We universally agree: Mentally ill people shouldn’t have guns. Guns kill, and some mentally ill people have bizarre reasons to pull the trigger.

That agreement, however, is the problem. It makes the ban-guns-to-the-mentally-ill initiative sound like a solution to the upswing in violent U.S. mass killings – which it is.

But it also makes it sound possible – which it isn’t.

Of important note: The courts have a strict definition of mental illness in crimes, but anyone who opens fire in a movie theater or elementary school is, in my opinion, mentally ill. If 99.9 percent of us stay in our lane while driving thanks to a tacit agreement to work together, rogue killers who murder children have a brain firing without a few cylinders.

Problems with the mental illness-gun control debate

1. The solution applies only to legally acquired firearms. This is the big one, and if you want to stop reading here, it’s okay. A new law would only apply to purchases, and even then only in actual stores.

After a tragedy, we want to believe that an unspeakable act wasn’t completely random – that there’s a reason it couldn’t happen in our town, in our kids’ elementary school. We decide that if the killer had a confirmed mental illness and managed to legally get a gun, the system somehow failed.

The weak implication: Absent a government screw-up, the victims would still be alive. The incorrect implication: Serial killers don’t have backup plans.

It’s a matter of time, not circumstance. The U.S. has a lot of guns.

2. What does “mentally ill” mean? Should every American taking an antidepressant be banned from gun ownership? The American Psychiatric Association’s gold standard for identification, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), has almost 1,000 pages – and psychiatrists routinely disagree with some conclusions.

3. Even if we identify dangerous mental illnesses, what is the no-guns-for-you level? A person can be mildly schizophrenic or live a life completely outside the real world. Where, exactly, is the no-guns dividing line?

4. Who decides? Say the no-gun-for-you litmus test is a letter of recommendation from two psychiatrists. First, imagine the red tape. Second, what happens if two psychiatrists make a recommendation but the soon-to-be-killer’s cherry-picked psychiatrist disagrees?

5. Mental illnesses overlap. A schizophrenic may or may not be paranoid. He may or may not suffer from depression. Hey may or may not have a personality disorder. If it takes a mental-illness cocktail to create a mass killer, what are the toxic ingredients?

6. How do we find these killers? People hide symptoms. New York City’s Son of Sam killer took advice from a talking dog, but he killed multiple times before police tracked him down. No one noticed his glitches, at least not enough to put two and two together.

People suffering from depression know how to smile on cue, shake hands and make topical jokes. It’s not just common, it’s almost universal for friends, post-suicide, to say, “I had no idea. I wish he’d talked to me.”

Before we jump on the “keep guns away from the mentally ill” bandwagon, we need to be clear on what that means. If nothing beyond “we meant well,” we need to find for other ways to stop the all-too-common mass killings today by focusing first on the things we can actually control – and ignoring the ones we can’t.

© 2015 SmithTakes.com