It is a crime in Pennsylvania for certain classes of people to possess firearms.
Persons convicted of violent felonies like burglary, rape, robbery, and murder is one class. Fugitives, illegal aliens, serious drug offenders, domestic abusers, habitual DUI offenders are another.
Things then get problematic.
Painful experience teaches that some “common sense” gun control legislation has hidden consequences that in the long run wrongly strip citizens of constitutional rights. The victims of the chicanery often do not realize their rights are gone until it’s too late.
For instance, a Pennsylvania resident loses his gun rights if he has been adjudicated as an incompetent or has been involuntarily committed to a mental institution for inpatient care and treatment.
To the casual observer or lawmaker under pressure to “do something” about gun violence, this proscription may appear perfectly reasonable. But in practice, this proscription has ensnared thousands of law-abiding Pennsylvania residents who decades ago were involuntarily committed to mental health facilities, generally by hapless parents.
Despite leading crime-free, productive lives for the intervening two, three, and four decades, these people learn that they don’t have the same civil liberties as their neighbors when, at the point of purchase, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, flags their name.
Almost 30 years ago, a friend’s parents committed him to a psychiatric unit because of his alcohol abuse. Released after a few days, he stopped drinking in his early 20s. He has lived a sober, responsible, productive life for over 20 years. Yet he cannot own a gun.
Another friend, “Barbara,” recalls two involuntary commitments. At 14, after taking her father’s Ambien, she was involuntarily committed by her parents because she was walking into walls and talking nonsense. She was quizzed about her drug and alcohol history and mental health and discharged in less than a week. She recalls fellow teens showing her how to hide her meds under her tongue and how to crush pills to snort them during her short stay.
Two years later she ran away to a friend’s house, where she was picked up by the police. Her mother again committed her to a mental health facility.
Diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (and in her words, “untreated alcoholism”), she was prescribed Adderall and antidepressants and released after several days. Post-discharge, she quickly became addicted to Adderall.
Now 31, 14 years clean and sober, married, mother of two, business owner, she remains on the NICS prohibited list.
Pennsylvania State Rep. Eric Nelson has sponsored a bill to address the gun rights of those once adjudicated mentally ill. He reports that of 23,000 involuntary commitments in 2017, after evaluation about 9,000 of those were found to have no mental health issues. However, their Second Amendment rights were lost forever.
Rep. Nelson’s amendment to the state’s Crimes Code would limit the length of prohibition relating to emergency, temporary involuntary commitments under the state’s Mental Health Procedures Act and provide a relief mechanism for those ineligible to possess a firearm because of a mental health issue.
Rep. Nelson’s bill respects, protects, and restores a precious constitutional right. It’s “common sense gun reform” that actually makes sense.
