Here's what I think....as if it matters.... (Page 13)

I like it.  We're getting closer than Washington will get to a solution through an INTERNET THREAD!! 

I don't think this is weird at all.  To me it comes as no surprise that people are wanting to get the guns they would like to use recreationally and to protect themselves.  I am planning on going to get a CCW as soon as I can.  I also plan to take a defensive weapons class to ensure that I or someone else isn't caught between myself and a would be murderer.  I used to carry a concealed weapon but allowed the permit to expire years ago.  I have intended to renew for several years but I simply haven't done it. 

I know I am about to get hammered by many of you but I am going to say it anyway.  If I happen to be in a public place and confronted with the evil that was perpetrated last week I will plan to do what I can to end it as quickly as possible.  As with the Oregon mall shooting not long ago, I hope that simply leveling my own weapon would cause the murderer to kill himself after seeing me with my .45 caliber leveled at him.  The report came from the local news (not the national media) that the perp shot himself after seeing an off duty security guard draw down on him.

I consult to about a dozen different school districts. They all, at all levels, have this. I have to press a buzzer, located near a camera, identify myself and state my business with the school before I get buzzed in. In most schools, the office is located right near the entrance point, where I have to sign in, even though in most cases I am not going outside the office and will be accompanied by staff members at every step of my movement; and am well known by many of the office staff, guidance counselors, special ed staff, and school principals because of my consulting work.

Hey GearBoy, if you missed this, could you give me your thoughts on this^^^

I did miss it, in the 15 or whatever it is pages of this thread. I think there are as many problems with looking at this as a mental health issue as there are in seeing it as a gun control issue.

MOST mentally ill people are a threat to no one. Not themselves and not others.

Statistically speaking, there is a greater chance that people who ARE a threat are mentally ill. 

So...what to do?

I think if you know that someone in your home may be a threat based on a history of aggressive behaviors, you should not bring firearms into your home. Talking about "training kids to handle firearms" only prevents accidental deaths. But if you have trained your kid to use a gun, and they are depressed and suicidal (for example), you have not trained them to be safe. You have trained them how to use the gun, and to anticipate the kick, such that their attempted suicide (or homicide) via GSW will be successful. It will not have been an accident. 

In most states, if you are involuntarily committed, that information goes straight to the state, and you will not be eligible to own a firearm or get a hunting license, or in some cases enter the military or police. We will sometimes in the ER warn patients that if they do not sign themselves in voluntarily, they risk being committed (in most cases, it is more than "a risk" - if we - the mental health professionals - are saying you will be committed, we usually understand very clearly the level of threat to self/others that you pose, and will take steps to ensure safety). Of course, the flip side of this is that if they DO sign in voluntarily, they remain "invisible" as far as the state is concerned. Which means they are free to later purchase all the firearms they want. Should we commit everyone who COULD be committed? I am troubled by that as it puts me (and my profession) too close to a Soviet-style enforcement arm of the government's will, and will discourage people from seeking help.Which means there will be people who we think might someday pose a threat to others that we cannot legally prohibit from taking steps later.

I think I mentioned somewhere in this thread that I know of cases where a person HAD been committed and was not allowed to own a gun, but had a family member willingly serve as a straw-man buyer to provide firearms. I don't know how to get around that. If anyone in your address has been committed, you cannot own firearms? I think people would object who have not committed a commitable act; and would then be less likely to initiate a commitment. I have a hard enough time getting parents to press charges on their teenage children who do not have a mental disorder and are simply engaging in antisocial behaviors, even though there is plenty of evidence that having a PO enforcing school attendance and sobriety can go a long way in turning around their life.

How hard is it to be committed? In most states, you have to demonstrate the presence of a mental illness, connected in some way to the threats to safety of self or others in the form of specific threats and acts in furtherance of those threats within a specified period of time (in PA, it is the last 30 days); in some cases (like PA). there is an additional, "softer" criteria of would be at risk within the next 30 days of serious harm (e.g. an anorexic who might starve to death, or a diabetic who believes his insulin is actually poison and refuses to take it). The commitment itself is not for an indefinite period of time - in PA, the initial commitment is for up to 5 days. If there is still a risk, I have to go back to court and ask for up to another 20; and then for another 6 months. At each hearing, the person has representation whose job is to challenge any assertions and evidence I present at a hearing to the effect of the patient's safety if they were to leave the hospital. As you might imagine, the bar is set rather higher in most cases for longer commitments. OTOH, having been committed even for the initial commitment is enough, in PA at least, to no longer be eligible to own firearms. I understand there is a mechanism in the law to appeal this, but you have to prove that the risk factors are no longer relevant. And the likelihood of a successful appeal is going to be highly dependent on the county and judges involved. 

At the end of it all, I think the solutions, like the issues of the budget, requires looking at both sides of the equation. We need to look at both mental health treatment as well as gun control issues. 

I heard an interesting thing on NPR today that pointed out that we are all, at some level, for gun control. Not even the most rapid NRA supporter, for example, would say "This guy says Osama bin Laden had some great ideas. He wants a high power, high magazine weapon so he can go the to the local playground and shot as many kids as possiible. He should be allowed as many guns and armor piercing rounds as he can afford". So the issue is not whether or not we believe in limiting access. It is where we believe that line should be drawn.

Thanks GB... I can agree with that. And the bottom line isn't to punish the mentally ill any more than it is to punish legal responsible gun owners. I also don't want to single this out as a "mental health issue"... because as you say... it's both.. or more. I was looking at info on mass shootings and about half "showed signs of mental illness prior to the shooting". I can't even begin to tell you what they meant by that. But the obvious take away is the other half were just pizzed off and sane.

Bottom line is to get the help these people need, whether they are a threat to others, or just in a really bad place and circling the drain. You have probably read that article that is circulating, "I am Adam Lanza's mother". I can't even imagine. The kid isn't evil or sick, he is ill, and needs help. The fact that the only help available is a jail cell is unacceptable to me. If the Lanzas were going through something similar, then that is a tragedy that deserves action as well.

I hope you do not take this as an attemp to "change the subject" or point blame. Perhaps this too can be a turning point for mental health and problems addressed. Not just ban everything and lock everyone away.

From my perspective, I see the mental health profession/industry/whatever you want to call it, as a complete and utter failure....completely broken.

You got it right, GB, in one of your initial paragraphs.  As a matter of ROUTINE, your colleagues, from what I have seen countless times, talk people into signing themselves in voluntarily to get around all the mandatory reporting that comes with an involuntary commitment.  That HAS to stop.

We deal with thousands and thousands of people in my line of work.....it becomes relatively easy to see when someone is a threat to themselves or others....and we take them straight to the hospital for an evaluation.  We fill out the affidavit needed for the involuntary commitment....which is required....only to find out, in the VAST MAJORITY of cases, that the Dr. has talked the person into signing themself in, thereby getting around the protections that should be in place.  It's a terrible practice that has become absolutely routine in your profession.  It's often done even before an evaluation is done in most cases.  We view it as shameful.....but we also know that we have taken the steps we are required to take by law...and we move on to the next one.

We, as a society, used to lock people away who were deemed a threat, or danger to the rest of us because of their mental condition.  Now we have gotten to the point where we talk about locking ourselves and our children in to keep us safe from them.  It's backwards.  It needs to be re-evaluated. 

Is anyone but me getting tired of hearing someone say, "you know, when I heard there was a shooting I KNEW it was XXXXXX.....I just knew it".  Yeah, no chit!!

As I've said, I'm willing to look at personal responsibility with regard to guns, and willing to debate any other parts of our gun control issues in this country.....but the way we deal with the mentally ill among us is a joke.  I'm sorry, it is.  It needs to be a major part of any discussion on mass shootings.

Nope...but when someone is obviously mentally ill and saying that they will kill people, and/or themselves, and are back out of the hospital in a couple of days after we have them committed, by filing the proper affidavit detailing their behavior, I don't have to know anything other than NOBODY could make that evaluation to let them back out into the public that quickly.

You may not know this, but many times we deal with the same person over and over again until they finally commit a crime that gets them locked up by the legal system.  My most memorable was a 22 year old that we had sent to the hospital for evaluation 11 times in a 4 year period.....each time he was released within  days.  He finally strangled an 8 year old girl.  When we finally found a witness that told us she had seen him with the missing girl, we knew all we were doing was trying to get him to tell us what he did with the body....it's not rocket science.

I can only comment on the things I see.....you can decide whether I know better or not.  It won't change what I will deal with tomorrow.

Here, this was written by a friend of mine in his late 60's......it will be viewed by some as controversial because he is nothing if not "plain-speaking"...so if you are not in the mood, why read it?  Still.....to me, it contains enough merit to become part of the debate.....we should at least listen to our elders....it's worked for generations:

"I agree that people are much, MUCH less responsible than they used to be. Maybe lots of people whose grandparents could be trusted with all sorts of things can no longer be trusted with anything dangerous. Maybe.

My grandpa lived on several acres at the edge of Springfield. As a kid I remember going with him to the hardware store to buy two sticks of dynamite, wires, and two caps to blow a couple of stumps out of the ground. Then back home he showed me how to do it. Fun - and no permits needed.

I've got a little Lefever double barrel 20 gauge that, during quail seasons starting about 1953, I'd hunt with in the fields behind our house before the school bus came. If I could get a bobwhite or two real early my Mom would make me quail and eggs for breakfast. An unsupervised second grader with a shotgun would get the SWAT team rolling and make the national news now, huh?

The thing is, we had a lot of freedom and people could generally be trusted with dangerous stuff and wouldn't use it for harm. I'm not saying people were perfect - I was surprised to hear that these Connecticut shootings are now the SECOND worst school murders in this country. The worst deal was in Michigan in 1927 when an ex-school board member set off bombs in a school and killed 55 kids. No guns used in that one, so hell, I dunno.

These attacks are a big problem, but I think it's a symptom of whatever has gone wrong with our culture that there are so many of them. More restrictive laws won't help - there are more guns in this country than there are people and these gun rampages are mostly happening in places that already have strict gun laws and in violation of all of them.

The problem is some PEOPLE, not the tools they misuse to kill with. I can't help but think that in the old days a screwed-up kid like that one in Connecticut would have been institutionalized, medicated, or whatever and maybe been unable to do what he did. I mean, good golly, look at that little goof's PICTURE - he was obviously a nut. Instead, in today's culture we don't judge, we don't discriminate, and EVERYBODY AND ALL KINDS OF BEHAVIOR ARE O.K.

But everybody ISN'T O.K. and some people are dangerous. At one time an antisocial kid acting and dressing like this one did in high school would have got the attention of some shrinks years before this happened and things might have been different.

I don't know what the answer is, but it's sure not more gun-control laws. I could be trusted with a live A-bomb in my basement and so could you, probably. There are other folks who shouldn't have access to a sharp nail file because they'd hurt somebody - and our society is no longer able to tell that difference and act on it before something bad happens.

Oh yeah, that kind of common sense we once had is now called "discrimination", isn't it? So since some of us can't be trusted with dangerous things, the government needs to take those things away from everybody so as to treat everybody equally. That's the new thinking.

Trouble is, history has shown that bad as people can be as individuals, governments are often a lot worse. That armed nut-case Connecticut kid was nowhere near as dangerous in scope or as scary as a U.S. government that holds all the weapons while the people have none." 

Even if we let the commitment stand, the person will be out on the street in a short period of time. The percentage of patients who get committed and end up going into long term treatment is minuscule. And state hospitals (where they would have gone) have seriously downsized their capacities.

There are several reasons to ask someone to sign themselves in instead of letting the commitment itself stand. For one, a voluntary commitment is open-ended. I am under no obligation to release a voluntary patient after 3 days, 5 days, 2 weeks, or even 7 months (my record for having a specific person on the unit due to the need for placement and the difficulty finding a placement). I do not have to prove anything in a court about safety. And if the person asks to sign out, I have up to 3 days to determine if I believe they are a risk to themselves or others, and can commit them at that point.

Also, a patient who is voluntary is a little more likely to spend the first couple of days working on whatever brought them in, rather than saying "I don't need to be here and I'll prove it at my hearing in a couple of days".

Finally, for someone who is concerned about having his 2A rights (and presumably all his other rights) protected, you should be wary about a system that allows people to be easily committed and then lose rights indefinitely as a result. As I said, I am concerned when the psychiatric profession is being treated like an arm of law enforcement to lock people up. It is too close the recent abuses of mental health systems in places like Soviet Russia.

I will say that if I suspect someone is signing in just to try to sign out, I will not allow them to sign in. That itself is may be a legal gray area, as I believe a person who asks to sign in is supposed to be allowed to do so, although I have not been taken to task on it in a court in the 20 or so years I've been in practice.

My other observation is a response the part I highlighted but didn't bold. I think it would be tremendous step backwards to lock people away for an indeterminate period of time due to having mental illness alone. And that is the way the system used to work (when I worked for a state hospital, I met a patient who had been held since 1941, several months before WWII - by the time the laws had changed, he could not function on his own, and was essentially forgotten by all who knew him. He was perfectly cooperative with the staff and not a threat to anyone at that point. But I had nowhere to send him). And if we treated mental illness as something where people COULD be easily locked away for years on end, I would predict that people WOULD be easily locked away. After all, even your comment just above mine here expresses the concern that "Trouble is, history has shown that bad as people can be as individuals, governments are often a lot worse". Making psychiatric commitment the hidden enforcement arm of the legal system is creating the risk that we have the problem without due process (which the mental health laws of the last 40 years have largely been addressing).

jmk-brooklyn - 2012-12-18 8:28 PM

powerman - 2012-12-18 7:15 PM

jmk-brooklyn - 2012-12-18 5:54 PM

 agree with all of the above. Including the "not banning" part. How about that?

Awesome! Consensus.

So, I went to the gun store today to but two magazines. Bizarre. Guns were literally flying off the selves. I over heard a employee say they were the 2nd or 3rd largest retailer... I expected state.. he said nation... they will probably be out of stock by the end of the week. This place is HUGE. It was packed. Monday after the shooting, Colorado had it's single biggest CCW permit application submission day ever. Weird.

I'm sure they were just people Christmas shopping. Seriously, I wonder what percentage of it is "the CT shooting made me feel unsafe, so I need a gun" and how many we're "they're going to take my guns away-- better stock up!" I would normally assume that it was overwhelmingly the latter, but the number of CCW applications makes me think that at least a fair percentage were the former.

A bit of both.  During the Clinton AW ban there was talk of making it harder to get a CCW as well. 

And my concern is that you are so worried about it (the collective you) that you forget that you ALSO have an obligation to protect society from dangerous people.  People who show that they MAY be capable of commiting these heinous acts. I'm not talking about a wild arse guess that they might, or even a perfect clinical diagnoses that they might.  I'm talking about people who's loved ones fear them, who have stated they will kill, or display such anti-social behavior that it becomes obvious to everyone around them that there is a serious problem.

When my colleagues were killed by a mass murderer every single person who first came upon the scene said the same thing...."was it XXXX?"  Every single one of them was right.  That's not a damn accident. 

Go ahead and ban assault rifles, make ammunition hard to get, create stiff penalties for not being fresponsible for your guns............but leave finding, treating, and/or removing these people from our population out of the equation at your own peril.  Again, this isn't brain surgery.....you have to be freaking bat chit crazy to kill innocent people going about their daily lives who have no connection to you....why is it that when the deed is done so many people "knew" the person was capable?  We need to work that from the other end.....before people die.

So where do we put these people?  The people who have mental issues and we have reason to believe they may injure other people.  There is such a stigma nobody wants to believe they exist or it is true so surely the funds are not needed/required to have a safe place for these people to receive the treatment they need. 

We put them in institutions until they can be treated and deemed no longer dangerous by people like Gearboy. 

Or....the alternative is to leave them out to roam around and act on their delusions, while we lock our children down.  Now who's crazy?

Where are these institutions you speak of?  Most of them have closed down in the last 20 years.

I know a young woman who has been a danger to herself though not to others.  She is very troubled, hears voices has a serious diagnosis and is medicated.  There is nowhere for her to go.  There is not a place for a troubled young woman to go to get round the clock care and therapy.  She gets bad, they check her into the hospital, she gets the care she needs and the insurance company tells the hospital to kick her out after X days.  Now where does she go?  I am sure if you know of an institution her family could afford or her insurance would pay for her family would be happy to hear of it.

They don't exist anymore.  Maybe Obamacare can help.  (yes, that's snarky)

Look, we will come up with the money to lock our schools down, etc.  Why not spend it where it should be spent....providing a place for these dangerous people to be kept from society while they get treatment?

The call around the country from schools is to put Police in all schools (you haven't heard it yet......but you will...it's all we are hearing from the schools, and what they are getting from parents)......stand by to pay for 15-30% more Police Officers, and the cost to retrofit every classroom with doors that don't open into the room, unbreakable glass at ground level, etc.  Oh....we'll pay for that, but let's make sure we don't offend anyone's fragile sensibilities regarding some lunatic who openly states he hears voices and wants to harm himself or others.

shouldn't building codes already dictate that the doors open outwards? (due to means of egress in fire or emergency)

Funny thing about schools......most older buildings don't, because they would open into the hallway and smack some kid in the head.     Why do you think you always hear about teachers or students "barracading" their door.....because it opens IN. 

I have no idea about building codes.....I just know what we've seen this week.

I addressed your first point.....just decide how you want to spend the money....or, more correctly, which way you think is the best use for your money.

On your second point......yes, they had sought mental treatment for him on a number of occasions.  No, I will not give you the source of that information.

I could not agree more!