I think most of us love the country, but not how its bureaucracies grow bigger and bigger, while being less and less accountable to constituents:

"The Department of Veterans Affairs' promise to end by 2015 its massive, benefits backlog for disabled veterans has "stalled," according to an analysis released Monday by a leading veterans' organization.

After slicing its glut of pending claims from a peak of 600,000 cases in March 2013 to 400,000 in November, the VA has been unable to budge below that threshold this year, according to "The Red Tape Report," authored by the group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

Consequently, hundreds of thousands of veterans who were permanently disabled or made ill by their military service are waiting months for their compensation checks to arrive to help pay bills and, in some cases, to buy food. Some of those veterans are physically unable to hold jobs....

...In addition to those 400,000 ex-service members with backlogged claims, another 265,000 veterans have filed appeals with the VA, asserting their disability benefits were erroneously denied or cut, the report states...."

VA backlog again gnarled in red tape, report claims - U.S. News

It has always happened. We just did not have so much media to sensationalize the event and encourage "copycats" all seeking to get their names memorialized on their way "out"!

Until YOU disclosed it, your medical experience was private and protected by federal privacy laws regarding medical treatment. The same is true of psychological evaluation or treatment.

The only question regarding mental illness on the federal gun purchase application form is whether not you have been adjudicated mentally defective or committed to a mental institution.

If you have not been adjudicated or committed you cannot be prevented from buying a gun, so a simple "evaluation" would be insufficient

Other posters have given a long list of very valid reasons showing that your suggestion is impractical.

Besides which, a recent Gallup poll discloses that 60% of all Americans already own guns.

Pew Research claims that only 37% of households have guns, but estimates there are 270 million to 310 million guns in the United States.

Some ideas sound good, but are impractical. Your suggestion is impractical.

.

Box cutters killed more people in one day then all the guns did.

In what time period were soldiers on US bases allowed to be armed? I was in the Army in 1966 in the US at Fort Jackson and at Fort Benning. All firearms were kept double-locked in the Arms Room. That also went for privately owned firearms. MPs were armed and still are armed.

What are feelings about soldiers returning to US from overseas tours having psych evals to detect warning signs of PTSD or other mental issues?

Impractical
 

Impractical and ineffective.

Reportedly, the shooter at Ft. Hood had self-reported that he had PTSD and the Army hadn't even gotten through evaluating him.

How long does it take?

How much more difficult would it be to complete the evaluation of a returning trooper who denies PTSD?

Not enough psychologists and too many returning troops.

In addition, we have thousands of civilian contractors in combat zones providing security for the troops who are also exposed to PTSD conditions. Who would evaluate them?

.

Y'all have better solutions than I can think of, so I will leave this topic to those of you better equipped to come up with the answer. In the interim, I will be cleaning my guns and spending as much tine on the range as I can afford.

Lou

Why not require a competency test before being allowed to vote, or take an infant home from the hospital? Not saying I disagree, just reminding that similar things have been tried (and decried!).

I love it the way it should be.

Your posting does not correctly reflect the way health care coverage operates. A single payer system, such as Medicare, means that the rules, formularies, coverages, exclusions, etc. would be the same for all of us. The payer then pays the provider for covered services in a uniform and predictable manner. The payer does NOT provide the medical record nor have access to the medical record without the consent of the patient. The only part of the medical record which might be made available would be that pertinent to paying for a claim to see if the doctor or hospital actually did perform the service for which the carrier is being billed or to see if the patient's illness justifies a requested medication or intervention. If you believe that seeing a doctor who operates under a government run health care is a risk to your privacy, then don't use your Medicare insurance. If you like Medicare, you like government run health care, plain and simple.

This is an excellent post! :agree:

You're talking about Medicare up until now, but I'm talking about the system in the future, with the huge, octopus involvement of the IRS and its involvement and knowlege of our medical records, as sanctioned by the ACA.

Add to that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms granted their tentacles access to citizens' medical records, and it is gargantuan.

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

Someone with mental illness cannot legally purchase a gun. There is a specific question on the purchase application.

A check is made to determine if that individual has been in a mental health facility in that specific state. However states do not share that information or provide it to a central data base where it could be checked.

An individual could also falsely respond to that question.