Ohio screens out mentally ill people who try to buy firearms, but the state isn’t reporting all known drug abusers to a national system that could prevent them from buying guns, a first-of-its-kind survey of 50 states found.
Mayors Against Illegal Guns said in its report “Fatal Gaps” that federal agencies and states in some cases ignore federal law and fail to report records about potentially dangerous people to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS.
Analysis of FBI data showed that millions of records of seriously mentally ill people and drug abusers are missing from the NICS database because of lax and inconsistent reporting among the states.
Mayors, including leaders from Dayton, Riverside and Brookville, are advocates for tougher federal, state and local legislation against illegal firearm sales and ownership.
Ohio has identified 26,876 mental health cases and forwarded those since the state passed a law in 2004. But 23 states and the District of Columbia have submitted fewer than 100 mental health records to the federal database.
Seventeen states submitted fewer than 10 mental health records, and four states haven’t submitted any records.
Substance abuse records also are underreported nationwide, and while many Ohio drug abusers show up in NICS when arrested and convicted, others fall through the cracks.
Ohio Attorney General’s Office spokesman Dan Tierney said the state updates arrests and convictions daily through the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation. State law, however, lacks a provision for reporting all known drug abusers to the federal database, he added. Ohio’s mentally ill show up in the system when they are ordered by a court to receive mental health treatment.
Instances of drug abuse that fall short of a conviction — such as failing a drug test when applying for a state job, telling a state agency you have a drug problem, or court diversion into a drug rehab program — aren’t reported because Ohio doesn’t have the infrastructure “to submit evidence of substance abuse outside of arrest and conviction records,” the mayors group said.
The report said that although federal regulations and policy require that failed drug tests, single drug-related arrests or admission of drug use within the past year temporarily disqualify a person from possessing a gun, “the vast majority of states are unaware that these records should be shared with NICS.”
Between 1999 and 2009, NICS processed 100 million background checks and blocked an estimated 1.6 million permit applications and gun sales to people prohibited from possessing guns.
A working system to screen out dangerous mentally ill people doesn’t always prevent potential killers from getting firearms even though it is illegal to provide a firearm to someone who has been judged to have been mentally ill to such a degree that hospitalization is necessary.
Following the shooting death of Clark County Deputy Suzanne Hopper New Year’s Day in a Clark County trailer camp by Michael Ferryman, a 57-year-old with a history of mental illness and gun violence, a father and daughter were indicted for giving Ferryman the shotgun he used. Ferryman was shot dead in the incident and a German Twp. officer was wounded.
Jean Blessing, 81, of Englewood, was charged with complicity to having weapons under disability. Blessing’s daughter and Ferryman’s girlfriend, Maria Blessing, was indicted on the same charge and on a charge of obstructing justice for lying to investigators about the gun. She was later sentenced to five years in prison. Monday, prosecutors dropped charges against Jean Blessing, saying he was incompetent to stand trial.
Ferryman had been ruled not guilty by reason of insanity in another shooting at police officers in Morgan County in 2001. He was sent to a psychiatric hospital and then conditionally released. He was supposed to be monitored by mental health services.
Clark County Sheriff Gene Kelly and Prosecutor Andy Wilson called for creating a database of those with severe mental illness coupled with a history of violence, especially violence against police, similar to the sex offender database.
“Most of the guns used in crimes are obtained illegally or through casual sales such as garage sales or classified ads,” Kelly said. His department created a database to include about five individuals who have been adjudicated criminally insane, but a national database doesn’t exist.
Kelly said a state and national database could alert officers on traffic stops or other action when a person is mentally ill and the officer should consider different tactics that could lead to a different outcome.
Wilson said Ferryman was in the NICS system and would not have been able to purchase a gun legally. Wilson said when Hopper responded to a shots fired call at Enon Beach Recreation Park on New Year’s Day, she didn’t realize she was walking into a situation with a man who had fired shots at police in the past.
“The key is giving street officers more information about the people who have been adjudicated mentally ill. They register sex offenders. Anyone can access a sex offender database; but there’s no mechanism nationally for officers to know they’re coming upon a mentally ill, violent person,” Wilson said.
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