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Move to get more mental health records in Brady database
From AP:
"Not one of their names was in a database that licensed gun dealers must check before making sales — even though federal law prohibits the mentally ill from purchasing guns.
Most states have privacy laws barring such information from being shared with law enforcement. Legislation pending in Congress that has bipartisan support seeks to get more of the disqualifying records in the database.
In addition to mandating the sharing of mental health records, the legislation would require that states improve their computerized record-keeping for felony records and domestic violence restraining orders and convictions, which also are supposed to bar people from purchasing guns.
Similar measures, opposed by some advocates for the mentally ill and gun-rights groups, did not pass Congress in 2002 and 2004."
I was at a planning session (made public by the Federal Advisory Committee Act) for the Brady Act database back in the mid-1990s. The planning group even then was seeking to consolidate mental health records (they figured the VA records would be easy to get, state records much harder), domestic orders, renunciations of citizenship (small number of files, kept by State Department), etc. I found the thing rather appalling ... as was the general disinterest in the matter by "privacy" advocates. I'd have expected even antigunners among the last to alert to the fact that the Brady files cover all Americans, whether they own guns or not.