<p>I’m not advocating for gun nuts, Cartera. I am saying you need an AND/AND approach, not an either/or approach.</p>
<p>Even gun laws won’t solve this immediately since there are so damn many guns out there already. Yes, to the gun laws. Yes, also, emphatically, to more aggressive treatment of mental health issues.</p>
<p>You have to look at the whole picture, imho.</p>
<p>Do we even know that the shooter had a mental illness? </p>
<p>Apparently, he was an atypical sort of person, but that’s not the same as being mentally ill and it’s certainly not the same as being part of the small minority of mentally ill people who can be recognized as being a danger to others. </p>
<p>I’m all in favor of better mental health care, but identifying people who are a danger to others because of what goes on inside their minds is extraordinarily difficult. On the other hand, identifying a gun isn’t difficult at all. We all know what a gun is. We don’t have to distinguish between dangerous guns and those that aren’t dangerous; they’re all dangerous.</p>
<p>If the relevant equation is “mentally unstable person + gun = potential for massive act of violence,” then I think it’s easier, in a practical sense, to remove the gun from the equation than to remove the mentally unstable person.</p>
<p>Here’s my suggestion:</p>
<p>1) Universal single-payer health care coverage in which mental health is treated like any other illness
2) A revision of the law regarding treating mentally ill individuals without their consent. I have been through this with friends in desperate need of care and friends fighting to save the lives of their children. And failing, tragically. We do not need to return to the bad old days, but we could acknowledge that we have swung too far in the other direction.
3) A complete ban on any weapon that fires more than one bullet per trigger pull. (By function, not by model name, and this would include altering any weapon to do this.) A buy back program for all such weapons now out there, including stiff penalties and fines for anyone in knowing possession of such a weapon after a certain date. A complete ban on anything that enables the loading of more than five bullets at a time. A complete ban on ammunition designed for maximum destruction (hollow point, for example) or designed to pierce bullet-proof vests. There is no legitimate reason for a private individual to own such ammunition, since it is designed solely to kill PEOPLE. Penalties would include loss of gun permit privileges for life, plus significant fines, including the seizure of any vehicle in which such a weapon is found.
4) A 6-month long permitting process for gun ownership. First, just like getting a learner’s permit for driving, you have to take a written test. This gets you a permit to go to a licensed entity–shooting range or instructor–where you can learn to use a gun safely for legitimate purposes, such as target shooting or hunting. During this period, you must pass a background check that includes mental health and a home visit to discuss your potential gun ownership with other members of the household. (I’m tempted to add that the background check should cover not only you but members of your household if you intend to store the weapon at home instead of at a secured range facility. If other members of your household will not agree to this, too bad, no gun permit for you.) At the end of the six months you must pass a test demonstrating that you know how to use a gun properly and safely.
5) THEN you can buy one. BUT it must be registered, and that registration must be periodically reviewed and renewed. Part of having your registration renewed–in addition to ensuring that you did not pose a danger to others or yourself–would be demonstrating that you are keeping it in a safe location, ie, a locked gun safe. (In the UK, the local constable used to drop by and check on the location of hunting rifles on an annual basis. No reason why we couldn’t do the same.)</p>
<p>And, of course, you have to join a “well-regulated militia.” We don’t want to ignore the Constitution, do we? (Okay, I’m just kidding on this one.)</p>
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<p>Thanks for this post. When things like this happen there is frequently a suggestion of autism which normally doesn’t turn out to be true or provable, but in this case I don’t know yet. Autism doesn’t make people do these kinds of things and I always worry that in a society so uneducated about autism, some people may draw false conclusions and look at me differently when something like this happens… it’s a very uncomfortable thing.</p>
<p>My advocacy organization of choice made this statement: [ASAN</a> Statement on Media Reports Regarding Newtown, CT Shooting | Autistic Self Advocacy Network](<a href=“http://autisticadvocacy.org/2012/12/asan-statement-on-media-reports-regarding-newton-ct-shooting/]ASAN”>http://autisticadvocacy.org/2012/12/asan-statement-on-media-reports-regarding-newton-ct-shooting/)</p>
<p>It is not autism which causes this, and, quite frankly, just because someone is autistic does not mean they are immune from other mental illnesses.</p>
<p>Nobody goes into a school and shoots kindergartners without a mental illness. I’m sorry, but it’s like abusing puppies. People who are mentally healthy just don’t DO this.</p>
<p>I like your suggestions consolation.</p>
<p>I agree with you completely poetgrl. I’m just asking how we force treatment upon adults who do not want it. So far, there is no indication that this kid had been violent before. By more aggressive, does that mean we force adults who were treated as adolescents to continue medication? Are they locked up if they don’t - even if they have never had any violent tendencies? Do we force behavioral therapy? Is forced treatment even worthwhile? My point is that these are much harder problems to solve than keeping guns out of their hands. Of course this mother didn’t intend for this to happen, but she was culpable in that she made the guns available. If she were unable to keep them secure from her adult son, then she needed to get rid of them. There should have been no hesitation.</p>
<p>I think that there’s no doubt that he had a mental illness. My point is just that this might have been the first serious manifestation of it. He was 20, which is right around the age when a lot of serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia first make themselves known.</p>
<p>If he had no past diagnosis or major symptoms, mental illness treatment being better and more accessible probably wouldn’t actually have helped, nor would a more thorough background check when his mother purchased the gun.</p>
<p>I agree with you. In this particular case, it’s a bit tricky.</p>
<p>But, if you look at the actual history of cases like this, there is clear evidence of serious mental illness.</p>
<p>I think we err too far on the side of not putting the mentally ill in an institutional setting, and we err too far on the side of making sure people can have these weapons.</p>
<p>Really like Consolation’s ideas.</p>
<p>Also think we need to look at why it is generally young, white, middle-class males who are committing these heinous acts. What is it with this demographic that leads them to such acts? There are so many similarities in many of the crimes–they are socially awkward (but sometimes very intelligent) loners and they commit their crimes in a similar fashion–dressed in black, wearing masks, armed to the gills, willing (or planning) to die at the end of their rampages.</p>
<p>To continue Consolation’s driving analogy, perhaps we should consider this group “high risk” and restrict their free access to weapons by either putting significant restraints on ownership or charging them a premium the way auto insurers do for young drivers. Also, we need to make sure all the other gun owners do not allow access to weapons to others in their homes. We don’t know what happened in this case with the shooter’s mother, but it sounds as though she was on leave from teaching because of her son’s issues. And yet she had at least three deadly weapons in the home. (Of course, he could have physically forced her to unlock the gun case or gained access some other way…not sure we will ever know.)</p>
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<p>Yes, but how many other people are there out there who have similarly clear evidence of serious mental illness? And do we put them all in an institutional setting?</p>
<p>The National Institute of Mental Health says that about one-quarter of all adults have some kind of mental illness and one adult in 17 has a seriously debilitating mental illness in any given year. That’s a very large number of people.</p>
<p>^^I’m sorry, I just can’t get the image of
sitting in their basements playing video games where they are committing virtual crimes
out of my head.</p>
<p>This whole thing is just unspeakably sad.</p>
<p>I’m haunted thinking of all those mornings spent getting the kids ready for school, irritated with them because they dilly dallied, didn’t eat breakfast, forgot a permission slip, fought with each other…and I sent them out to get on the bus still being irritated with them. Oh, I hope each of those 20 kids got a hug from their parents that morning.</p>
<p>Completely agree, cartera. Someone was quoted who described her as a “responsible collector.” If she was not able to keep them out of the hands of her son, she was not responsible. </p>
<p>And also completely agree with poetgrl and others: Autism does not make a person do something like this, mental illness does. And I simply do not believe that his mother was unaware of his condition. But in our current legal situation, she would have been powerless to do anything about it unless she could offer PROOF of his intent to harm himself and others.</p>
<p>I have a friend who was sleeping in other people’s garages and in the woods for days, after a multi-state odyssey that included abandoning her car (in her paranoia, it had been tampered with in an attempt to kill her), losing her wallet and checkbook in another state, claiming that she was abused and the victim of a murder plot, and so on. This went on for several weeks. We were out going door to door with her picture, trying to find her. The police knew she was ill, but had to go through hoops to take her to the hospital against her will, but they finally did it. I was there with her college-age child when she was picked up, I had to look her in the eye and tell her I would not take her home, I witnessed her screaming “I’m your mother, don’t you love me, don’t let them do this to me” at her child on the side of the road as she was dragged in handcuffs into a police car. (The police, BTW, were wonderful in the way they tried to persuade her to go and in how they counseled and cared for the child.) She was held against her will and transferred to a hospital, where she remained only a short while because the court ruled she had to be let go because she was able to articulate that she was not a danger to herself or others. She was out in under 2 weeks. She will not admit that she suffers from a mental illness, EVEN THOUGH THIS WAS NOT THE FIRST TIME she had decompensated in a paranoid manner, imagining plots against her life and others.</p>
<p>In the last press conference, it was certainly suggested by the police that they have evidence that may shed light on what motivated the shootings. </p>
<p>As a gun collector, I would not be surprised to learn that she went to shooting ranges and, perhaps, that her son was comfortable handling guns. </p>
<p>Speaking to the young white demographic and, coincidentally, to bullet control, those of you who will not be offended should go to YouTube and search for “Chris Rock gun control” and watch the longer version of his routine. He starts by saying that the scariest people in the world are white kids under the age of 21. He then says that rich white families are going to try to get their kids into all black schools to keep them safe. This routine has Columbine in mind but is, sadly, still relevant.</p>
<p>My (admittedly limited) experience with institutionalizing for mental illness is that it’s a pretty flawed solution, the way that it’s set up right now. I have a friend who has spent time in well-regarded institutions, and my impression is that if somebody is thought to be an immediate danger to themself, they are put in, but for about a week, and given heavy doses of meds. Most of these people need long-term treatment, and my friend’s long-term treatment plan (she had been going to a psychiatrist and psychologist) was disrupted by the institutionalization. When she got out of the hospital, she couldn’t stay awake for more than a few hours a day because of the antipsychotic medication – everybody’s body tolerates meds differently, and she found that she couldn’t function in day to day life on almost any psych meds – and had to work through withdrawal plans with her doctors. </p>
<p>The other thing is that if somebody who needs long-term treatment gets an emergency one-week hospitalization, what then? Do they leave more ****ed off? Will they keep going to psych visits? I don’t think the sort of mandatory hospitalizations that happen right now are always helpful in isolation. Institutionalization for very long periods of time, sure, but that’s in my opinion really not something to force on anyone with mental illness for a variety of reasons. As Consolation described, the “out in under two weeks” is a huge part of the problem. I think that the affected individual has to buy in for mental health treatment to work, and it can take longer than two weeks to convince them to do that.</p>
<p>I should also mention that my friend ended up being misdiagnosed with both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Her actual diagnosis is that she has never been psychotic or manic and her doctors were wrong about those symptoms. She has been clinically depressed. All diagnoses will appear on her medical record for life.</p>
<p>As an elementary school nurse, this hits close to home. Yesterday, after hearing of this horrific tragedy, the principal, vice principal, secretary, receptionist and I gathered to discuss it. As little ones visited my clinic yesterday with a variety of physical ailments, I couldn’t help but think of those tiny lifeless bodies that lay on the floor of their classroom as their parents were praying their children would once again return to them. I know this tragedy will bring mental illness, gun control, school security systems, etc. to the forefront. I can’t think of those things right now. I can only think of those babies.</p>
<p>Poetgirl:
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<p>This is a often used, and politically charged accusation. But it is still wrong. It was the .Lanterman–Petris–Short Act which ‘put everyone on the street’, not Reagan. The LPS Act was brought into place by patient rights advocates and the ACLU. It made it so that an individual could no longer be forced into a mental health facility against their will unless it could be proved they were a danger to themselves or others. It also made it so that a patient could not be ‘forced’ to take meds. So, some patients in facilities stopped taking meds, left of their own free will - and ‘hit the streets’. Other individuals who prior to the LPS act would have been forcefully placed under mental health care, were able to choose for themselves - and they chose to ‘hit the streets’. So, guess what, the facilities emptied out. So by the time Reagan ‘closed’ them, they were pretty empty already and yes, it was a financial decision to close empty facilities. </p>
<p>The LPS act has been described as one of the only times a law made the ACLU and the John Birch society happy at the same time.</p>
<p>CNN has just reported on air that they are looking at 3 other guns recovered at the scene besides the original 3 guns that were registered under Nancy, his mother. Also they have an unconfirmed report that the gunman tried to unsuccessfully purchase another gun at a store within the week which may have explained the reason why he may have carried his brother ID since he is under age and not old enough to buy a gun.</p>
<p>If I recall correctly Ed Koch really hated this law</p>
<p>Well, deitz, considering all the laws which were put into place to put people back in their comminities? six of one, half a dozen of the others.</p>
<p>Anyway, I would say that while we re-examine our gun laws, which we absolutely need to do, we ought to re-examine our mental health laws, as well. We are erring on both of those fronts, imho.</p>
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<p>Technically this answer is unknown at this time. But we know that Jared Loughner did when he shot Gabby Giffords. And it seems pretty clear that James Holmes was mentally ill as well in Aurora. Do we need to exact combination of the diagnosed schizophrenic with a truly automatic weapon in a preschool or daycare (because kindergarteners are not small and defenseless enough) to figure out that something needs to be done? Shame on us.</p>