Right up front it's important to realize that screening is only going to interfere with a murder (mass murder, or otherwise) wherein a currently mentally challenged perpetrator(s) needs to make purchase of a weapon. Many murders will slip past that.
Nonetheless, if screens were good enough to just stop those. I'd say hey, every bit helps we ARE talking about people's lives and every life we save is a huge victory.
The best predictor of violence is previous violence. Is the screen set up to filter mentally ill with prior histories of violence, or do we enter into the age of the Matrix and use mental health screening as a means of filtering out anyone who _could_ represent a heightened risk of violence because of an association with a mental illness?
It's important to remember that even among persons with serious personality and emotional disorders only about 7% show up in the crime stats used for epidemiological studies of violence and mental illness. There could be, and probably would be civil rights challenges by multiple advocacy groups to anything that looks like heavy handed class-based discrimination.
Maybe that could get past the Robert's court...Assuming that it did...
What would a mental illness screen for a gun purchase involve?
Would it be a check in a new database of the American mentally ill or would it be a line on a gun purchase permit that asks "Ever diagnosed with mental illness?"
Most mentally ill Americans are UNDIAGNOSED. Is it really fair and reasonable to discriminate against some of them and not others? I foresee lawsuits. The percent of people diagnosed certainly varies somewhat with the illness, and illnesses that are either very disruptive to daily functioning or otherwise dramatic tend to get diagnosed somewhat more than others.
It follows that most people filling out an application would also answer, No. Worse, any person planning to commit a murder and wanting to buy a gun would seem motivated to lie about that. How to control for lying on screening? There are tests for things like response time to questions on computer driven tests, but then we are into requiring every gunshop or license examiner to have such things. Cost will create some resistance, maybe that can be overcome.
If the screening involved asking questions to identify personality types or psychological disorders what questions would you ask? People might find it astounding considering television crime shows, but forensic psychologists haven't found a set of core characteristics for mass murderers that really distinguishes them from the many more people who fit such descriptions but don't represent a risk.
Does society just go ahead with some generic screening for symptoms of mental illness that non-expert lawmakers choose to include? Do we go for the top ten mental illnesses associated with crime? Or do we go for any and all mental illnesses that include hostility, whether or not that hostility is reactive and un-targeted? Again I foresee advocacy groups stepping in with many lawsuits to protect their interests arguing unfair and unjustifiable discrimination.
Forensic psychiatry does know a lot about common violent behavior (attacks with weapons and physical assaults). And they know that substance abuse (including alcohol) is the most highly correlated feature. Maybe you've never seen such a supplement to a personality test. I have and I found the questions about substance abuse not very subtle. Most substance abusers could easily lie when they encounter them.
Many of these tests are now done on computers and the time to answer a question is evaluated as much a variable as is the answers when attempting to evaluate truthfulness from the respondent. But with a bit of practice that's easily confounded.
Setting all that aside even after passing a screening problems could certainly arise.
A person could certainly become intoxicated and dangerous without an habitual substance abuse problem, after honestly answering those questions, and be subject to the increased impulsivity that is associated aggressive violent behavior.
Perhaps of most concern is that people get seriously emotionally challenged at various points in their lives. Those may distort their thinking and lead to deviant behavior. Think about the guy who flew the airplane into the building, or the guy who gave us the phrase "going postal". Screening can look backward and at current conditions, but it really can't see forward in any more than with very very poor resolution. There's really no way to know that the guy who today seems to be a duck hunter will a decade later take that shotgun into his former place of business.
Again, I say if the ATF and Homeland Security can come up with screen that saves some lives, GREAT. Lives are important.
I just don't expect to see a big drop in mass murder, or murder in general, using a new and improved mental health screening system.
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