The gunman accused of killing five people in cold blood Wednesday had a concealed weapon permit

[Atypical Liberal]

79. That is precisely why I am against such subjective requirements.

If this is allowed to be a subjective decision, that allows for discriminatory decisions by bigoted or biased examiners. The point of "may issue" and "good and substantial reason" and "apprehended fear" statutes in the first place was so that the Sheriff or other government agents could issue permits or enforce carry laws on the basis of race, and I suspect that "mental fitness" statutes would be used in this and similar ways.

This is precisely why I am against subjective requirements, and why nearly every state in the Union is now "shall issue".

"May issue" gets you scenarios like Washington DC and New York City where only those who are wealthy and/or have political connections can exercise their right to bear arms.

I have no problem with requirements, including background checks, for people who want to carry concealed weapons. But these checks should only look for disqualifying traits that have been earned through the due process of law.

Years ago it was common to institutionalize or even lobotomize unwilling people because their families or others deemed them mentally unfit or otherwise a burden.

The Rosenhan experiment showed in 1973 that many completely sane people were regarded as insane:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

Rosenhan's study was done in two parts. The first part involved the use of healthy associates or "pseudopatients" (three women and five men) who briefly simulated auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 different psychiatric hospitals in five different states in various locations in the United States. All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. After admission, the pseudopatients acted normally and told staff that they felt fine and had not experienced any more hallucinations. Hospital staff failed to detect a single pseudopatient, and instead believed that all of the pseudopatients exhibited symptoms of ongoing mental illness. Several were confined for months. All were forced to admit to having a mental illness and agree to take antipsychotic drugs as a condition of their release. The second part involved an offended hospital challenging Rosenhan to send pseudopatients to its facility, whom its staff would then detect. Rosenhan agreed and in the following weeks out of 193 new patients the staff identified 41 as potential pseudopatients, with 19 of these receiving suspicion from at least 1 psychiatrist and 1 other staff member. In fact Rosenhan had sent no-one to the hospital.

The study concluded, "It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals" and also illustrated the dangers of dehumanization and labeling in psychiatric institutions.

One of the consequences of this study was to accelerate the reform of mental institutions and de-institutionalization.

My first thought was that mental institutions have a vested interest in diagnosing people as mentally ill, so that they continue to have patients and thus funding.

I do not want such people having a say-so over whether or not people get to exercise a Constitutional right. Especially since the people lining up to have the say-so probably are eager to push an anti-gun agenda.

You correctly note that in the past such subjective requirements for gun rights and other rights have usually been used to push prejudice in terms of race.

I'm not interested in having people with anti-firearms prejudices trying the same thing.