Screeling wrote:
I mean, I guess you can say a doctor can just make all of these up. But any instance of abuse on this could lead to said psychiatrist losing their license to practice. I don't see how one can convincingly make the case that any abuse on stuff like this could happen on any recurring basis without getting flagged or reported and likely some sort of judicial review of the physician's competence.
I'm making the case that legislation specific to allowing gun confiscation based on psychological conditions might alter the process you are articulating for those cases, and those cases only. I am not disputing the integrity of the process as it exists right now; I am saying that I do not put it past Congress to do something like... for example not actually require a diagnosis for this purpose.
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Could a doc do it a couple times without repercussions? Probably so and yeah, that's a couple times too many. But those sorts of things would be easily fought in court and quite honestly, there aren't that many psychiatrist in the U.S. to make that much of a dent in the gun-owning population and willing to take those risks.
That is probably true insofar as I'm sure that the vast majority of psychiatrists are honest. However, a shortage of psychiatrists is a concern too. I can certainly envision a GVRO scheme in which emergency orders are issued without any diagnosis by a physician (regardless of the bona fides of the emergency) and requiring a clearance by a doctor to end the "temporary" order.
Lots of untrained people think they can read the DSM-V and diagnose people; it's very easy to see the symptoms of a manic episode in someone if one wants to and is not properly trained to apply it. The concern here is that the burden of obtaining the diagnosis may not be on the state, or on the "family and friends" proposed in some schemes, but on the gun owner under the guise of a "temporary" situation.
The integrity of the medical community is not, by itself, sufficient defense against the gun-grabbers. Taking guns away from people is, for many anti-gun people, not actually about crime, violence or safety. It's about cultural victory over an identity stereotype that they A) hate B) believe that they sit in judgment of and C) cannot accept has any form of power, either in the form of the vote or in the form of a gun.