Erika Eichelberger

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.

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