I agree with you that the vast majority of mentally ill people have and never will harm anyone. However, as a society, we do place constraints on mentally ill people owning firearms, and I do believe that the person that is single most responsible for what happened is the mother, who decided a good way to bound with her child was through playing around with firearms that were capable of killing twenty some odd seven year olds.
Allowing non-property owners to vote for property tax increases is an example.
I disagree. Anyone who rents an dwelling similarly is affected by property taxes.
I’m not sure we actually do. I own a couple of firearms and was never once asked about my mental health. I imagine being committed to a mental institution would have shown up on a background check, but very few people would qualify for that. In any case, Adam Lanza, he was never actually diagnosed with any specific mental illness other than Asperger’s, which isn’t typically considered dangerous so there was no legal reason to disqualify him from owning firearms. Additionally, it’s estimated that 100 million Americans (roughly 1/3 of the population) own firearms, I’m not sure how you could realistically complete comprehensive mental health evaluations on even a fraction of those people.
No, it isn’t clear that, under Federal Law, Adam Lanza would be disqualified from owning a weapon and there are general concerns that even this narrow law is not properly enforced.
Given the number of people that own firearms and the number of people who can properly evaluate someone’s mental health, I doubt the law can be enforced.
Which, I think, is exactly the point. If the law is written requiring a mental health evaluation (perhaps an evaluation no more than a year old) prior to a sale, it would effectively halt gun sales. They may even go so far as to require a license that requires yearly renewal, of course requiring an updated mental health examination,