American Psychiatric Association and firearms

The American Psychiatric Association has an interesting Position Statement on Firearm Access, Acts of Violence and the Relationship to Mental Illness and Mental Health Services. It contains this:

Because privacy in mental health treatment is
essential to encourage persons in need of
treatment to seek care, laws mandating psychiatrists
and other mental health professionals to
report to law enforcement officials everyone who
appears to be a danger to themselves or others are
likely to be counterproductive and should not be
adopted.

Basically they throw the ball back into the gun control court with this:

Many deaths and injuries from gun violence can be
prevented through national and state legislative and
regulatory action. These actions should include:
a. Limiting access to guns by persons who are
identified as dangerous, whether or not they have
been diagnosed with a mental disorder;
b. Requiring more extensive background checks and
waiting periods on all gun sales or transactions;
c. Requiring safe storage of all firearms in the home,
office or other places of daily assembly; and
d. Limiting access to semi-automatic firearms, high
capacity magazines and high velocity ammunition
to reduce risk of critical injuries and death from
firearms;

I wonder what they mean by “Limiting access”. Probably a complete ban or NFA type paperwork and taxes. “High velocity ammunition?” I think that is the first time I have heard that suggestion. I wonder what their threshold is such that they would consider a bullet “high velocity”.

I would like to suggest the APA confine itself to psychiatric issues and leave the gun restriction suggestions to criminologists.

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10 thoughts on “American Psychiatric Association and firearms

  1. “Many deaths and injuries from gun violence can be
    prevented through national and state legislative and
    regulatory action.”

    Citation needed.

    High velocity, in terms of trauma inflicted, means a target velocity of about 2,000 fps or higher. I believe it was here, a few years ago, that a photo intensive medical analysis was presented showing the trauma inflicted with various cartridges. In it, the 2,000 fps threshold was shown to be quite significant. That of course means almost all rifles, and certainly all rifles considered decent or good for North American big game hunting. It would of course include all rifles suitable for militia purposes.

    On the other hand, it is doubtful that in the medical industry in general,
    and especially more doubtful when it comes to the APA, most members would be able to define “high velocity”.

    “…leave the gun restriction suggestions to criminologists.”

    Better yet, leave that to the Bill of Rights. The criminologists’s job is to solve crimes, such as, for example, violations of the Supreme Law of the Land.

    Generally speaking, the whole idea of treating guns as a “medical problem” is a ruse, perpetrated by authoritarians. It is the result of the servants of the Dark Side getting together and saying to one another, essentially, “What tools do do we have that can be used to disarm America. We need a new angle, because what we’ve been doing isn’t working nearly fast enough. Doctors! That’s it! People respect their doctors, and medical ’emergencies’ are always taken seriously…”

    Best not to give it any credence whatsoever, being as it is a silly (and rather idiotic) trick.

    Anyway; the argument could very credibly be made that the more effectively or efficiently a particular weapon can kill a targeted individual, the more desirable it is for militia purposes, and therefore the more certainly it is protected by the second amendment. A slingshot verses a handy rifle chambered for the .308 Winchester for example, etc.

    In summary; the APA is throwing feces on the wall, hoping some of it will stick and that no one will notice.

    • But it isn’t really the job of the criminologist to get into the fine details of the Bill of Rights. Sure they need to be aware of the general protection and not suggest something like “stop and frisk” of everyone you suspect, or shooting all [insert minority group name] on sight.

      It’s the politicians and ultimately the courts job to always respect the Bill of Rights when looking at criminologist recommendations.

      I don’t have a significant problem with some firearm regulations. If the criminologist have concluded there is a significant reduction in recidivism when violent felons on parole are returned to prison for possession of a firearm then I wouldn’t complain. If criminologists found that gun thefts are reduced when gun owner addresses are published then I wouldn’t have a problem with prosecution of those who publish names and addresses without the permission of the owner.

      I’m sure I could come up with lots of other reasonable regulation examples. It’s not that hard.

      • The response seems to be “reasonable”. However, the one assumption is that the people proposing these “reasonable” or “common sense” restrictions are not doing so with the desired goal that is reasonable. If the goal was to “reduce criminal violence” then I am all ears about anything that would in fact accomplish that.
        However, every proposed restriction or gun law so far has had the intent to make gun ownership “too hard” or “too expensive” for the ordinary person to afford. The goal of Bloomberg and Brady groups is to dis-arm all of the people that are not part of the elite.
        Criminals, police, and their security guards should have guns, every one else should not. With such a thinking process these groups should never be considered worthy of any attention.

  2. When a (supposed) medical professional claims to be making a medical judgment of a person he has never seen, there is a term for that: “Malpractice”.
    Then again, you have to stretch things quite a lot to classify psychiatry as a branch of medicine.

  3. I don’t consider it high velocity until it exceeds 4200 fps. Everything else is regular velocity.

    • Just as anything above 7 rounds in a magazine is “high capacity”. I consider that anything above 50 rounds is nearing high capacity.
      Just as “dangerous” would be defined by some of these professionals is defined as “any one who wants to own a gun”.
      Just as background checks, the mention of them in these articles and in polls are “reasonable”. However, when you look at the details the actual proposals are vastly different and are more of a ruse for gun registration and to make gun ownership too expensive for the “average” citizen. The people that need guns are not the ones living in “walled neighborhoods” with guards using machine guns (examples: M Bloomberg, Shannon Watts, Gabby Giffords). It is the people living in average homes that have families and go to work to pay the bills. You know the people that if they are assaulted would care about the co-pay on their hospital insurance.

  4. a. Limiting access to guns by persons who are
    identified as dangerous, whether or not they have
    been diagnosed with a mental disorder;

    Um……if they, the “experts” refuse to do the identifying……

    “laws mandating psychiatrists
    and other mental health professionals to
    report to law enforcement officials everyone who
    appears to be a danger to themselves or others are
    likely to be counterproductive and should not be
    adopted.”

    How is this supposed to work again?

    • Magic.

      Like ALL gun control measures more nuanced than “have the armed forces round them up into camps.”

  5. “American Psychiatric Association” is a sub-organization/member of the extreme gun control organization The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV), It is the sole goal of this organization, along with the parent organization, to pass extreme gun control and to lessen civil rights of all ordinary citizens.

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