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CHARLTON HESTON'S GUNS: I was very sorry to hear about Charlton Heston's illness -- surely one of the crueler fates that the world has to offer -- and I probably wouldn't have said much about it, except to express my regret and my best wishes. But since Slate's Explainer has taken on the question Will Charlton Heston Have To Give Up His Guns?, and since a reader has asked about it, I thought I'd briefly speak on the matter.

Explainer asks "If he is diagnosed with full-blown Alzheimer's, will he have to give up his guns?," and answers "Yes," citing California Welfare & Institutions Code secs. 8100-8108:

California state law requires that anyone who represents a threat to others because of a mental disorder or illness can't own a firearm. The state also denies gun ownership to those suffering from any kind of grave illness. For Heston to lose his Second Amendment rights, a court would have to find that he has a grave illness or represents such a threat.

Here's how the process would work: If Heston's doctor suspects him to be unfit, California law compels the doctor to tell the local district attorney's office. The DA would then file a motion to revoke Heston's gun ownership rights. A judge would make the final call, after consulting with Heston's physician and, in most cases, another doctor of the judge's choosing.

Now I am not an expert on this area of the law, and I may well be mistaken, but I'm not quite sure that the law can really be read this way. Here's how I read it:

Sec. 8100(a) bars people from possessing firearms while they're receiving inpatient care and are a threat to themselves (defined as showing some tendency towards suicide) or others (not clearly defined by the statute). Once the person is discharged (not just temporarily checked out, but discharged) from the inpatient facility, or if the person is not being treated as an inpatient, the section doesn't apply. I don't know much about Alzheimer's, but as I understand it, it doesn't generally call for being checked into an inpatient faciltiy.
Sec. 8100(b) bars people from possessing firearms if they have communicate to a psychiatrist a serious threat of physical violence against an identifiable victim. Doesn't seem applicable here.
Sec. 8102 provides for the temporary confiscation, which could be made permanent, of firearms from people who are "detained or apprehended for examination of his or her mental condition." (It also provides for similar procedures for people covered by secs. 8100 and 8103.) I know of no plans for the detention or apprehension of Heston for such an examination, nor do I see any reason why the police to do that.
Sec. 8103(a) is limited to people who are adjudicated by a court to be dangers to themselves or others, or as sex offenders. I suspect that very few of the millions of people who suffer from Alzheimer's are brought into court for such adjudications, unless they actually do something that seems dangerous.
Sec. 8103(b), (c), and (d) are limited to people who were found to be not guilty of some crime by reason of insanity, or found mentally incompetent to stand trial on some criminal charge.
Sec. 8103(e) applies to people who are placed under a conservatorship by a court. I am not an expert on conservatorship law, but as I understand it this is one category that might cover quite a few Alzheimer's patients, since this category may often be triggered even when a person hasn't done anything that seems physically harmful to others; as I understand it, conservatorships commonly take place to protect the subject's property, ability to get proper medical care, and so on. Still, I doubt that most Alzheimer's patients are placed under conservatorships; my sense is that the family usually works this out without court help.
Sec. 8103(f) applies to people who are taken into custody by the government or assessed by the government on the grounds that they are dangers to themselves or to others -- again, my sense is that this generally applies only to people who have committed some dangerous-seeming acts that trigger government attention. I realize that some might say that anyone who is sufficiently mentally incompetent and has guns around may thus be a danger to others -- but even if this is so as a factual matter, the test isn't whether the person is a danger to others, but rather whether he has been taken into custody or assessed on those grounds, something that I doubt routinely happens until the person engages in some positive act that seems potentially harmful.
Sec. 8103(g) applies to people who have been certified for intensive treatment after being taken into custody on grounds that they are threats to themselves or others or are gravely disabled; again, though, it's limited to people who have been taken into custody on these grounds, which to my knowledge Alzheimer's patients generally aren't, at least until they engage in specific acts that suggest to the authorities that they are a danger.
As I read the sections, a doctor is not obligated to report anything to the police except if the patient communicates to the doctor a serious threat of physical violence against an identifiable victim. See secs. 8101(b), 8105(c). Perhaps there are other statutes that require a doctor to report a patient's disability, but I'm unaware of them, and the Slate article didn't mention them.

     So the bottom line: Based on my reading of the statute that Slate cites, and other sections referred to by the statute, an Alzheimer's patient will generally not be stripped of his right to own a gun unless he (1) is placed under a conservatorship, (2) communicates to a psychotherapist a serious threat of physical violence against an identifiable victim, or is (3) taken into custody by the government or assessed by the government on the grounds that the person is a threat to others or is gravely disabled, something that typically (to my knowledge) doesn't happen unless the person commits some act that is seen by government authorities as potentially dangerous. If Heston can avoid fitting under these categories -- which seems quite likely, at least unless it is found necessary to place him under conservatorship for financial or medical care reasons -- then he won't have to give up his guns.

     All of this is a legal analysis, not a policy analysis. Whether people who are suffering from Alzheimer's should have their guns taken away is a different question; to evaluate it, I take it we should investigate, among other things, (1) how often such people harm others or inadvertently harm themselves with guns, (2) how likely people are to err in diagnozing sufficiently severe cases of Alzheimer's, and (3) more broadly, how concerned we are about ceding considerable legal power to the expert judgment of psychiatric professionals. The answer might be that people who are suffering from "full-blown Alzheimer's" should have their guns taken away; I just haven't investigated the matter closely enough to tell.

     But as a legal matter -- and stressing again that I am not an expert in this field -- my tentative view is that Slate's analysis, and especially its unqualified "Yes" answer to the question that it asks, is not quite sound. Charlton Heston has enough to worry about; I don't think he needs to worry that he will be officially stripped of a right that he believes to be quite valuable, and the loss of which might be greeted with some pleasure by some (though surely not all) of his political adversaries. I welcome correction, though, from others who are more knowledgeable on this statutory scheme than I am.

UPDATE: For more on whether Heston would likely have to be placed under conservatorship, see this post.