Mental Health and Background Checks?

There has been a lot of buzz the past few days about background checks containing mental health information. This would never 'fly' for employment screening but it certainly begs the question for gun control.

Mental Health and Guns: Do Background Checks Do Enough?

By MICHAEL LUO

Published: April 19, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 18 - Revelations about Cho Seung-Hui's
2005 stay in a psychiatric center under a magistrate's order have
raised questions about whether background checks adequately scrutinize
the mental health history of potential gun buyers.

Federal law prohibits those who have been "adjudicated as a mental
defective" by a court, as well as those who have been involuntarily
committed to a mental health facility, from buying a firearm.

Only
17 states, however, submit such mental health information to the
background check systems they use on gun purchases, said Dennis
Henigan, legal director of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

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