Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Should Mental Health Evaluation be required for Gun Purchases?
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Old 04-06-2014, 08:10 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by patfla06 View Post
Interesting question!
I don't know if it would be able to be done.

We have a case here in Tampa of a Mom with a long history of mental illness was able to buy a gun and shot and killed her 2 children.
We could start, at least, with anyone who has a history is not eligible to
Buy a gun.
Her trial starts this month. Very sad story.
That's interesting. A careful assessment of why various patients have had to be adjudicated mentally ill would have to be taken into this. My initial assessment though would be that most people Baker Acted here in Florida and then adjudicated as mentally ill are probably people with alcohol, drug, or other addictions. And, most of these probably would never become violent unless they come from an environment of domestic violence or so other kind of cyclical violence.

Take media cases involving mothers who murder kids-- most mothers never have any problem with post partum depression leading to violence. There are the rare exceptions.

The media cover the extreme cases of mental illness pushing someone to violence. They rarely cover though just how many people in the US suffer from some kind of mental illness. It is one in four the last I looked. http://www.nami.org/template.cfm?section=About_NAMI

http://www.nami.org/factsheets/menta..._factsheet.pdf