It has been a long time coming. On Tuesday, Barack Obama officially announced a set of proposalsthat aim to reduce gun violence in the US.
The proposals follow a bloody year that saw 52,000 incidents of gun violence, including 330 mass shootings. According to the non-profit corporation Gun Violence Archive, this resulted in over 13,000 deaths – 3380 of which were children aged 17 and under.
At the moment, anyone who wants to buy a gun from a licensed store must pass a background check. Their details are run through a national database – if they have a record of domestic violence or some other crimes, or have been involuntarily committed to a mental health institution, they can’t buy the weapon.
But loopholes do exist: if it takes longer than three days to run the checks, the person is free to purchase the gun regardless of what the result turns out to be. The federal law also doesn’t apply to sales at gun shows and private sales.
Smart guns
Obama aims to close these loopholes, requiring anyone who sells a gun to carry out checks. The president also hopes to recruit an extra 230 database examiners to help with background checks, which reached over 22 million in 2015. Both steps should make it harder for people with a history of violent crime to get their hands on guns.
Smart guns could also help. These guns incorporate technology, such as fingerprint recognition, that should help reduce the frequency of accidental discharge or unauthorised use. Obama proposes that the US Departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security should each be given 90 days to come up with a report detailing how they plan to research and develop such technologies.
A more controversial proposal is to expand the national database to include more information on people’s mental health. This might mean encouraging clinicians to report their patients’ mental health status.
Last year, eight US health organisations and the American Bar Association urged lawmakers to carefully consider such legislation, stating that the move could only stigmatise mental illness for little gain – less than 5 per cent of violent gun crime is committed by people with mental illness.
Privacy vs safety
However, this doesn’t include self-inflicted violence. In a speech yesterday, the president said: “if we can continue to de-stigmatise mental health issues, get folks proper care, and fill gaps in the background check system, then we can spare more families the pain of losing a loved one to suicide”. To this end, the administration is proposing an investment of $500 million to improve access to mental health treatment.
“Persons diagnosed with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violence,” says Philip Candilis, a forensic psychiatrist who teaches at St Elizabeths Hospital in Washington DC. While Candilis supports Obama’s proposals that aim to prevent suicide, he worries that associating violence with mental illness does contribute to the stigma surrounding he issue. “I am sure many in the health professions will be watching that thorny area between privacy protections and community safety in the coming months,” he says.
Steven Weinberger, executive vice-president of the American College of Physicians, is one such person. He says that although the organisation strongly supports Obama’s plans to reduce firearms violence, by closing the legal loopholes and increasing access to mental health treatment, he cautions that any plans to increase mental health reporting to the national database need to be carefully considered.
“Reporting of individuals with mental illness should be based on the risk of violence to oneself or others, and reporting requirements should be designed in a way that does not discourage such individuals from seeking mental health treatment,” he says.
Bron: www.newscientist.com
