Giffords Shooting Raises Questions About Guns and Mental Illness

WASHINGTON -- It takes a lot to be considered too crazy to own a gun in Arizona.

As authorities investigate the mass shooting that killed six people and left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords critically wounded, it appears clear that a growing list of troubling warning signs would not have prohibited suspect Jared Loughner from buying the Glock 19 semiautomatic pistol he is accused of using in the attack.

Gun-control advocates say the 22-year-old Loughner was technically within his rights to buy the weapon. And that's why they say stricter background checks and a new strategy for keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill is needed.

"He was dangerous enough to get kicked out of algebra class, but that's not enough to get him disqualified from buying a gun," said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "Something is wrong with that system."

Despite ample warning signs that Loughner may have been mentally ill -- including behavior unsettling enough to get him kicked out of Pima Community College -- the suspect was eligible to buy and possess a gun.

Under the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, it is illegal for people to possess a firearm if they have "been adjudicated as a mental defective" or "been committed to a mental institution."

Neither applied to Loughner.

The federal law also bars drug users from owning a gun.

Yet a 2007 charge for possession of drug paraphernalia was expunged from court records after Loughner completed a diversion program. When he later tried to enlist in the Army he was turned down, according to Time magazine, for admitting that he used marijuana frequently.

Those facts did not show up in the federal database that cleared Loughner to buy the handgun at a Tucson, Ariz., store on Nov. 30, authorities say.

Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, would not answer AOL News' questions about whether existing gun laws provide enough safeguards to prevent mentally ill people from purchasing firearms.

"At this time, anything other than prayers for the victims and their families would be inappropriate," he said in an e-mail.

But gun-control advocates say it is past time to speak out.

"Just enforcing the laws on the books isn't enough," Helmke said. "We need a stronger definition that covers somebody like this guy."

What that definition might be is complicated.

"This is a tough problem. It requires balancing of so many competing interests and imperatives," writes Jill Lawrence of Politics Daily. Among them: "gun and privacy rights versus a system that prevents weapons sales to unstable people."

For now, that latter priority is taking center stage. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who heads Mayors Against Illegal Guns, called today for "commonsense fixes to some of our broken gun laws." Among them: tougher background checks to prevent drug abusers from getting around the system.

Other elected officials from New York, home to some of the nation's toughest gun-control laws, also are proposing measures. Republican Rep. Peter King plans to introduce a bill to make it illegal to bring a gun within 1,000 feet of a government official. Democrat Rep. Carolyn McCarthy wants to restrict the sale of high-capacity ammunition clips like those used in Saturday's deadly shooting.

Yet as the newly revived debate over gun control heats up, advocates say a top priority is to keep weapons out of the hands of the dangerously unbalanced.

"Everyone and his mother knew this kid was severely deranged," said Ladd Everitt of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, citing Loughner's run-ins with police and school officials.

He noted that a Google search would have been more effective than looking in the federal government's database because it would have turned up Loughner's now-removed MySpace post last month in which he wrote, "I don't feel good: I'm ready to kill a police officer!"

Arizona law allows anyone to petition the court for a psychiatric evaluation of a person who is acting strangely and is suspected of being a danger to himself or others. Despite concerns about Loughner, no one went to court.

The state's weak gun laws require only the most perfunctory background check and no permit. Had Loughner tried to buy a gun in New York, for instance, he would have had to undergo a licensing check by law enforcement officials. That might have uncovered online clues to his mental state as well as his problems at the Army recruiting office and school.

Helmke urged Congress to hold hearings to explore how federal background checks can pick up potentially dangerous people who don't fall within the narrow range of prohibited gun owners. He noted that states improved their reporting systems after the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech by a man adjudicated as mentally ill whose record didn't show up in the federal database.

Since 2008, the names of nearly 1.1 million people disqualified from possessing firearms because of mental illness have been added to the federal system. Another 2 million names are still awaiting entry into the database.

At the time of the Virginia Tech shooting, Arizona had not submitted any mental health records to the federal government, according to government records. It has since listed 4,465 Arizonans and estimates there are nearly 122,000 others who still are not in the system.

Yet even with better record-keeping since Virginia Tech, there have been several cases of accused killers with a history of mental illness who bought their weapons legally.

"Maybe crazy people will do crazy things," Virginia Tech survivor and gun-control activist Colin Goddard writes in a column for AOL News. "But why, I ask my country, my president, my representatives in Congress, why do we make it so damned easy?"

The answers aren't easy, said Michael Stone, a Columbia University forensic psychiatrist unrelated to this writer. Short of "preventive detention" for those who act strangely but don't break any laws, only the "extremely delusional and bizarre" can be stopped from obtaining firearms.

"It's very difficult to prevent a paranoid person from buying a gun who is able to present himself in a rational and coherent manner, as many are able to do," he said.

Follow Andrea Stone on Twitter.