Right Side of the Rainbow

When you buy a gun from any reputable dealer — which is to say, any dealer with an FFL (federal firearms license) — your purchase will usually be submitted for clearance to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, operated by the FBI. (If you have a state-issued, federally-approved license to carry a handgun, your purchase is generally exempt from clearance. In most states, the background check for a carry license is more stringent than the federal background check for a purchase. If you’ve passed the former, you cannot fail the latter.*)

Most of the data the FBI relies upon come from the states. If the data are incomplete, the FBI may clear a purchase prohibited by federal law. And so it has, more than once:

WASHINGTON — In Alabama, a man with a history of mental illness killed two police officers with a rifle he bought on Christmas Eve.

In suburban New York, a schizophrenic walked into a church during Mass and shot to death a priest and a parishioner.

In Texas, a woman taking anti-psychotic medication used a shotgun to kill herself.

Not one of their names was in a database that licensed gun dealers must check before making sales — even though federal law prohibits the mentally ill from purchasing guns.

In many states, privacy laws prevent the sharing of mental health records with law enforcement. Federal legislation to require the sharing of the records is meeting resistance, but not from the gun rights lobby. It comes from the mental health lobby:

Michael Faenza, president and chief executive of the National Mental Health Association, said forcing states to share information on the mentally ill would violate patient privacy and contribute to the stigma they face.

“It’s just not fair. On the one hand, we want there to be very limited access to guns,” Faenza said. “But here you’re singling out people because of a medical condition and denying them rights held by everyone else.”

What pap! We also “single out” the blind and deny them a driver’s license. Their condition is the reason for, and reasonably related to, the denial. Where do some people get the idea that the Government should never make any distinctions, no matter how sensible, among its citizens?

(*To learn whether your state license qualifies as a federally-approved exemption to NICS, see this chart from the ATF.)