US Appeals Court Deems Mental Health Gun Law Unconstitutional

The three-judge panel of the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that a federal ban on gun ownership for those who have been committed to a mental institution violated the Second Amendment rights of 73-year-old Clifford Charles Tyler.

Tyler attempted to buy a gun and was denied on the grounds that he had been committed to a mental institution in 1986 after suffering emotional problems stemming from a divorce. He was only in there for a month.
        Fox News

(Dreamstime.com)

Interesting. It's certain that many mental health gun laws are overbroad and draconian, as in this case. This ruling bucks the current legislative trend of expanding the impact of mental health issues on gun possession. Anti-gun California and New York are in the forefront of this push. For example: In California, 2nd Amendment rights can be immediately removed with just an accusation of mental instability. 

From the article:

“The government’s interest in keeping firearms out of the hands of the mentally ill is not sufficiently related to depriving the mentally healthy, who had a distant episode of commitment, of their constitutional rights,” wrote Judge Danny Boggs, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, for the panel.