[Taltarzac725]

Originally Posted by Carl in Tampa

I'm going to try to make this brief, which is difficult for me.

Kitty is correct that it is often easy to identify potentially dangerous mentally ill people. When I was training in this area I was amazed to find how many of the mentally ill would readily admit that they heard voices in their head instructing them to do things when there was no other person present.

Years ago Liberal Activists destroyed the nation's mental health system of compulsory detention of potentially dangerous mentally ill people. Those people are now "the homeless" on our streets who refuse free refuge when it is offered.

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Now, back to the Original Post. No, you can't require a psychological exam prior to purchase of a firearm. A psychological exam is a medical procedure and HIPAA law forbids disclosure of the results.

The great obstacle we are presently encountering is the difficulty in establishing a database of people found to be "mentally defective" which disqualifies them from purchasing a firearm.

Frankly, the medical establishment refuses to cooperate.

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That seems way too simplistic. Many of the homeless were/are veterans pushed through the system and not getting the care they need. National Coalition for the Homeless The National Coalition for the Homeless » National Coalition for the Homeless Many are unemployed who could not get a job for whatever reason. A very small number are paranoid schizophrenics. And most of the very large number of mentally ill people NEVER cause any violence to anyone. http://www.nami.org/

There were very serious problems in the mental health system and their still are. Most of these seem because people are obsessed with simple solutions to extremely complicated problems when they are no easy answers when dealing with common sense, bureaucracies, limited funds, and other matters.

You look at the current mess of the Veterans' Administration or prior to that the Catholic Church and sexually active priests (usually with underage boys) and you expect a "mentally defective" list of people to be actually work? It does not seem we are every learning from the lessons from the crooked timber of humanity. You are never going to get that perfect looking house, so to speak, from such lumber.

Look at these statistics from NAMI (probably a little biased, but....)

One in four adults−approximately 61.5 million
Americans−experiences mental illness in a given
year. One in 17−about 13.6 million−live with a serious
mental illness such as schizophrenia, major depression
or bipolar disorder.1

 Approximately 20 percent of youth ages 13 to 18
experience severe mental disorders in a given year. For
ages 8 to 15, the estimate is 13 percent.2

 Approximately 1.1 percent of American adults—
about 2.4 million people—live with schizophrenia.
3,4

 Approximately 2.6 percent of American adults−6.1
million people−live with bipolar disorder.
4,5

 Approximately 6.7 percent of American adults−about
14.8 million people−live with major depression.4,6

 Approximately 18.1 percent of American adults−about
42 million people−live with anxiety disorders, such as
panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD),
posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), generalized
anxiety disorder and phobias.4,7

 About 9.2 million adults have co-occurring mental
health and addiction disorders.
8

Less compassion and more bureaucracy does NOT seem to be the answer.