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Hold on isn't this just "involuntary or voluntary admission?" Per google found a law firm saying that's the case. Including voluntary is a bit sketchy in my mind but the steel man is pretty reasonable - "did someone in the community and a panel of experts on safety agree that you were an acute danger to yourself or others" is not that unreasonable. The reality of the situation means that sometimes admissions are soft but on paper "a bunch of people though you were going to kill yourself or someone else" is not that unreasonable of a disqualified for owning a firearm.
If for some reason this involves mundane outpatient interaction with a psychiatrist then people in the state have the easiest lawsuit in the world - just find someone who saw a psychiatrist one time as a kid because they were annoying, was going through grief or adjustment disorder or something like that and take it to the Supreme Court.
No.
Yes.
Previous discussion: 1 2
Text of law
Filling out the form falsely is a strict-liability felony.
So, if you were "attended, treated, or observed" "for any mental or psychiatric condition", but you can't give the name, location, and date because you don't have the records, then you can't get a gun.
Great, easy lawsuit then! "I went a few times as a kid to rule out ADHD and my parents and I don't have any records." Should be slam dunk 2A case.
I'm noting that your highlighted text does not note that seeing a psychiatrist outpatient is exclusionary.
Unfortunately, no. The only successful challenges to the FPIC have been statutory (basically just Polotov, where 'lying' during an evidentiary hearing, rather than on paper, was not covered by the statute's 'essential character' clause or the "any person who knowingly falsifies any information on the application form for a handgun purchase permit" clause). Because you're stuck in a state court, the state court findings are given preclusion and Rooker-Feldman protection, and the state courts are New Jersey, they consistently point to the Bruen Footnote 9 and flip you the bird.
In The_Nybbler's specific hypothetical, the state will also just refuse to process an incomplete filing, so you have ripeness problems (and the state will argue against 18 USC 1983 federal charges allowing you to bypass exhaustion requirements).
Yes, the state can sometimes grant an FPIC to people who have had past outpatient care. And then sometimes it won't. And a past denial or incorrect statement is itself cause for a denial on later requests.
First, I do acknowledge that this stuff has been used to abuse gun owners, although less than they fear.
I've also filled out a million background checks and other similar documents, we have techniques, the classic of which was "no, I do not remember going to a psychiatrist three times at age 6." Patients forget things all the time. Patients forget heart attacks, and as long as you aren't in a centralized database (like for involuntary admissions) you won't be found out. Psychiatrists do cash pay for healthcare people to help facilitate this type of thing (so they don't have to report to boards).
And again, while it's onerous, practically speaking this shouldn't be a problem - people are required to store records and to use a document service if they sunset their practice. This is a common thing.
With respect to your linked case, are you familiar with it?
Through a cursory review the person described therein is a central example of someone who shouldn't own a gun and who should be prevented by any means necessary.
The guy has a history of violent and suicidal ideation, has acted out with aggression and violence, exhibits a pattern of poor impulse control, judgement, and insight and engaged in terroristic threats and other threatening behavior. To the extent that the person doesn't have any criminal convictions which precludes gun use is solely due to undercharging. The person likely meets criteria for a cluster-b personality disorder, probably on the border of Narcissism and Anti-Social. This person has a the profile of a mass shooter. I've seen people with multiple bodies who have less red flags. Put another way - I'd rather give a gun to a banger, at least he's only likely to shoot a civilian by accident.
Yes people age out of these personality attributes but it's pretty alarming, I imagine if you ran this case by non 2A people nearly 100% would say god no no guns, and even a super majority of 2A supporters would be like yeah fine.
Not a good test case.
It's a minimal obligation to mental health professionals, who have to deal with this sort of thing on a regular basis. It's absolutely a serious problem for normal people, because randos don't have rolodexs going back into their childhood.
For a simple job background check, this doesn't matter, because if you're mistaken you just thank them for finding information you forgot, and at worst you don't get the job. For the FPIC, it's a strict liability offense and even if not prosecuted, prohibits any future FPICs with the corrected data.
Yes, which makes a lot of the summary by the lower court a little annoying.
The 'terrorist threats' were a reddit The Purge-themed thread, and a "Shut The Fuck Up Liberals" protest sign. The acting out with aggression and violence was from an incident where a Penn State professor beat him in the face while he was protesting COVID mandates. It's very unclear that he's even violated the law, nevermind in a way that would result in a felony charge.
The guy is a racist asshole (and moreover, the sort of person who'd wear the badge "racist asshole" with a grin). I absolutely wouldn't trust him with my login info, or to be polite to ... basically anyone, but and especially to be polite to anyone African-American, trans, or XX-chromosone'd. Some of the stuff floating around is downstream of people just smearing him over his politics, but some of it is genuinely some personality disorder (although I'd guess oppositional or defiant) and a good deal of it is just that he's that sort of asshole.
But if we're going to start stripping constitutional rights from people on the basis of making a bad social media post that a normal person while see as dangerous, or being enough of an asshole that someone wants to punch them, well, Do I Have A Deal For You.
The good test cases don't try to press the law when it pushes back, or flee these restrictions, or just quietly resent over in a corner.
There was a time where waiting for or building perfect test cases was persuasive, but between NYSRPA I, Whitaker, and most importantly the willingness of courts to dive down over holiday weekends to rescue absolute scumbags in other contexts, it's stopped being persuasive.
You can't pick out individual things, you need to consider the whole context - this guy fought his dad, his mom was worried that he was going to be a "psychopath."
Some of the individual bits aren't too bad (who still posting here hasn't been called racist at some point) but the whole thing is highly alarming and as someone who has treated a lot of criminals this guy likely only evaded being outright criminal scum status by luck (born with enough social class/status and money to stay out of the underclass).
Some people will grow out of this but this person will lifelong struggle with impulsivity.
This is the kind of person who has a rocky childhood, figures it out, and then kills his wife and kids at age 57.
I do not believe this is a valid "type" of person. That is to say, I do not believe that you can look at a random selection of people who had a rocky childhood and then figured it out, and then pick the ones in advance who are going to kill their wife and kids at age 57 at a rate significantly better than chance.
"This person will lifelong struggle with impulsivity" I find more plausible, but note that if insights of this sort were in fact considered broadly actionable, the criminal justice system's interaction with repeat offenders ought to look very, very different from the way it does.
We've recently discussed the connection between Psychology as a discipline and the law; this is a similar thread, it seems to me. When I blame Psychology as a discipline for Iryna, it's precisely because I observe psychologists individually and as a field advancing claims similar to the above, and I observe the strong impact those claims have had on how the criminal justice system operates and maintains its operation. Politicians justify releasing violent criminals from prison on the grounds that their problems are psychological, and thus implicitly treatable. They do this because Psychology has consistently claimed that this is the case. If Psychology said "we have no idea how to treat these people, we certainly don't think they should be released, we want no part of this and the consequences are on you if you let them go", the politicians, I think, would not be letting them go.
In that discussion, you seemed to be arguing that Psychology couldn't really predict criminal outcomes effectively, and so shouldn't be held accountable for bad outcomes delivered (in my understanding) by following their advice. But here you seem to be claiming that Psychologists can make accurate predictions about future criminal behavior, and so their advice should be followed even if based on nebulous evidence. Am I mistaken in this reading?
As before I will emphasize that I am a physician so my speaking is more to the medical model than the psychological one.
Physicians are often asked to "predict the future" we usually can't do this. People will ask "what will happen with my cancer" or other physicians will ask "is this patient medically cleared for surgery."
Usually we are only able to risk stratify. In the case of homicidal/violent ideation and suicidal ideation this is usually further bucketed into acute or chronic risk. Owning a gun ticks the needle substantially towards murder and completed suicide.
These are actuarial judgements more than practical ones. Is this person safe for discharge? At this time they have a low acute risk of harming themselves or others. Maybe 1/100 of people discharged in this way shoves someone onto the subway tracks. Maybe it is 1/1000. We cannot say definitively what an individual person would be, just as I can't tell someone asking about their malignancy what it is going to do. I can also speak of ratios and other such things.
As a matter of public policy you have to choose which things are sufficiently discriminatory to violate individual rights for the safety of the community. Having committed a felony? Yeah pretty convincing you shouldn't own guns anymore. I think most if not all states add an involuntary commitment to the list. If something increases your risk of doing bad shit 1,000 fold, maybe 10,000 fold? Pretty good argument that it's bad.
To the person here, when I speak about what this person reminds me of it's because I have not spoken to this patient or read his records. I can tell you that he pattern matches to other similar people who do meet criteria for something bad or I've treated in a forensic setting for having done bad shit who just need routine care because people get sick in jail. If interviewed as an adult a reasonable physician would likely be comfortable with a diagnosis like ASPD or NPD if the pattern of behavior holds.
Someone with those diagnosis are the central example of someone who should proactively have their rights taken away due to a tendency to violate the rights of others being a core part of the pathology.
I see some additional things in here like "Politicians justify releasing violent criminals from prison on the grounds that their problems are psychological, and thus implicitly treatable." I don't think that's what they are arguing, personality disorders are in general hard to treat and there is a reasonable stance that ASPD cannot be treated at all.
The actual discussion on this is complex although I imagine politicians are for the most part doing it wrong.
This was batched out at work quickly, apologies for typos etc.
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