However, people choose to own guns. If you want to own a gun, jump through some hoops the same way you have to jump through some hoops to drive a car, operate a business that serves alcohol or any other activity that has potential to put others at risk. Mental illness is not a choice and people should not be treated like pariahs for something they have no control over, but if you choose to own a gun, prove to the rest of us that you’re responsible.

All said, Wayne LaPierre must have a pretty stone-age conception of mental illness, especially with buzzwords like ‘deranged’ ‘voices’ and ‘demons.’ .Does he realize that about 1/4 of the population has been treated for depression? Nice to know that he thinks pissing and shitting on people with disabilities is a better thing to do than to ask his (probably mostly white) fan base to fill out a few more form, or limit themselves to guns that can’t fire more than 10 shots before re-loading.

I only agree with part of this. Some firearms owners are simply hunters and given that there are species that require thinning in certain areas (white tailed deer in the east) they should be accommodated, unless we want to reintroduce top predators (wolves and cougars). All those who believe that it is their right to acquire an assault weapon, or currently have an assault weapon (more than 6 shots without reloading, hand gun or long gun) should be considered suspect in the mental health category. If you are suspect you should be required to pass an annual mental health review administered by the local organization most opposed to guns. You are never after the first time not a mental health suspect.

All gun owners should be held responsible for any use of their weapons, whether or not they approved or authorized the use.

Please go somewhere else if you want to suggest that any group of people should “just commit suicide.” Thanks.

It’s dishonest and unfair to speak of “all the gun owners” as killing others. Just as mass shooters represent a vanishingly small percentage of people with mental illness, they also represent a vanishingly small percentage of gun owners. There are responsible law abiding gun owners. Stigmatizing all gun owners in the wake of a mass shooting is just as unfair – and unhelpful – as stigmatizing all mentally ill people in the wake of a mass shooting.

As for it being unconstitutional for the federal government to require state reporting of mental health treatment – HR 2460, the NICS improvement act, that the NRA supported, does in fact mandate reporting of mental health issues to the NICS system, and penalizes states for not reporting. It was passed after the VA Tech. shooting.
A person with mental illness can be institutionalized with much less due process than a criminal.

We already, kind of, have such a registry. It’s called the NICS system. And it’s easier for felons to get their name taken off the “prohibited” list for gun purchases, than it is for people who’ve been treated for mental illness. It does indeed assume that the mentally ill never recover.

LaPierre’s organization has long campaigned against a national database or registry of gun owners. It’s hypocritical to fight one sort of Orwellian registry while endorsing another.

Why can’t all the gunowners skip the middleman and just kill themselves without taking others with them?

The original mental health problem that led them to want to acquire guns seems just the first symptom in a degenerative mental illness that compels them to kill others before themselves. Perhaps the realization that they won’t be missed much by others so they make sure they will have an impact by taking away somebody who will be missed.

Gunowners should just commit suicide and not homicide.

See above Re: the fundamental attribution error as applied to unethical behavior, and the cowardice thereof.

Those who commit violent outburst aren’t like serial killers who have a long path of escalation (arson, killing animals, etc.). Some mass shooters have zero history of mental disorders or criminal activity. Some (One L. Goh, Kip Kinkel) have histories as victims of abuse, but that is not a predictor of being violent.

Adam Lanza had no history of violence (or, the media did not mention any) nor did Jeffrey Lee Michael, the Hollidayburg shooter. A friend described Michael as “withdrawn”, a hard core christian and believer in the “end of the world” on 12/21. But Michael (reportedly) displayed no anti-social tendencies before he acted out.

I would bet this is true of other shooters.