Is having the conversation about mental illness and horrendous violent crime stigmatizing?

[pipoman]

25. ...

I agree that mass/spree/rampage killing is rare. Most firearms related murders are committed by people who legally aren't allowed to possess firearms..convicted felons. Nobody is suggesting that all people with mental illness are mass killers, just that the majority of mass killers have mental illness. Elimination of guns (as if that is even a reasonable expectation) wouldn't make those who plan mass killings not plan mass killings. Guns don't cause mass killings, sick minds do.

According to the CDC (http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate10_sy.html), there are were 625 gun related deaths of children 0-15 in 2007 (the most recent info on CDC). That is a lot of kids. OTOH, there were 832 who drown (usually in backyard pools) and 2,344 in motor vehicles, many in sporting accidents.. The point is that while each child death is a tragedy, there are many things which result in child deaths and always will.

I don't know where you got the idea that online sales of firearms are not subject to background checks. They are if they are interstate transactions. If I want to sell a gun on gunbroker.com, and I sell the gun to someone in another state, I am required to mail the gun to a federal firearms licensee in the buyers state, then the buyer has to complete a background check through NICS to take possession. If it is a handgun, I have to take the gun to a FFL in my state who has to mail it to a FFL in the buyers state and the buyer has to complete an NICS check before taking possession. Anyone mailing a gun to a private individual in another state is violating federal law. If I send a gun back to the manufacturer for repair, they will mail it to a FFL in my state and I have to pass an NICS check before I can pick up my own gun.

As for the private sale notion that the NRA has anything to do with...not. The "commerce clause" of the US constitution doesn't allow for federal regulation of intrastate commerce of legal products. This has no connection to the NRA. The feds are prohibited from regulating intrastate commerce. States can (and a few do) require background checks for private intrastate sales. The only way there will ever be a requirement for background checks on private intrastate sales will be if the states enact the requirement. Further, even if I want to use the NICS system to transfer a gun to a buyer within my state, I can't access it. I have ideas about how to make this system better, but alas, most in favor of gun control don't really want to make it better, they want to eliminate the commerce clause...an impossibility...and won't hear anything else..

I would think mental health advocates would embrace an opportunity to re-fund mental health services to a level prior to Raygun administration's defunding.