To the Editor:
“Mental Issues Put 34,500 on New York’s No-Guns List” (front page, Oct. 19) highlights cases in which people on the list threatened murder, attempted suicide and exhibited manic behavior with a history of setting fires.
These names were submitted to the New York State database after qualified mental health clinicians determined that these individuals were threatening harm to themselves or others and were at risk to be violent. The vast majority of people seeking mental health treatment are not violent or at risk of being violent.
And most people with mental illness are more often victims than perpetrators of violence. But it takes just one Adam Lanza, James Holmes or Jared Loughner with easy access to a gun to kill innocent people.
Threatening violence can also be toward oneself. Nearly two-thirds of all American gun deaths are suicides. In 2012 more New Yorkers died from gun suicide (516) than homicide (436). New York City, which has stricter gun laws than the state, has a firearm death rate that is less than half the national rate and a firearm suicide rate that is the lowest of major American cities.
[For more of this letter, and others, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10...he-mentally-ill.html]
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