Quote:
Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde
@kyp: Pardon me, but can I ask you what is it about psychiatric evaluation that makes you hate it so much? Wouldn't it help screen people who shows tendencies to make blunders with firearms? (such as crimes or accidental shootings)
Please don't resort to snarky comments and just answer it in a gentlemanly way.
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There are multitudes of issues with the idea.
1. What type of evaluation are you talking about? and how often? If it's the questionnaire type that you may see with some job applications, then it would be practically useless. If you're talking about the type where you do a one-on-one with an actual psychiatrist, then you run into even more problems.
2. Cost - who is going to pay for those examinations? one-on-one sessions are not cheap to say the least. And if you make these the burden of prospective gun owners, then you would've essentially priced the poor and those who have limited disposable income out of being able to exercise their constitutional right. When was the last time you had to pay to have your freedom of speech? I've talked about this in more detail in the previous post, there are some lines a government should not cross, and massive mandatory psychiatric exams on a substantial portion of the general population without reason is one of them.
Realistically speaking, no politician will ever seriously support such a measure, and the Supreme Court (or any lesser district court for that matter) will toss such a blatant violation of the 4th Amendment out the door so fast you wouldn't have time to blink.
3. Logistics - Qualified psychiatrist are not a dime a dozen. Roughly 25 to 30% of the entire US population owns firearms, which means you'll have anywhere from around 90 million to 105 million people that would have to undergo said evaluation.
Do you have any idea how long that's going to take? especially when you consider that there is already a worsening shortage of psychiatrists in the US to meet current mental health care needs, the strain an additional 100 million patients will force on top of that system would be unthinkable.
Not only will such scenario likely force those psych evals to become little more than rubber-stamped formality, you'd also exponentially increase the likelihood that more James Holmes and Seung Cho will slip through the critically strained system.
4. Ineffective - Psych evals will not address the two issues you raised, such as crime and accident. Sure, you may weed out some of the mentally unstable, but most criminals are not crazy in the head (nor do many of the crazies starts out that way). As far as accidents go, that has far more to do with proper maintenance and following safety procedures, which has nothing to do with a psychiatric exam.