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"Adjudicated a mental defective"
The Gun Control Act forbids firearm possession by any person who has been committed to a mental institution (other than for temporary observation) or who has been "adjudicated a mental defective."
I made an effort to find definitions of the latter term. In Black's Law Dictionary, "mental disease or defect" is set out as "see Insanity." None too helpful. Insanity is defined as a legal rather than medical term, a condition that renders a person "unfit to enjoy liberty of action because of the unreliability of his behavior with comcomitant danger to himself and others." It gives details on not guilty by reason of insanity, committment for danger, and mental incapacity to make a contract or will.
So I Googled it. It appears that the term "mental defective" had faded out long before they drafted the Gun Control Act. Here's a review of a 1931 book by that title, which seems to focus upon "feeblemindedness." PubMed, which compiles medical journals, turns up a one article from 1957: "Differentiation between the mental defective with psychosis and the childhood schizophrenic functioning as a mental defective." Here's another, same year, in French.
This appears to be a use in 1974.
Here's a recent call from the National Assn of Social Workers to take the phrase out of the GCA as " stigmatizing and inappropriate language."
And by pure coincidence I found this entry in a pro-gun populist blog.
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And, lest we forget;
The American 'Nazi' Gun Control Act of 1968:
"The Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership and the Gun Owners Alliance both claim that the GCA was inspired by the earlier National Weapons Law of Nazi Germany. This claim, disputed by some, is based on the JPFO's findings that the GCA's author, Senator Thomas J. Dodd, requested that the Library of Congress translate a copy of the Nazi-era National Weapons Law of Germany (which he most likely obtained while serving as a war-crimes prosecutor at Nuremberg), and adapt its language to the American legal system. A side-by-side comparison of the two laws supports the existence of several similarities with the Nazi-era law, which was used to strip opposition groups, dissidents, Jews, and other undesirables from their ability to defend themselves or conduct an effective underground resistance movement within Nazi Germany. The primary similarities stem from key gun control concepts like 'sporting use' and 'prohibited persons', all of which subsequently appeared in the Gun Control Act of 1968."
need a way to fight this
Yeah, the first ones the Nazi's went after were the "menatally defectives". Then came the Jews and other "undesirable's"........