This is a one-two sucker punch let loose in the name of civil society and treatment of poor mentally ill people. The government lets us Second Amendment people keep guns, but only if we are not mentally ill – and it is the government which will define “mentally ill.”
In the administration’s latest push to limit the Second Amendment rights of its citizens, the term “mental health” is being bantered about and used as common ground between anti-gun activists and staunch defenders of gun rights.
Sen. Roy Blunt, Missouri Republican and NRA backer, objected to President Obama’s proposals but agreed the “focus should be on mental health.” Others, while proclaiming support for the Second Amendment, propose “a meaningful conversation about mental health,” or that we should “identify people who are mentally ill.” After all, how could anyone support guns in the hands of the mentally ill?
Wait … not so fast. The problem is one of definition: Who is mentally ill?
The use of psychiatry against dissidents in the Soviet Union was one of the major human rights scandals of the 1970s and 1980s. Overt tyrants don’t need to employ psychiatry as a weapon, but establishing a dictatorship that pretends to be a republic requires a stealthy way of silencing opponents. As the Soviets discovered, not everyone is afraid to speak out, and when dissidents are perceived by the public as speaking truth, they must somehow be discredited.
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