Medicine/Guns: Walmart sells gun used in suicide to schizophrenic

Here's one sticky story--sticky for gun control, sticky for medical privacy, sticky for patient's rights and competency.

Shayla Stewart's mother is suing Walmart for not doing a sufficient background check to find out that her daughter had a history of manic depression and schizophrenia (how Walmart would do this without violating HIPAA, I have no idea). The biggest tip off might have been that the pharmacy at the Walmart seven miles down the road was issuing her anti-psychotic medications, but that sort of information is rightly kept away from the prying eyes of the FBI by 38 states.

So even I, anti-Walmart and pro-gun control, don't have a clue what to say about this one, except that perhaps doctors should be allowed to suggest to courts that certain people be put on some sort of national no-gun list. The centralized list would contain no information as to why the person would be on the list, only the name of the physician, and then perhaps if the patients wished to challenge their position on the list, they could appeal to some sort of magistrate hearing or something similarly fast-track, and the physician would then be required to submit to the court why the patient meets some sort of established medical criteria for exclusion from a constitutional right.

Obviously such a solution is constitutional insanity. But everything needs a first draft. If a person can be committed to a mental institution against their will by a physician, it seems reasonable that their gun rights could be suspended as well.

The most interesting aspect of this entire situation is that personal responsibility has been essentially eliminated from the equation, as a person suffering with an improperly controlled psychotic illness cannot possibly be expected to exercise the sort of judgment required handle a firearm successfully.