What, Realistically, Can Be Done?

It appears now that Cho's mental illness problems didn't make it into the NICS because he chose to be voluntarily hospitalized--perhaps because he was given that as an alternative to involuntary commitment. I suspect the unwillingness of one of his stalking victims to press charges might have played a part in this as well.

So, what can be done to deal with situations like this? If we make voluntary commitments an NICS reportable firearms disability, it will discourage some people from checking themselves in--and that would be a serious problem. That's part of why a lot of mental health professionals in California initially opposed such a state law.

Perhaps situations like Cho's, where there was reason to suspect that he might be dangerous, justify involuntary commitment--regardless of whether anyone wants to press charges.

The problem is that involuntary commitment in some states, especially for observation, does not have enough protections against abuse of the process. In California, Welfare & Institutions Code 5150 allows:

a peace officer, member of the attending staff, as defined by regulation, of an evaluation facility designated by the county, designated members
of a mobile crisis team provided by Section 5651.7, or other professional person designated by the county may, upon probable cause, take, or cause to be taken, the person into custody and place him or her in a facility designated by the county and approved by the State Department of Mental Health as a facility for 72-hour
treatment and evaluation.

Once you have been 5150ed, you lose your right to possess firearms for five years. See Welfare & Institutions Code 8103(f).

This can be, and has been abused. I know someone who got upset with a bureaucrat at the Sonoma County Planning Department some years ago, and made some rather stupid and rash statement along the lines, "If I have to do any more paperwork for this subdivision, I'll kill myself." The bureaucrat apparently was sufficiently displeased that he called the police. Within an hour, this guy had been picked up and taken to a mental hospital. Two hours after his admission, he was back out. The staff could see that this guy was no threat to himself or to others--but that 5150 was now a problem, and he had a bit of work to go through to get his firearms disability removed, including petitioning the court--but the burden of proof is to prove that there is good reason to remove that disability. In some counties of California, where hostility to gun ownership by judges is widespread, that would be a high standard to meet, I fear.

There needs to be some minimum level of due process to cause a person to lose their right to possess firearms--and it should not be a lifetime disability. There are people who go through difficult times, especially teenagers and young adults, and then straighten their lives out. Five years doesn't seem unreasonable; if someone keeps getting locked up for observation or commitment more than once every five years, he either has a serious problem, or he needs to move to a less abusive locale. Most of the serious mental illnesses will have such a person committed far more often than that.

Even then, let's be realistic about the net effect. If Cho's mental problems had made into NICS--and this had caused his purchases to be declined--would it have disarmed him? It appears that whatever Cho's problems, they were not glaringly obvious--not obvious enough to make the gun dealer Cho bought guns from nervous about him.

Could Cho have bought guns privately? Very probably. There are mental patients who are so obviously disturbed that a gun dealer would not sell to them--or even allow them into the store. Even the most opportunistic criminal would think twice about selling guns to someone who appeared to be crazy, both out of fear of the mental patient coming to the attention of the police, and out of fear of being injured by the patient.

All background check systems work at the margin. They don't work perfectly. They may only prevent the prohibited person from buying at a dealer, causing him to look for a private seller. But any system that isn't hideously expensive--and still works at the margin--can be a good thing.

If 2% of prohibited persons, because they can't buy from a dealer, decide not to buy a gun, or need to spend more money or time to find a private seller, this can be a good thing. They may not find a private seller. They may be delayed long enough to give up on their project. They find the cost prohibitive--or not have enough to buy the vast quantity of ammunition that Cho apparently used.

We have a choice on this: try to fix a significant hole in the system, even if it isn't perfect, or find ourselves confronting the same problem a few years down the road. I would rather not wait for another mentally ill person to buy a gun from a dealer, and murder 32 people.