No. of Recommendations: 4
Exactly, but aren't we talking about changes to legislation? Or is the only change that is permissible is change that falls on the entirety of all gun owners (except criminals of course who don't obey laws)
Yes. Well, sort of. Legislative changes would be subject to Constitutional limitations. There's no way that a requirement that you had to submit to a mental health assessment as a condition of owning a firearm would pass constitutional muster under the current 2A jurisprudence.
But even if you amended the 2A, practically speaking any such proposal would be DOA politically for the reason you implicitly raise in your second question. If you're going to try to keep guns away from people who have mental health issues, that change would fall on the entirety of all gun owners. You don't know in advance who has mental health issues and who doesn't. So if you're going to check to see who has mental health issues as a condition of gun purchase or ownership, you're going to have to test everyone who wants to buy a gun (or owns a gun, in the more extreme version of that).
Scouring government records to see if people have been adjudicated with a mental health problem (ie. a public record of involuntary commitment) isn't going to have much impact at all. You have to make people submit for some kind of psychological examination. And I'm pretty sure that that would be even more unpopular among gun owners than any other gun regulation that's been proposed.
Albaby
