Parents Blame Suicide on $10 Rented Gun

[branford]

51. Assisting people who are suicidal, regardless of their preferred means of action,

is usually a goal shared by most people, Republicans and Democrats, regardless of their opinion concerning guns.

Current law already prohibits those who are adjudicated as a danger to themselves or others from possessing firearms. I certainly have no objection to you using any necessary legal procedures to protect your patients.

The primary matter is how some people effectively attribute magical or animistic properties to firearms wherein the believe normal people somehow become raving psychopaths or desperately self-destructive in the mere presence of a firearms, no less physical contact. As you acknowledge, this line of reasoning is patently ludicrous, without any scientific support.

In your scenario, the issue is properly your individualized assessment of proper treatment concerning a particular patient's pathology. That's entirely professional and hardly controversial (assuming you're basing you diagnosis on commonly acceptable medical criteria rather than political opinion). If you recommended that everyone, or even all people who've ever sought psychological treatment, be denied a enumerated constitutional right to keep and bear arms, without such individualized personal assessment and lawful government procedure, that's where our perspectives would radically diverge. Personal politics has no basis in medical treatment, and such behavior would be an affront not only to the Second Amendment, but also the most basic tenets of personal privacy, due process, and equal protection.