Mental health issues are very tough. The huge majority of folks with mental illnesses are NOT violent towards others. The methods of treatment take time, effort and cooperation, as well as good resources. Often some or all of these are missing and those with mental health needs do not get effective treatments promptly.
It is not enough for us as a country to say, pray for the dead and injured and whoops another person who may have mental health issues committed another deadly act of violence.
This needs to seriously be addressed by our nation yet Time and again it isn’t.
Yes, I think it’s important to remember that persons with mental illnesses are FAR, FAR more likely to be harmed by others or harm themselves than to harm anyone else. Their rates of violence against others are actually lower than among persons without mental illness.
I will never own a gun because I have struggled with mental health since I was a teen. I am not afraid that I’ll hurt someone, but that I’ll hurt myself. But because I’ve never been institutionalized, I can still easily get a gun. Even if I had been institutionalized, I could still get one. That is terrifying to me.
And as or IPV charges/convictions, the guns are extremely lax. Sure, offenders are technically not allowed to own them but few states have laws that compel people to turn their weapons over to authorities. When I was working at an emergency shelter, I would often do intakes and the women often do a detailed inventory of the weapons their partner had in their possession in case anything ever happened to them (among other reasons).
In some states domestic violence hearings are notorious for the fishy claims made by the parties, which leads the courts to recommend alternative resolutions when there are no threats of actual physical harm involved to the complainant. Some states will terminate gun rights for the barest definition of DV, such as quarreling with one’s spouse and that spouse or partner files a DV complaint. Somehow, Santiago’s gun ownership rights were spared.
I think it was CNN reported that an Alaskan judge was asked about the gun and said that there had been no adjudication of mental illness or a felony (his domestic case was on a deferred judgment) so there were no grounds for not returning the gun. In states like Alaska, they are going to require a high standard for not allowing people to have guns because they really do need them for protection from animals in many parts of the state, even in cities.
Do I think there should be a BIG questionnaire before that gun his handed back? Oh yes. Sometimes just asking the questions will make the person think they shouldn’t have a gun.
This may be true for all mental illnesses collectively, but surely there are some particular mental illnesses that greatly increase the chance of the person harming others.
Do you have any data to suggest that people with antisocial personality disorders are more violent than people without diagnose MH disorders? Your statement was that some MH disorders increase the chance of a person harming others. I am not aware of any data to support that. That said, the number of people incarcerated who have untreated MH issues is very high.
Back to this specific incident: I heard on the radio that ALL he checked was a single handgun! No suitcase with clothes. And going from Anchorage to Florida! He had to fill out paperwork to check the gun but yet no one noticed that he had no other luggage? And he bought a one-way ticket.
This is not directly related, but the timing is interesting- and a huge red herring for mental health providers in Washington State: http://alert.psychnews.org/2017/01/state-supreme-court-ruling-expands_3.html Now the providers are supposed to be clairvoyant, and decide who might be a potential victim, based on past sessions?? In the Washington case here, I believe the provider had not seen the patient in many months.
@albert69, your habit of warping and conflating what people have said gets tiresome, as do the strawmen.
There is always going to be a balance between civil liberties and public safety. I would suggest that when it comes to guns the line is currently being drawn in the wrong place. The gun should not have been returned to him. The things he said to the FBI should have been sufficient to prevent it. Add in the domestic violence issue, and his license should have been pulled for the foreseeable future. A person with his history should have to prove that he is stable enough to own a gun, and that he has a need to do so.
@Consolation The point I’m trying to make is that we’re all playing armchair quarterback here and saying that people should have noticed this, that, and the other thing about him when it probably isn’t as obvious as is sounds in hindsight. So the baggage handlers, specifically whoever was running the scanning machine that day, should have noticed a lone gun? How were they supposed to know he isn’t a light packer who carried his other stuff in a carry on, or perhaps he could have had multiple bags checked, etc. So he was going from Anchorage to Florida one way. He could have been a rich eccentric dude who didn’t know when he wanted to return yet.
Zeroing in on details like that doesn’t make much sense because even if there were clairvoyant people along the way who were able to use some rule to stop him, it’s unlikely someone with a similar idea couldn’t get around such specific rules in the future - aka, buy a 2 way ticket, pack the gun with other items, etc.
As far as the FBI not catching him with all the ISIS talk and other issues, I’m still skeptical as to whether that was due to a lack of laws in that area or if it was laws not being enforced in the best way. The FBI are not mind readers - it’s easy to say, well see, they should have taken the gun - now, after the crime has been committed, but it may not have seemed so clear before. With the domestic violence, that is a touchy issue because to make a change there, you’d have to advocate taking a right away from a citizen without a conviction. Either that or suggest changes to the way that domestic violence is prosecuted in general.
Just read the details of what he said to the FBI and of the reports about the domestic violence . The latter incident had a negotiated settlement. One of the provisions of that settlement should have been surrender of any guns and surrender of his license to own a gun.
The FBI didn’t need to read his mind: he told them enough. The default in domestic violence situations should be removal of weapons. The person could apply to get the right to own a gun back after being able to show sufficient evidence of reform.
“Anchorage municipal prosecutor Seneca Theno said Santiago pleaded no contest to criminal mischief and assault charges. Under a deferred prosecution agreement, the charges would have been dismissed if he complied with the conditions. He was due back in court on March 28.”
He should have not been allowed to own a gun during this period. He pleaded no contest, not innocent.
He regained his gun after a month. That is not long enough to recover from such an extreme level of psychiatric disturbance. Nor is it sufficient time to establish a record of stability that should enable a person who does not dispute the facts of such a domestic violence violation to regain possession of a gun.
Gun ownership need to be taken a lot more seriously.