Felony Likely Committed Before Massacre – UPDATED

In the aftermath of the VA Tech massacre, there is likely to be a vigorous debate over gun-control in the next several months. One policy issue that should be discussed is the lack of psychological history in the NICS background checks.

It’s an issue that has come up before, and has been defeated before.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10214838/

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.”

However, in this instance, had this guys previous and fairly recent instabilities been accessible during the instant check made when he purchased his firearms, he may have been denied purchase.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=3052278&page=1

In December 2005 — more than a year before Monday’s mass shootings — a district court in Montgomery County, Va., ruled that Cho presented “an imminent danger to self or others.” That was the necessary criterion for a detention order, so that Cho, who had been accused of stalking by two female schoolmates, could be evaluated by a state doctor and ordered to undergo outpatient care.

Now, police were able to obtain this after the fact, but the NICS probably didn’t have this information in the database. Wouldn’t want to “stigmatize” people who already have mental health issues.

Now, if the info had been in the database, Cho would likely not have been allowed to purchase a gun at all. In fact, he would have been committing a felony by falsly answering question 12F on Form 4473 when he purchased the guns.

Question 12F states “Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective (which includes affairs) or have you ever been committed to a mental institution?”

I’m no lawyer, but I would think that his detention for being “an imminent danger to self or others” would require an answer of YES to question 12F…

So, what we have here is a failure to communicate. And an inability to follow the law as currently written. Many will call for new restrictions, and regulations to make it harder for law abiding people to obtain guns. What we really need is the ability to keep criminals and mentally unstable people from obtaining guns.

UPDATED:

So, what we really have here is a system which failed us.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/blogs/news_blog/070418/cho_nearly_landed_on_list_of_t.htm?s_cid=rss:site1

Despite being temporarily detained at a mental health facility in 2005, Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui’s name was not added to the federal database meant to prevent the mentally ill from obtaining handguns because he was never formally committed to the facility, U.S. News’s Will Sullivan has learned.

Following accusations of stalking by two female students against Cho and concerns he might be suicidal, campus officials obtained a “temporary detention order” for him on Dec. 13, 2005, from a Virginia magistrate, citing concerns that he “presents an imminent threat to [him]self or others.” Cho was sent to Carilion St. Albans Behavioral Health Center in Radford, Va., for examination.

But the next day, a physician concluded that, while mentally ill, Cho did not present an imminent danger to others or require involuntary hospitalization. Special Judge Paul M. Barrett of the Virginia District Court in Christiansburg released him.