Answer me about US law regarding the aquisition of firearms?

Question

After the shooting this week, can someone explain how it is possible in the US for an ex mental patient to legaly buy a handgun (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070418/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_shooting)?

Is it me or is there something very wrong in this system?

By the way, I'n not from the US and I'm not familiar with your constitutional rights, so I can do without the patriotic lessons.

Answer 1

Well, without a criminal record, you have a constitutional right to own a firearm. And he was taking meds for depression and was a college student, and while yes I would call many college kids I know mentally deficient, it is not because of actual medical problems. So because of his depression, we should have summarily restricted his constitutional rights?

Answer 2

Without a lengthy legal lesson, the problem has to do with overzealous privacy laws not with firearms. In the state in question, when a person wishes to purchase a handgun, he is given an immediate background check through a computer database. This database has all criminal conviction and mental health institutionalization information. By laws designed to protect the privacy of people with mental health issues, only those actually classified as mentally ill will have that information in the database. In other words, if you sought out council from a mental health therapist to overcome a problem, that would not be in there.

Once again we run up against the problem of the rights of a person's privacy and the rights of people in general to be protected. We must revisit those laws.

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Answer 3

A back ground check is done to see if you are able to get a fire arm. Just like in your country there gun dealers or on the street sellers. so what is wrong with your system? there are more death a day in other countrys then here. they just don't hit the news because they are 2 or 3 world countries. so you need to stop and think about the gun men in africa south america that slater folks just because.