No one suffering from mental illness should be able to obtain a firearm easier than getting care for their condition.
While I find this position noble, it needs to be treated with kid gloves, because there may be unintended consequences with this position, depending on how it’s approached.
The lion’s share of gun deaths are suicides, and suicidal thoughts is one of the most predominant mental illnesses we have in this country, depending on how we go about defining “mental illness.” And we could probably do a great deal to reduce the number of suicides by reducing the number of guns in the households of people who are suicidal. But there’s a catch. If you were to, say, pass a law saying that anyone diagnosed with suicidal tendencies must have their firearms seized, then that law would disincentivize suicidal gun owners from seeking treatment, and make the overall problem worse instead of better. So these sorts of things need to be voluntary, and realized through better education and awareness efforts. More on that here:
Please do not take this reply as tacit support for the NRA. In fact, I think if the NRA were thinking clearly, they could be a tremendous help when it comes to suicide, but that doesn’t appear to be their objective.
