Republicans make it easier for mentally ill to get guns

Back in 2012 when a mental- ly unstable man killed his mother and then 20 children and six faculty members at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, gun-control advocates thought the tragedy would result in laws limiting access to some semiautomatic weapons or, at least, to high-capacity magazines.

National newspapers and magazines ran photo montages of the 20 children. Several of the parents became articulate advocates for gun control as a memorial to the young victims and as a statement that the nation was willing to take action that might avert a future, similar massacre.

But the pro-gun lobby was up to the challenges facing it in the wake of Sandy Hook. The proper response, they said, was not to control guns or magazines, it was to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.

The tactic worked spectacularly. Despite an impassioned plea for action from President Barak Obama, any response to Sandy Hook withered in Congress.

But, at least, one would think, something good came out of all those deaths: It became more difficult for mentally ill people to get their hands on firearms. Well, no.

It was never going to be easy to restrict someone’s access to guns based on their mental condition, just as it is difficult to involuntarily commit even obviously imbalanced people for medical treatment.

But that doesn’t mean society shouldn’t try. Indeed, it has an obligation to protect the mentally ill from themselves and to protect others from them.

With Congress unwilling to act, President Obama did what he could to make it more difficult for the mentally ill to get guns. He drafted a rule that required the Social Security Administration to inform the attorney general when a person was “adjudicated as a mental defective or ... committed to a mental institution.” Those names would be subject to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the FBI database used to determine whether someone can buy a firearm under the 1993 Brady Bill.

Medical evidence

The SSA has long had a process for using medical evidence and statements from relatives and physicians to determine if a person who seeks disability benefits is so mentally disabled that he or she is not capable of directly receiving financial benefits.

The logic of the rule was that if an orderly process determined that someone needed a financial surrogate, it was a reasonable assumption that he or she shouldn’t be able to buy a gun.

It was estimated that about 75,000 people would be affected. That’s about one in 40,000 people – hardly a wholesale sweep.

But for some even that was too much. And so, one of the first things the new Republican-controlled House and Senate did was pass a law negating Obama’s order. President Donald J. Trump promptly signed it. With all that was on their plates, this was an issue that Congress and the new president saw as a priority.

So much for the concept that everyone would be better off if guns were kept out of the hands of people with mental disabilities.

We suppose that those who take an absolutist view of the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms will celebrate this turn of events. Clearly, those who believe strongly in the right to bear arms are on a roll. Their candidates are winning elections and those candidates at delivering for them.

That’s the democratic way. But it is worth remembering that democracies have a way of turning. Over the years, Democrats become Republicans and Republicans become Democrats and the ranks of the independents and third parties rise and fall.

Moderation is not a dirty word. Keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill is not a radical idea. Remember, even the strongest of Second Amendment advocates were singing from that hymnal back in 2012.

But many were just giving lip service to a perfectly sane concept. They seized on a convenient distraction that suited their purposes at the time, but has now been abandoned. Until, we suspect, the next Sandy Hook inspires calls for gun control.

And, of course, that day will come, because when we do not learn from history, history repeats itself.