not as easy as it seems

at first blush, even the NRA agrees that people who have been involuntarily committed and deemed mentally ill or a danger to them self or others should not be able to purchase guns. Indeed, it is a rare thing that the NRA supports a restriction on gun sales, or individual's right to purchase guns, so this must be a no-brainer right?

I'm not sure. Of course, it is already illegal for people falling within these categories to purchase guns. The problem lies in reporting by state agencies who are bound by state privacy laws. With the events at Virginia Tech fresh on everyone's mind and conscience, there is a new push to enforce these laws by creating or giving full effect to the national data base against which background checks are performed. That is something I do not support.

There should not be a federal law that preempts state privacy protections, especially for the mentally ill. There should not be a federally centralized list of all the crazy people in the country. If you want to buy a gun, then I think you give up certain privacy protections and one of those is being forced to divulge your mental health history.

But I do not want to buy a gun, and I do not want my name or anyone else's name in that database. Being put in a database is an infringement on your privacy, and you should not be forced to do that so that other people can buy guns more quickly. This returns us to the world of a couple day waiting period - it could even be an overnight or several hour thing. Each state would be networked and when you want to buy a gun, the dealer sends out the request and any states that have you on their list respond.

Privacy Laws Slow Efforts on Gun-Buyer Data

By MICHAEL LUO

WASHINGTON, May 1 — Momentum is building in Congress behind a measure that would push states to report their mental health records to the federal database used to conduct background checks on gun buyers.

But a thicket of obstacles, most notably state privacy laws, have thwarted repeated efforts to improve the reporting of such records in the past and are likely to complicate this latest effort, even after the worst mass shooting in United States history at Virginia Tech last month.

Federal law prohibits anyone who has been adjudicated as a “mental defective,” as well as anyone involuntarily committed to a mental institution, from buying a firearm. But only 22 states now submit any mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, against which all would-be gun purchasers must be checked.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/02/us/02guns.html

see also http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/02/AR2007050200282.html


in other news, this is why I try to stick with Organic foods as much as possible:

Millions Of Chickens Fed Tainted Pet Food
Risk to Consumers Minimal, FDA Says

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 2, 2007; A01

At least 2.5 million broiler chickens from an Indiana producer were fed pet food scraps contaminated with the chemical melamine and subsequently sold for human consumption, federal health officials reported yesterday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/01/AR2007050102071.html