From Winston-Salem Journal:

Any person who has been committed to mental-health treatment and deemed a threat by the courts would be barred from buying a gun under a proposal approved by the state Senate yesterday.

The proposal, which was unanimously approved, would require court clerks to report to the National Instant Criminal Background Check, or NICS, the names of all people who have been involuntarily committed by the courts to inpatient or outpatient mental-health treatment. The database is used by gun vendors to conduct background checks on would-be buyers. Those listed are barred from purchasing weapons.

But a provision pushed by Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, limited the scope of the mandate by specifying that only people who have been deemed a threat to themselves or others would be reported to that FBI-maintained database.

“We need to make sure that when we’re dealing with people’s constitutional rights … (that) we are carefully crafting the legislation to meet the problem,” Berger said when arguing for the change. “The language in the bill that would have every involuntary commitment — whether inpatient or outpatient — for those individuals to automatically be reported and ineligible to acquire a firearm reaches too far.”

Berger’s amendment was approved on a 31-18 vote, after a sometimes-heated debate in which opponents urged legislators to err on the side of caution.

Any person with a mental illness that’s severe enough to require a judge to order treatment should not be able to buy weapons, said Sen. Martin Nesbitt, D-Buncombe, when arguing against Berger’s change. The individual’s condition could deteriorate to a point where they become dangerous — particularly if they’re living in the community as an outpatient and then stop participating in treatment, he said.

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