Sara Gorman cautions against laws that would prevent mentally ill people from acquiring firearms:
There are two main reasons to approach these kinds of laws with a healthy dose of caution: one reason is that gun control efforts focusing on mental illness have the potential to exacerbate public stigma about the potential violence associated with mental disorders; the second reason is that gun laws that in particular involve collecting the names of people with mental illness in national databases have the potential to deter people from seeking the care they may desperately need.
Ample evidence has suggested that stigma and discrimination against people with mental illness is often correlated with perceptions that people with mental illness are inherently violent. People who believe that mental illness is associated with violence are more likely to condone forced legal action and coerced treatment of people with mental illness and may feel that victimizing and bullying people with mental illness is in some way justified.
The idea that mental illness and violence are closely related is quite common. A 2006 national survey found that 60% of Americans believed that people with schizophrenia were likely to act violently toward another individual. Even so, research has repeatedly established that psychiatric disorders do not make people more likely to act in a violent manner. Gun laws targeting people with mental illness are likely to worsen the perception that mental illness and violence go hand in hand, and, as a result, stigma and discrimination are likely to be exacerbated.
The Dish 