I've got a loaded question...no pun intended...
Back in 1995, when I was 24 and in college, and at that point having gone through a three-year slide into depression because of family problems and the fact that I was hundreds of miles away from my then-fiancee, to try to bail out of school without (so I thought) screwing up my permanent record, I pretended to have hallucinations and cut myself pretty badly (never mind where, but it did require surgery) thinking that if I had a good enough excuse to drop out of school for a year (I was going to a very high-pressure private college and was also under a lot of pressure from my family) that I'd be able to gain a reprieve, take the rest of the year off from school and start over again a year later.
Well, it came back to bite me in the butt.
My self-injury required hospitalization and subsequent surgery, and in the process of giving the doctors a line about hearing voices and then finding that I'd cut myself, I was put in the hospital's psych ward for 2-1/2 weeks. I was scared to death, and quite frankly, not knowing what else to do, I figured it'd be best just to stick with the line about hallucinations, etc., since I figured at that point that admitting that I lied about how I came to injure myself would open a whole other can of worms with the powers that be at school, and with my family. What this got me instead, though, was a judge signing papers for me to have a three month stay in the state psychiatric hospital with a tentative diagnosis of undefined schizophrenia. Egad.
Over the next three months, they kept me doped up on several different medications which, as far as I could tell, were having no effect except making me extremely drowsy so that I slept all day--which was against ward policy, as they wanted us to be out in the day room so they could observe our behavior to see how our medications were treating us. Well, since the only thing that was wrong with me was that I'd cut myself and then lied about it, I played the game for three months and was finally released (in Feb. 1996), and was readmitted to school with the stipulation that I see a psychiatrist regularly and stay on the meds that I'd been on. So I played the game for another year and a half while I was back in school, then in early 1998 dropped out of school to take care of my best friend, who at the time had cancer (and now is in remission and is my wife), continuing to get the meds the psychiatrist had prescribed through a community health clinic, and during this time the psychiatrist in the town where I had relocated said that according to his judgment, I no longer needed to be on medication (not that I did in the first place, but you get what I'm saying).
Fast-forward 10 years to today. I am in the process of starting my own arcade machine business and will be regularly in possession of large amounts of cash both on the business' premises and during trips to the bank. I don't especially want to be caught defenseless in this sort of situation, since I'd be an easy target for robbery, kidnapping or the like. Is it possible for me to petition a judge in the state I'm in (Indiana) by way of a psychiatrist to declare me mentally competent and able to own a firearm? A Washington Post article I just read (here's the link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 02279.html) mentioned a provision in the latest gun-ownership measure passed by Congress to allow people who've been previously been alleged to be mentally ill to petition for the reinstatement of their right to own a gun. Should I talk to a lawyer who deals with federal law, or mental health issues, or both? Any other legal avenues I should consider?