By John ThomasSpecial to the Chronicle

In a speech made ten days after the Sandy Hook massacre, National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre asked, “How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame?” He questioned how it is even possible to determine such a number, given the nation’s lack of an active database of the mentally ill, in effect, indicting the mentally ill as the guilty party in this tragedy. LaPierre proposes that a government record of every single person afflicted with mental illness is the only mechanism able to resolve America’s massive mass murder problem. The immoral hubris exhibited by this contention should have been the cause of national outrage, and spurred an apology and letter of resignation from LaPierre, but none of those consequences have come to pass. In fact, LaPierre’s opponents have focused largely on his refusal to cede any ground in the gun control debate, rather than his proposal to create a web of tyranny that would entrap millions of Americans. This oversight adopts the possibility of this grossly inhumane measure into the national discourse–which is ignorant of the facts and outright bigoted.

How would a plan like LaPierre’s play out? In its initial stage, it may be similar to a bill passed in Oregon in 2009 that allowed the mentally ill to voluntarily register themselves in a state-run database. This primarily served to inform law enforcement officers of the measures and empathy that they should adopt if they are ever forced to confront the database member. While this seems like a common sense solution to the miscommunication inherent in situations where officers of the peace don’t understand the circumstances of their subjects, it would probably not prevent any future massacres.

The alternative to a voluntary database is a compulsory archive. I don’t think you realize how much this would affect your lives, even if you’ve never been diagnosed with a mental illness. If, when diagnosed with a mental illness, every patient was forced to adopt a new lifestyle under the ever-present eye of the federal government, what happens when someone slips through the cracks and commits another Sandy Hook after such a program was initiated? All Americans would be conscripted into routine checks of their psychological wellbeing. This chain of thoughts is entirely theoretical, and definitely sensational, but just as sensational as Wayne LaPierre and the NRA’s policy of fear mongering. By any account, a database of the mentally ill would infringe on the rights of all American citizens.

I’ve entertained the possibility of a mental health database, but I would like to stress that the stigma of violence that surrounds the mentally ill has no factual basis whatsoever. Research indicates that a trivial amount of the mentally ill engage in acts of violence. In fact, a North Carolina State University study found that people suffering from severe mental illness are 2.5 times more likely to be attacked, raped or mugged than the general population.

Wayne LaPierre and the NRA’s proposed creation of a national database for the mentally ill is not only inhuman, it’s illogical. We need to remove these bigoted ideas from our discussion, and start accepting the mentally ill as our neighbors, not the other.