April 17, 2013 08:49 AM UTC

Mental Health Reforms "Studified"

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Durango Herald's Joe Hanel reports:

Legislators at last began moving on the final piece of their gun-violence agenda Tuesday with the first of two bills addressing people with dangerous mental problems.

Sponsors have scaled back their original plan to allow mental-health professionals to flag possibly dangerous patients and keep them from buying guns, as well as make it easier to hold a person against their will for mental-health treatment.

Both topics proved too controversial for mental-health experts to find consensus before the end of the legislative session May 8. Now, the bills call for a pair of task forces to start meeting this summer to recommend legislation for 2014.

In the aftermath of mass shooting incident in 2012 in Aurora, given weight after another in Connecticut last December, one of the highest priorities expressed by both parties was to reform the delivery of mental health services, making them easier to obtain in the crisis situations where they are needed most. The other component of this is the issue of persons who need to be involuntary committed, or yes, denied access to firearms due to the risk their condition poses to the general public. Nobody expected this to be an easy debate, and the underlying issues of public safety versus civil liberties call to our minds entirely valid arguments on both sides. But it seemed like there was support for trying. 

Both of these policy goals stalled this legislative session under fierce GOP opposition. The National Rifle Association declared the stillborn legislation from Rep. Beth McCann to allow mental health professionals to place temporary holds on gun sales "the most unconstitutional" of any gun bill passed this session, no small statement after they declared them all "unconstitutional" with wildly hyperbolized predicted consequences. After the massive struggle to pass the bills that are already law, another pitched low-information battle over guns may have simply been too much to ask of even some Democrats.

Now, what we know of McCann's original bill comes from news reports. And we do absolutely recognize the sensitive balance of rights and public safety responsibilities. But given the previous bipartisan consensus that existed after last year's mass shootings to look at mental health laws as a way to prevent future tragedies, don't you think McCann's bill should have been debated? One of the most repeated arguments from Republicans and the gun lobby during the recent passage of gun safety bills was that they didn't deal with the "real problem."

You know, mental health!

Well, here you go. Our understanding is the task forces actually have until 2015 to get back to the Assembly, so maybe sometime after that you'll see something that looks like action on what was supposed to be the highest priority.

Please try to remember the way this all went down next election cycle.