Growth of NICS ‘Mental Defectives’ Index Category

By Dean Weingarten

The National Instant Check System, NICS, started operation in 1998. The first numbers that I found available for ‘mental defectives’ were contained in an annual report listing numbers available at the end of 2000. The first 89 thousand people on the list were submitted by the Veterans Administration. In the next report, at the end of 2002, about another 60 thousand individuals had been added from state data bases. In 2004, NICS listed the ‘mental defective’ definition as this . . .

Mental Defectives/Commitments – Persons who have been adjudicated as a mental defective or have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution or have been deemed incompetent to handle their own affairs. (This definition is established by 27 C.F.R., §478.11.)

In 2013 NICS lists ‘mental defectives’ as:

Has been adjudicated as a mental defective or committed to a mental institution;

It is hard to know if the change in definition is substantive or not. This is only from the FBI NICS annual report, but the statute cited in 2013 had changed to 18 U.S.C. §922 (g) (4) instead of the previous 27 C.F.R., §478.11.

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Source:: Truth About Guns