Open letter to senator Ayotte: gun control not mind control is needed to stop gun violence

In response to an earlier letter to Senator Ayotte about her vote against gun control, I received an extended response in which she pointed out among others (emphasis is mine)

….  The Protecting Communities and Preserving the Second Amendment Act would have strengthened the background check system, addressed mental health gaps, boosted resources to improve school safety, criminalized gun trafficking and straw purchasing, and increased prosecutions of gun-related violence…

Given the connection between mental illness and the horrific tragedies at Newtown, Aurora, and Virginia Tech, I also cosponsored and voted for the Mental Health Awareness and Improvement Act.  This bipartisan measure includes provisions of legislation I helped introduce that seek to improve mental health first aid training and increase the effectiveness of mental health care across the nation.  ..

Again, thank you for taking the time to contact me.  As your Senator, it is important for me to hear from you regarding the current issues affecting New Hampshire and our nation.  Please do not hesitate to be in touch again if I may be of further assistance.

Sincerely,

Kelly A. Ayotte
U. S. Senator

In response to that last invitation, I wrote her the following letter on May 8th.  

Dear Senator Ayotte, 

I appreciate your response.  As a recently nationalized US citizen I remain baffled by your insistence that checking the background on all gun owners is somehow a problem.  Gun violence requires control of gun sales.   Background checks should be thorough, enforced and universal.   Countries like Switzerland show that high gun-ownership can be combined with low violence given appropriate controls. 

To choose to expand registration of mental health conditions instead is wrong.   I was recently diagnosed with the same condition as the Newtown shooter - Aspergers.   To use this specific trait of him as an excuse to stigmatize large segments of society is wrong.  To expand public records of mental health in the interest of public safety, rather than service and support is wrong.  

The history of Aspergers  is instructive when it comes to the dangers of such public records.   When the Nazi's were eliminating undesirables, Hans Asperger tried to save lives by focusing on the special capabilities of his pupils who otherwise would have been eliminated as genetically inferior.   

I strongly oppose trends that wants to eliminate large segments of people with disorders like Down syndrome and  autism through prenatal screening. 

As a former partner in a leading strategy and innovation consultancy,  I also believe that the diversity of mental profiles is critical for the growth and quality of our society. Many of my consulting clients in high tech businesses show strong asperger characteristics.   People on the spectrum make important contributions to innovation and the development of new business   

The stigmatization of this and other mental health disorders is therefore a much bigger danger for a fair and free New Hampshire then any system of back ground checks on guns.  Gun violence is a gun control issue, not a mental health issues.  It can and should be resolved through effective gun control measures that have demonstrably worked all across the globe.  

Your attempt to shift the blame from guns to mental health and the solution from gun control to mind control is offensive to me and many others on the autism spectrum.  Shifting the blame to mental health as the NRA and the republican party are doing is personal for many other NH citizens.  At least  10% of families are directly affected, because they care for or live with family members with mental health issues.   The  history of Aspergers itself shows that registration of mental health conditions by the government is a  direct threat to our well being, economic opportunity and ability to contribute effectively to society.    

I'm of course all in favor of more support for kids with mental problems.  But not because they are prone to gun violence.   There is no evidence to support that Aspergers or other mental health conditions are more prone to violence then the general population.   Building your policy on a few anecdotal cases is irresponsible policy making.   Fourth amendment rights are at least as precious to NH as second amendment rights.     

Give the law the same power to control gun ownership as they have to control car ownership and usage, or alcohol sales and usage and the problems we see now will be significantly reduced.    And even  eliminating the 10% you mentioned could save thousands of lives.   

Eight weeks later, I still did not receive a response.    

This suggest that senator Ayotte will continue to stigmatize millions of Americans.   That the senator and her allies in the NRA choose mind control over gun control.   She considers gun sales confidentiality more important then doctor patient confidentiality.  

And that is dangerous.   More than 200,000 mental patients lost their lives between 1935 and 1945 in Europe, especially in those countries where outstanding mental health sysstems ensured that  patients were easy to trace.   Hundreds of thousends more were forcefully sterilized.   

That happened in Germany, France, Holland, Austria, Denmark, Belgium and many other occupied nations, some of them countries with long democratic histories and a long history of political freedom.   Earlier in the US about 30,000 inmates of prisons and mental hospitals were subject to involuntary sterilization.   

Mental health records deserve continued full confidentiality and protection by the fourth amendment   That is the kind of choices NH requires.