Thus far, President Obama’s answer has been vague
and administrative enough to avoid the need for Congressional approval.
As the International Business Times reports, “In addition
to gun control measures, Obama’s anti-violence package includes increasing
mental health resources, boosting funding for school security and lifting
restrictions that prevent the government from researching the causes of gun
violence.”
These few specifics are indicative, however. For
example, Obama is attempting to lift a longstanding ban on the Centers for
Disease Control (CDC) taking a position on gun control. In 1996, Congress made
the appropriation of funds to the CDC conditional on the stipulation that “none
of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun
control.”
Now Obama has asked for $10 million for the CDC to
research “the causes and prevention of gun violence.” Obama is declaring gun
violence to be a public health issue. And he wishes to expand the sharing of
mental health information between government agencies.
Moreover, Obama seems to have reversed himself on
whether doctors should ask patients about whether they own guns. Under
Obamacare, the federal government cannot use medical records to compile a
database of gun owners. Nevertheless, Obama recently and prominently stated
that Obamacare “does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in
their homes.” Indeed, the American Academy of Pediatrics encourages them to do
so in the name of public safety.
Public safety. Public health. And the individual is
lost in the shell game.
Raising the question of keeping guns from the mentally
ill is not meant to promote discussion. It is intended to discredit and to
silence anyone who answers it incorrectly.
The tactic is particularly dangerous because those
who should be defending the fundamental right of self-defense are falling over
themselves to agree with the focus on mental health. On January 24, the
powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) reminded readers that it has urged
“the federal government to address the problem of mental illness and violence”
for over four decades. The NRA reiterated, “the time is at hand to seek means
by which society can identify, treat and temporarily isolate such individuals
[the mentally ill].”
Before exploring the problems that attend the
rhetorical coupling of gun ownership with mental health, however, it is
important to note that the demand to keep guns away from the mentally ill does
not refer to the sensible step of refusing to sell a weapon to someone high on
PCP who screams, “I need it to kill my mother!” It refers to accepting the
government’s definition of mental illness. It means agreeing to a government
screening process that undoubtedly involves a federal database on people’s
mental health.
The NRA’s chief executive Wayne LaPierre fully
embraces this violation of privacy. He told FOX News that the mental-health
lobby and federal law had blocked his organization’s proposal to place the
names of people “with potentially dangerous mental health problems” into a federal
database. In reality, of course, everyone screened would be entered into
whatever database existed.
What are some of the problems with focusing the
firearms-ownership argument on the question, “How do we keep guns away from the
mentally ill?”
Shifting the ground of debate
First, the question makes several unwarranted
assumptions. It assumes everyone has a common definition of mental health — the
government one. It assumes that politicians who are zealously anti–gun
ownership will use their additional authority to make gun ownership safer
rather than obsolete. (On one day alone, Obama recently signed 23 executive
orders bearing on gun ownership.) It assumes that government approval of mental
“wellness” ought to be required to exercise a fundamental right. Most
importantly, the question leaves all discussion of actual rights to choke in
the dust while expediency is explored. Respecting the Second Amendment is no
longer on the table, but how to revise it is.
Shifting the grounds of the argument is also a
psychological tactic. Those who continue to defend gun ownership as fundamental
to the right of self-defense are transformed into people who do not care if
guns are in the hands of the mentally ill. In the wake of the Newtown school
massacre, they become moral monsters who will step over the bodies of children
to protect their own weapons. The question itself is a form of character
assassination directed at anyone who rejects the validity of government
granting a right only after establishing a person’s mental ability to handle
it.
What is next? Freedom of speech only for those who
speak the truth? Freedom of association only for those who do not keep bad
company? (With government being the judge, of course.)
If a right requires government permission to
exercise, then it ceases to be a right. It becomes a state privilege.
Meanwhile, a further shift is occurring. The debate
is leaving behind not only fundamental principles but also raw evidence and
statistics. Advocates of gun control simply lose the argument if it rests on
hard data. Scholars like John Lott have meticulously documented how gun
ownership decreases rather than increases violence. Regarding the most
controversial of all gun types — assault rifles — Lott states in the Wall
Street Journal,
Since the
Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired in September 2004, murder and overall
violent-crime rates have fallen. In 2003, the last full year before the law
expired, the U.S. murder rate was 5.7 per 100,000 people, according to the
Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Report. By 2011, the murder
rate fell to 4.7 per 100,000 people. One should also bear in mind that just
2.6% of all murders are committed using any type of rifle.
The consequences of the question
Who is mentally ill?
In an article entitled “Obama Taking Over
Psychiatry,” Dr. Lee Hieb argues that government should not be the one to
decide. She writes,
The use
of psychiatry against dissidents in the Soviet Union was one of the major human
rights scandals of the 1970s and 1980s.… [E]stablishing a dictatorship that
pretends to be a republic requires a stealthy way of silencing opponents.… What
better way than to be labeled mentally ill?”
Allowing the federal government to define mental
illness, screen for it, and maintain a database does not necessarily lead to
the psychiatric internment of dissidents. That is the most extreme possible
consequence.
More likely outcomes include
-gun control via a circuitous route;
-a federal database of highly personal information
on people who have committed no crime;
-a further erosion of medical privacy;
-the loss of constitutionally guaranteed rights by
anyone who seeks help for a mental problem;
-a cementing of the criminal and medical systems;
-a de facto ban on gun ownership for those whom the
government deems hostile.
Conclusion
There is, however, a salutary backlash against the
medicalization of gun ownership. Various Republicans in Congress are speaking
out. Senator Chuck Grassley objected to the CDC being involved in gun research,
saying,
Lawful
gun ownership is not a disease. It is a constitutionally protected, individual
right.… The president said that we suffer from an — quote, “epidemic of violence,”
end of quote. Although there is too much violence in America, violent crime
rates are at the lowest level in 50 years.
State-controlled psychiatry is a terrifying weapon,
especially when it is used to determine who has rights.
Every individual should be able to be eccentric,
different, and even self-destructive. As long as the behavior harms no one
else, it is no business of authority. To screen people for potentially
dangerous behavior is a form of pre-crime diligence that gives government an
almost unlimited power over anyone it targets. It is a tool of social control,
not safety.
About the author: Wendy McElroy is the author of TheReasonable Woman: A Guide to Intellectual Survival (Prometheus Books, 1998).
She actively manages two websites: http://www.ifeminists.com and
http://www.wendymcelroy.com. Send her email.
This article was published by the Future of FreedomFoundation.
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