Erika Eichelberger

Reporting Fellow

Erika Eichelberger is a reporting fellow in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She has also written for The Nation, The Brooklyn Rail, and TomDispatch. Email her at eeichelberger [at] motherjones [dot] com.

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Mental Health Checks for Gun Buyers: Weak, Chaotic, Full of Loopholes

Federal law technically prohibits sales of firearms to the mentally ill. Here's the reality.

—By Sydney Brownstone and Erika Eichelberger

| Fri Dec. 21, 2012 8:04 AM PST

The tragedy in Newtown has revived a national debate about gun control, focusing attention on the laws (and loopholes) governing gun ownership in America, and raising a host of questions about how to prevent future Newtowns (and Auroras and Columbines and Virginia Techs). Chief among them is how to keep weapons out of the hands of mentally ill people. Newtown shooter Adam Lanza, whose mother was reportedly seeking to have her son committed to a mental institution, carried out the shootings with weapons that had been legally purchased by his mom, but across the country it's frighteningly easy for people with serious psychiatric problems to purchase weapons.

It's technically against federal law to sell guns to people with a severe mental illness, but in practice the background check system is so flawed it rarely filters out those with disqualifying psychiatric problems. There are a number of roadblocks to enforcing the law. One of them is that only gun sales by federally licensed arms dealers require background checks. That means a huge chunk—40 percent—of private gun sales don't require buyers to be vetted. (This is the so-called "gun show" loophole, though currently six states have laws that close it.) The law also defines disqualifying mental illness narrowly. It only forbids gun sales to people who have been determined by a court to be seriously mentally ill, or who have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution. This means that the system often overlooks dangerous and disturbed people who don't have a paper trail.

[Read the full article]

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Boehner's Plan B: "For Backing Out"

—By Erika Eichelberger

| Thu Dec. 20, 2012 8:52 AM PST

On Monday, President Obama rolled out his latest deficit deal compromise, which would reauthorize the Bush tax cuts for those making under $400,000, extend unemployment benefits, and cut Social Security spending. It's pretty close to the deal House Speaker John Boehner offered last Friday. But on Tuesday, Boehner pulled out a not-so-fun sounding "Plan B," which involves letting tax cuts expire for those with income above $1 million...and then just not really dealing with the rest of that fiscal cliff thing.

Democrats say Plan B is a signal that Boehner has backed out of negotiations over the fiscal cliff. And now the center-left Center for American Progress has taken a look at Plan B, and found it wanting.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

How to Get Republicans to Care About Women's Issues: Snacks

—By Erika Eichelberger

| Thu Dec. 13, 2012 8:28 AM PST

After a year in which men told American women that they were "prostitutes" for using birth control, that rape isn't real if you get pregs, and that women should have a transvaginal probe stuck in them before they could get an abortion, a record number of non-men were elected to Congress. So how will female lawmakers use that power to advance women's interests?

A few high-profile female lawmakers and policy people discussed just that at a Center for American Progress event on Tuesday in Washington. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter, and other lady luminaries joined PBS' Judy Woodruff for a download on what women voters expect from Congress' female contingent, and how to keep American women politically engaged, and fighting for their interests post-election.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Soledad O'Brien Slams GOP Senator on Food Stamps

—By Erika Eichelberger

| Tue Dec. 11, 2012 12:10 PM PST

While President Obama and the Democrats have talked a lot about protecting the middle class from tax hikes and entitlement cuts in any debt deal that eventually emerges from the fiscal nightmare, it looks increasingly likely that food stamps will come under the knife. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), ranking member of the Senate budget committee, has taken the lead recently in attacking these "gifts" to the poor. Monday night on CNN, Sessions said the food-stamp program—which now serves a record 47 million people—is "out of control" and needs to be cut down to size. But Soledad O'Brien took him to school.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Offshore Tax Haven Money Could Save Us From the Fiscal Cliff

—By Erika Eichelberger

| Thu Dec. 6, 2012 12:56 PM PST

Offshore tax havens—like the ones Mitt Romney has relied on—screw the federal treasury out of some $150 billion a year, but as Congress and the president haggle over where to scrimp and save, there's been nary a mention of this potential deficit-busting gold mine. Today, the consumer group USPIRG released a report detailing what we could do with all that cash.

At least 83 of the top 100 publicly traded corporations in America shield large chunks of their income from taxes by keeping it overseas, according to the Government Accountability Office. In fact, according to the USPIRG report, 30 of the nation's biggest, richest companies actually profited off the tax code between 2008 and 2010, by avoiding taxes and getting tax refunds from the government. USPIRG notes that one of the techniques Google used to save $3.1 billion over that time period is called "double Irish," and involves two Irish subsidiaries and one in the tax haven Bermuda.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]