New law would take firearms away from Alzheimer's patients

• Barbara-Anne Foley still remembers the day she got the call from the police that there had been "an accident" involving William Meyers, an 84-year-old Harwich resident who had been showing signs of mental confusion.
• On that May day, Meyers took a .357 caliber Magnum, and "in his delusions shot his wife and shot himself," says Foley, the director of the Harwich Council on Aging.
• That was the final straw for Foley, who shortly before that had a gun taken away from an elderly man who reacted to an unexpected evening visit from his niece, by aiming a gun at her as she stood at the door.
• As a result of Foley's initial concern and the support she's received from other council on aging directors, a bill sponsored by Gomes, which would take guns out of the hands of those in mid- or late-stage Alzheimer's dementia, is now in committee.
• It further calls for an additional section that would require a doctor treating someone for Alzheimer's dementia to ask the patient if they possess any firearms.
• If it's determined that they do, the doctor would be required to notify police, who would confiscate the patient's firearms identification and guns.
• Foley says the bill as currently worded doesn't go far enough, in that it is limited just to those with Alzheimer's dementia, leaving out other causes and forms of dementia.
• It also calls for only questioning the patient, who may no longer have the ability to understand or answer the question.
• And it limits the question to the patient's ownership of firearms.
• Foley says she would want to see the bill expanded to other forms of memory impairment and dementia, allow for a patient's caregiver to be questioned and include the question to include all firearms in the home.