Mental Illness and New Gun Law Reforms The Promise and Peril of Crisis-Driven Policy

摘要

The December 2012 tragedy in Newtown, Con-necticut, transfixed the nation in a moment of shared grief for 20 small children and 6 adults who died in a merciless hail of bullets. The weeks since have brought numerous federal and state policy proposals to curb gun violence. Whether these crisis-driven reforms can help inch society toward the goal of reducing firearm-related deaths, the new laws' broader social consequences could long outlast the memory of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Policy makers would do well to pause and think them through.Some of the proposals deal with dangerous guns: Ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. That now seems like a good idea to a majority of Americans across the political spectrum.1 But in a nation with a constitutionally protected right to possess a firearm and an estimated 310 million firearms already in private hands,2 the real action in gun control is "people control": Prohibit dangerous people from getting their hands on a gun. It is through the lens of "people control" that mental illness comes into sharp focus, both as a presumed vector of gun violence and as a categorical prohibitor of gun access.