In Wisconsin you can buy a gun faster than a mental health diagnosis

Let me be clear upfront. I’ve owned a gun. I had a concealed carry permit. I understand why people want them. Hunting is a generational tradition here in Wisconsin. Families pass it down the same way they pass down recipes and holiday rituals. It’s woven into the culture in a real way, and I respect that. I haven’t touched a firearm in over 20 years, and there are reasons for that I’ve written about elsewhere.

This isn’t an anti-gun piece.

Gun ownership in America isn’t going away. I’ve accepted that. What I do believe, and what I think most reasonable people agree with regardless of where they stand politically, is that owning a firearm is a serious responsibility. Not a casual one. Not something you treat like a car purchase or a hobby signup. A gun can end a life in a second, including your own, and that weight should never be taken lightly.

TL;DR: Gun suicides account for more than half of all gun deaths in America, yet mental health care remains absurdly hard to access. I have been waiting seven months for an ADHD diagnosis in Wisconsin. In that same state, you can buy a gun the same day you walk into a dealer. Something is backwards.

Here’s a fact that gets almost no attention compared to the headlines we see after a shooting: in 2023, according to CDC data analyzed by Johns Hopkins, there were 46,728 gun deaths in the United States. Gun suicides accounted for 27,300 of them. Gun homicides accounted for 17,927. The remaining 1,500 or so were accidents, law enforcement, and undetermined causes combined. That means gun suicides didn’t just outnumber gun homicides. They outnumbered every other category of gun death combined, and it wasn’t close. More than half of all suicides in America involve a firearm. It has been the leading category of gun death in this country for nearly three decades.

We don’t talk about it that way, because it doesn’t fit either side’s preferred story. But that’s what the numbers say.

So when a shooting happens and politicians line up to say mental health is the real problem, I have one question. If mental health is the real problem, why are you making it so hard to get any?

This is about something I lived through, and the more I think about it, the more it bothers me.

In October 2025, I asked my primary care doctor for help with ADHD. I’d already been working with a licensed therapist through BetterHelp. I thought I was doing things the right way. My doctor said it didn’t matter what my therapist documented. He needed a formal diagnosis from a psychiatrist or he couldn’t do anything.

So I made the referral.

My first appointment was a two-hour video screening. Then I had to go in person for a four-hour psychological evaluation. Then they tell you to wait another six weeks while they review both sessions before they’ll give you any kind of answer.

I made that first request in October. By the time everything was processed, we were deep into the new year. And the whole time I was waiting on paperwork, the thing I was trying to get help with was still going on. There’s no hold button on your own brain.

Now here’s the part I keep coming back to.

In Wisconsin, you can walk into a licensed firearms dealer, fill out a form, pass a background check, and leave with a gun the same day. There is no waiting period. Wisconsin eliminated its 48-hour waiting period back in 2015. Not 48 hours. Not a week. Same day. If you want to carry concealed, you take a course. The Wisconsin Department of Justice model curriculum is four hours. And Wisconsin does not require live fire to get a concealed carry permit. You can complete the required training and get licensed to carry a weapon without ever pulling a trigger.

I’m not here to relitigate gun policy. But I want to sit with that contrast for a second, because it says something real about what we’ve decided to treat as urgent.

My daughter spent nine months trying to get her license for Ayurveda care. Nine months to practice a form of healing that has existed for thousands of years. Try getting a building permit in most places and you’ll be waiting too, multiple reviews, inspections, a stack of sign-offs. I spent 30 years in commercial construction and roofing. I understand why safety codes exist. Some of those wait times make sense.

Mental health doesn’t work like load calculations. The barrier to getting a diagnosis isn’t protecting anyone. It’s just slow.

I’ve been an Everytown for Gun Violence Prevention Fellow. I’ve spent years in Wisconsin Democratic politics. Gun violence has cost me people I love. I wrote about losing my mother Joyce in TIME Magazine. So when I say this is personal, I need you to understand that it goes in both directions for me. I want sensible gun policy and I want accessible mental health care, and right now in Wisconsin, we’ve got the priorities backwards on at least one of them.

The delay isn’t just inconvenient. Every week someone waits for a diagnosis is another week without the right treatment. They might be self-medicating. They might be white-knuckling through work and relationships and daily life. And if they’re lucky enough to have a therapist, that therapist’s documentation apparently doesn’t count unless it comes from the right type of professional with the right type of credentials and the right type of process behind it.

And that’s before we even talk about cost. A psychiatrist evaluation isn’t cheap. The sessions, the testing, the follow-ups, most of it runs through insurance with deductibles and co-pays that add up fast, assuming you have insurance at all. The people who can least afford to wait are also the people who can least afford to pay. That combination alone is enough to make someone quit before they ever get started.

I’m still waiting. I made my initial request in October 2025. My first appointment wasn’t until March 10th, more than four months later. The in-person evaluation was March 23rd. I won’t get the actual diagnosis until May 5th. Seven months from request to answer, and I’m one of the people who had the time, the access, and the persistence to see it through. But I keep thinking about the people who stopped somewhere in those months because they didn’t have the time, the money, or the stamina to fight for a piece of paper that said their brain works differently.

Those people exist. And they didn’t give up because they didn’t want help badly enough.

The system just wasn’t built like it was in a hurry to help them.

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Sources

• Gun Violence in the United States 2023 – Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
• Gun Suicide at Record Levels for Third Straight Year – Johns Hopkins (June 2025)
• What the Data Says About Gun Deaths in the U.S. – Pew Research Center
• Gun Laws in Wisconsin – Wikipedia
• Concealed Carry Training Requirements – Wisconsin Department of Justice
• Wisconsin Concealed Carry Permit FAQ – ASDI Training

Last updated: March 25, 2026