Richard Martinez is demanding “immediate action”
from Congress in response to the murder of his son and five other
people in Isla Vista, California, on Friday night. “I don’t care
about your sympathy,” he
tells The Washington Post, referring to the
legislators who have called him to offer condolences. “I don’t give
a shit that you feel sorry for me. Get to work and do something.”
Yet Martinez candidly admits he does not know what that something
should be. “I understand this is a complicated problem,” he says.
“There’s no playbook for this. We don’t know what we are doing. I
just know I have to keep fighting until something changes.”
Today a New
York Times editorial takes a stab at defining that
something, calling for “a better definition of how severe a mental
illness needs to be before it prevents someone from possessing a
gun.” Under the Gun Control Act of
1968, anyone who has been involuntarily committed to a mental
institution is prohibited from owning a firearm. One could argue
that such a rule is too broad, especially since it covers people
viewed as threats to themselves as well as people viewed as threats
to others. Should everyone who is forcibly treated because he is
thought to be suicidal forever lose his Second Amendment
rights?
The Times has no such qualms. To the contrary, it
views the current standard as a “high bar” and worries
that it “misses thousands of people.” In truth, it misses tens of
millions, since survey
data indicate that half the population qualifies for a
psychiatric diagnosis at some point. Hence “a better definition of
how severe a mental illness needs to be before it prevents someone
from possessing a gun” could have sweeping implications for
Americans’ constitutional rights.
California already has expanded that definition, prohibiting gun
ownership by anyone who has been subject to a 72-hour psychiatric
hold aimed at determining whether he is a threat to himself or
others within the previous five years. In other words, merely being
suspected of posing a threat to yourself or others is enough for
you to lose your Second Amendment rights in
California. But it turns out that the Isla Vista
shooter, Elliot Rodger, not only had never been involuntarily
committed; he had never been involuntarily evaluated
either.
The closest Rodger came to a 72-hour hold seems to have
been in April, when Santa Barbara County sheriff’s deputies
visited him at his apartment after his mother, alarmed by his
dark and brooding YouTube videos, reported that he might be
suicidal. The deputies, finding Rodger to be calm and polite, did
not see any evidence that he was a threat to himself or others. He
reassured them that he had been going through a difficult time but
was not about to kill himself, and they believed him. They did not
have enough evidence to confine him for a 72-hour evaluation, which
in California requires
“probable cause to believe that the person is, as a result of
mental disorder, a danger to others, or to himself or herself, or
gravely disabled.”
The Times suggests that “parents or other
relatives should be allowed to petition a court for a restraining
order prohibiting gun ownership by those who pose a credible risk
of harm to themselves or others.” Even assuming that Rodger’s
parents, who did not know that he owned guns, would have sought
such an order, it is doubtful that they could have presented
“credible” evidence to back up their request, given the absence of
probable cause. Until last Friday, they had no inkling of their
son’s homicidal plans. They knew he was socially awkward, lonely,
and depressed, but many people fit that description, and almost
none of them become mass murderers. Loosening the standards for
psychiatric holds, involuntary treatment, or loss of Second
Amendment rights would strip many harmless people of their liberty,
with no guarantee of preventing even a single violent
crime.
The Times also reiterates its support for a
“universal background check system.” Yet every gun buyer in
California has to be cleared by the state Department of Justice, a
requirement that did not stop Rodger because, like the vast
majority of mass shooters, he did not have a disqualifying criminal
or psychiatric record. A background check is only as good as the
criteria for exclusion. Since there is no
reliable way to identify mass murderers before they strike, we
are left with criteria that are both too broad and too
narrow.
The Times suggests a few more. You should not be
allowed to buy a gun, it says, if you “have been convicted of a
violent misdemeanor, subject to a domestic violence restraining
order, convicted of drunken driving two or more times in five
years, or convicted of two misdemeanors involving a controlled
substance in five years.” Before adding to the exclusion criteria,
shouldn’t we ask whether the current ones
make sense? As the law stands, any felony conviction—even for a
nonviolent offense that might not even involve a victim, let alone
violence—results in the permanent loss of Second Amendment rights.
If you are in the country without permission, you have no right to
armed self-defense. Likewise if you smoke pot or use a relative’s
prescription painkillers. These rules have very little to do with
public safety.
And none of these policies, lest we forget, has anything
to do with Elliot Rodger, whose crimes provoked this whole
discussion. “Would these measures have prevented
Elliot Rodger’s rampage?” the
Times asks. “Possibly not. With so many guns in
this society, no law will ever prevent all gun violence, but that
should not stymie attempts to reduce it.”
You know what should stymie attempts to
reduce gun violence? The likelihood that they will fail, combined
with the certainty that they will deprive innocent people of
freedom.
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