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August 12, 2012

State law hampers gun buyer checks

Associated Press

— OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – Oklahoma is largely complying with federal mental health record-sharing standards regarding people prohibited from owning a firearm, but there are barriers that keep the state from releasing some information, a state official said.

The state meets record-sharing standards in nine of 10 categories of people barred from owning guns, but it will take legislative action to circumvent a law that doesn’t allow the release of mental health records, she told The Oklahoman.

“There’s a need to make sure that Department of Mental Health can transfer information to the courts,” Fudge said. “And then there’s the issue of the courts. ... They don’t have an integrated court management system.”

Last month, federal prosecutors charged a Woodward teenager who had been committed to a mental institution with unlawful possession of firearms and making false statements with respect to purchase of firearms after he bought a shotgun and a rifle from a licensed dealer.

A taxi driver told authorities the teen asked him questions about how to hide bodies and avoid extradition before and after the deadly movie theater shootings in Colorado.

Federal and state law prohibits the sale of firearms to people who have been adjudicated by a court as mentally incompetent.

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