LOCAL

UA professor hopes study leads to new gun law

Ed Enoch Staff Writer
The UA School of Law campus in Tuscaloosa AL, Sept. 29, 2006.

A study by a University of Alabama law professor and researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham suggests individuals at risk for suicide are receptive to a voluntary Do Not Sell list, which would prohibit gun shops from immediately selling them a firearm.

“I think it really just establishes how, at least for a significant faction of people with mental illness, they do not want access to guns period. They don’t want to be able to change their mind,” said Fredrick Vars, a UA professor of Law.

The article published last week in the journal “Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior” is the latest in a series of papers by Vars on the voluntary list proposal. The latest article adds survey data on how people who are at risk for suicide received the proposal.

While people were receptive to the idea, Vars’ said he encountered skeptics who didn’t believe people would voluntarily sign away their rights.

“That’s the problem; it is a voluntary program, and it is only as good as the number of people who sign up,” he said. “To be clear that people would take the idea seriously, we had to establish that people, and in particular people at a high risk of suicide, would actually be interested in it.”

Vars, whose area of study is mental health law, became interested in the idea of a voluntary restriction as he researched the constitutionality of existing federal restrictions on ownership in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008, affirming an individual constitutional right to possess a firearm for lawful purposes, overturning the district’s total ban on handgun possession in the home.

“Pretty quickly, it became clear the reasons given for those laws tend to focus on violence toward others, trying to prevent mass shootings, a mentally ill person from shooting someone,” he said. “But statistically, suicide is far, far more common and highly associated with mental illness. So if you are going to justify a restriction on the rights of someone with mental illness, suicide prevention is by far the strongest rationale.”

Vars partnered with researchers at UAB for the study. The surveys were administered in November 2014 and September 2015 to patients in an inpatient psychiatric unit and two outpatient clinics at UAB. Of the 200 participants in the survey, 46 percent said they would sign up for at least one version of the proposed do-not-sell list.

“The significant part of the study that just came out is the data, the people who are sort of a high risk for suicide, people with psychiatric disorders who would be interested in doing this. Almost half said yes,” Vars said.

The survey offered two options for having their names removed from the list, a seven-day waiting period following a request for removal or a judicial hearing to restore rights. The study showed a slight edge for the seven-day waiting list.

“This is totally different. This is people deciding for themselves,” Vars said. “It is entirely voluntary. No gun owner is at risk of losing their right to buy a gun. They don’t have to sign up for the program. It is not mandatory.”

Vars co-authors were Richard Shelton, vice chair of research for the UAB department of psychiatry and a study co-author; Karen L. Cropsey, associate professor of psychiatry at UAB and a study co-author; and Cheryl B. McCullumsmith, an associate professor University of Cincinnati.

The delay could be life-saving, according to Vars. Research shows suicides typically are impulsive decisions, he said.

“Waiting periods to purchase firearms have been shown to reduce gun suicide, most likely due to the impulsive nature of suicide attempts,” Cropsey said. “The Do Not Sell list is a new type of means restriction, and means restriction generally has been shown to be one of the most effective suicide prevention strategies.”

The law professor hopes the latest study becomes a starting point for a further discussion of the proposal, which would require a federal or state law to be enacted.

Vars is hopeful for the proposal because it is voluntary on the part of people who are on the list and, while there has been little action on gun policy reforms at the federal level, lawmakers have been willing to take up new gun laws in state legislatures.

“My hope is the idea gets attention and a state legislator somewhere -- maybe Alabama, maybe somewhere else -- picks up the idea and you get a law,” he said.