To the Editor:

The Gun Control Act of 1968 states that anyone involuntarily committed or adjudicated a “mental defective” is barred from buying or possessing firearms. However, many States do not share their mental health records.
In the United States V. Rehlander, the First Circuit Court suggests there is a serious limit on the ability to keep guns away from people who lack the capacity to handle them. The court strongly suggest that mentally ill individuals must be allowed to carry guns until they receive a fairly elaborate hearing declaring them unfit to use a gun. With a Federal law that was passed in 1968, States that do not share information on mental health records, and courts that make rulings that follow their beliefs rather than the law, it appears people that suffer from mental problems “fall through the crack.”
In the latest statistics I’ve found, there were 12,318 reported deaths that were attributed to DUI drivers in the recorded year. There were 37,485 people that had drug overdoses or brain damage linked to long-term drug abuse. Figures from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System indicates 1,321 children died as a result of abuse and/or neglect.
If Ms. Murray’s line of reasoning is followed, automobiles, unprescribed drugs, and parents should be banned, rather than putting the blame on the driver, user, and abuser where it belongs.
Guns do not perform these horrific acts, the person pulling the trigger does. The blame should be placed squarely on the person.

Ruth Poole
Rutledge
Via e-mail

Printed in the January 3, 2013 edition