn that into everyone having to be assessed and adjudicated as defective\non-defective before being allowed to purchase. Ultimate gun control right there. This would create a caste system in the US, which shouldn’t be allowed and the vast majority of the population would be on the losing end of the decision. It would maybe start out as whatever low low number but over the years things like social media posts and traffic tickets would be added into the equation. Because this sort mission creep ALWAYS 100% of the time happens when the government is the enemy of the people as we have in the US now.
Maybe the answer is to stop prescribing these meds so much. Find out why a person has depression or anxiety and deal with that issue instead of covering it up with chemicals. Some people are clinically depressed and my understanding of that is that their body does not produce enough of whatever chemical or hormone for them to not be depressed. That should be something that could be determined with a blood test, not just from a verbal assessment and observation. Outside of that chemical production issue no one should be given these medications because they are too damaging and dangerous.