Here's what I think....as if it matters.... (Page 14)

Something that really bugs me about the reporting of this whole thing is how the story changes so often.

For hours, in fact almost the entire day Friday it was reported and "confirmed" that the whacko used two 9mm handguns and that was what was found inside the school. There was reportedly an AR15 in the trunk of his mom's car in the parking lot but it was not used.

How in the heck does it go from that to 1 9mm, 1 10mm and then the rifle was the primary weapon? 

You can start building me a tin foil hat but either something weird is going on or we have a lot of very over zealous news agencies that should shut up until they have the facts correct. 

Just seems odd to me that the story swings that wildly and now all anyone can talk about is AR15's. AR's account for very few deaths when compared to handguns. Why is all the talk centered on the AR? Easy target? Been done before so easy to get done again?

I would suggest that the media/powers that be (probably one and the same!) don't want to focus on the real issue which is the mental state of this man (I will not call him boy he's 20 - could be married with kids)

and could it have been dealt with before it got to this - maybe.

I believe those that pose the most danger to society in the mental health stakes - are those kids that go through school - loners, outsiders, who get to the stage where they are so unhappy they have nothing to lose - they wanna die anyway - they wanna go out with some noise and some attention and these acts are perpetrated.

I think we all had the 'odd' person at school - I certainly had one in elementary school, he committed suicide at 18 - no he didn't take anyone with him, but even so probably could have been dealt with.  Back then no school psychologists.

Don't know the answer....but these are the ones I fear.

And by the time the 'facts' come out, the event is too long ago - we havent forgotten but it's not longer newsworthy.

A nationwide, mandatory psychological assessment or a comprehensive background check of persons who are either potential customers or owners of registered firearms just may be the answer we need to prevent another school shooting spree.

If Ms. Lanza had been forced to undergo a psychological assessment test before purchasing additional firearms or assault weapons, she would've been prevented from doing so, and authorities could've investigated whether or not she or any family member, was a danger to themselves or others. Why do I say that? Because Ms. Lanza had grown increasing paranoid as the years progressed and had she been evaluated, they would've found cause to investigate whether or not she was eligible to purchase assault weapons and keep them stored within the home. They could've required all gun-owners to store their assault weapons in an environment, outside of the home and guarded by other law enforcements. Anyway...

Predictive policing is possible. It's doable, and it can prevent people from accessing a gun and using deadly force. It could also decrease the number of domestic homocides due to firearms within the home. All they have to do is put a computer system in place, whereby they can predict the liklihood of violence within a home that has a registered gun-owner. I just read up on an article about Los Angelos cops who were using a system similar to one featured in the movie "Minority Report" and I believe that if we could duplicate it, and include comprehensive background checks and along with yearly pscyhological assessments for registered gun-owners, that we could positively affect change in the number of deaths by assault weapons.

I understand (and this is not for you per se) that everyone wants to live in a free country and I understand safety regulations are an impingement on the rights of the few eccentrics who use and collect them as hobbies, but I can honestly say that I'd rather have these safety measures put in place than for a person to "freely" walk into a school and "freely" kill 27 people, including his own mother (Ms. Lanza).

You are joking right? Yearly assessments? I don't think so. And this would not have prevented Ms. Lanza from anything. She was a sane "responsible" law abiding person. Obviously how responsible is up for debate with guns in her house with her son... but not sure what type of checking would need to happen to catch all those things. And I promise you you are not getting yearly psychological assessments of gun owners.

Even if people know answering "yes" to something will deny them, then guess what they are going to put down. So you fill out a form, mark all your answers... then a team is going to check your home, check your background, see who is living with you, and then you will undergo a psychological assessment. And then when your brother in law looses his job and comes lives with you for a bit... do you have to get him cleared so he can crash on your couch.. and he will have to have an assessment.... that isn't going to happen.

And just FYI... there is no "registry" for gun owners. If you buy a gun from a FFL, then that gun went to you... but you can sell them and buy all the private guns you want and nothing is "registered".

Whether she was sane is a matter of opinion.

Considering Ms. Lanza had been showing increasing signs of paranoa during the last few months of her life (hoarding bottles of water and food, assault weapons, etc.), I doubt she would've passed a yearly psychological evaluation test. I also question her lapse of judgment (which also is a sign of mental distress) in keeping assault weapons within reach of a disturbed family member. In any event, to reiterate my earlier post, similar to thousands of domestic homocides, she was killed by an assault weapon within the home and like far too many tragic cases, the perp responsible for her murder was a family member, her son. Is a yearly psychological evaluation for all gun owners excessive? Absolutely not. When it comes to the safety of people, asking people to take a yearly psych test is only a small petance; and if it doesn't work or if changes are needed, then so be it, but to sit by and twiddle our thumbs while we search or knock down possible answers is unacceptable. I'd rather take a step towards doing something about it, then doing nothing at all. Wouldn't anyone!

A comprehensive background check (which would've included not only her but any resident or family member within the home) may have also prevented her murder and the death of 26 Sandy Hook Elementary members, especially upon the purchase of additional firearms or assault weapons. Wtih predictive policing, we just might be able to decrease the number of homocides by assault weapons. So I say, we try anything we could to get it done.

Thousands do what is bolded, it's called disaster preparedness... some just like to be called preppers.

She wasn't killed with an "assault" weapon... she was killed with a pistol.... at least that is the story today. We don't have all the details so I am not going to guess as to his or her mental states.

But on what grounds do you think you can give people psych evals to exercise their rights?

It isn't "excessive"... it is fantasy. You would have the same chance of telling all the gun owners to turn in their weapons. It isn't going to happen.

And what is the point of passing a law that is unenforceable. You can't "search" family members that are not buying guns... you can't check them out for no reason. You can't tell people who can and can't live in their house, or expect them to have them "checked out" when they do. What about visitors... It isn't enforceable.

And you can say what you want about "predictive" policing.. this isn't Hollywood. the backbone of our system is innocent till proven guilty. You can't be denied your rights because we think maybe you might do something some day. Even being committed to a hospital... you have to be a danger in the near future, right now. And that is temporary.

Welcome to the site BTW.

Thanks for this thread Leftbrain although I have to admit I only read the first couple of pages and the last couple of pages. I get too depressed.  I like your repeated question:

 "How do we protect our children in light of 400,000,000 guns and the 2nd amendment?"

In light of that number of guns, more laws around guns seems a bit silly.

I've read folks saying that, "Law abiding gun owners are not the problem" however as far as I know, none of the recent mass killers had criminal records.  None of these "law abiding" gun owners is a problem until they pull the trigger on their first bystander, movie goer or six year old.

Had any of these shooters, been diagnosed as mentally ill?  I have no proof one way or the other but the line between bat chit crazy and mentally stable seems to run right down the middle of everyone of us.  I've heard that people in-love exhibit signs of insanity (probably built in genetics to keep the planet populated).  People being spurned in love seem even crazier.  Teenagers probably don't have that line down the middle simple because they tend towards the 100% nuts.

I'm using people here but perhaps I should use "men" for this. (Women may have the bat chit crazy thing going too but in times of stress, we tend to do unspeakable things in regard to chocolate consumption instead of with guns).  There was a female mass killer in 2006 but that was the only one in the last 30 years.

I would love to see more education/media on how to keep your family safe from your own family.  Perhaps the NRA could step up to the plate and have seminars on gun security and people that are most at risk to themselves (mostly young men?).  When my 14 year old foster brother moved into the house, my Dad took all his guns up to the neighbors; we didn't have a safe and I don't know if trigger locks were available in 1975.  My foster brother wasn't mentally ill; he was just an adolescent with a horrible life. 

Okay I'm going back on my thought on no more laws and thinking: are there laws that guns have to be locked up or could there be?  Of course someone with a torch/hacksaw/whatever could still get to the guns but it could cut down on accessibility of guns.  Also as far as who pays for more measures of gun safety/national security, how about the gun owners must buy gun security devices when they buy a gun?

Annie, I do not think that line between sane and killing spree is anywhere as close as it seems right now. Of the numbers I did the math on... <1 out of 1 million gun owners have gone on a killing spree... and that is mass murders over the last 30 years and just current gun owners... I have no idea how many gun owners there have been over the last 30 years.

There are no laws that your guns have to be locked up. First, to have your guns stolen... someone has to break the law enter your house and commit another crime of theft... not exactly your fault when you expect your house to be safe. I mean who is committing the foul here? Second, it is simply unenforceable. The law would punish after the fact, not keep it from happening. We could charge Ms. Lanza with unsecured firearms, but she got 4 bullets to the face... not sure what else we can do about that.

At least with domestic violence.. that really has gone a lonf way from how it used to be... used to just be accepted as "private". But now if somone lays a finger on anyone, someone goes to jail.

I don't always find myself in agreement with powerman, but on the issue of mental health evaluations here I do. Less on the idea of restricting rights and more so on the "boots on the ground" details of a proposed evaluation. Hoarding water and food is a tricky area. I try to keep between 3 and 7 days worth of bottled water for potential issues like bad storms. I have a similar amount of foods on hand, partly for the same situation and partly for backpacking. At what point does it become excessive? And who is going to check? And what about that constitutes dangerousness? I have a friend who collects firearms - what crosses the line between collecting (and using) versus hoarding?

About 20-25% of people will have a treatable mental illness in the course of any given year. Do ALL mental illness preclude gun ownership? For how long? What if they already own guns?

We have a long history now of making commitment contingent not just on the presence of mental illness, but on the presence of dangerousness as well. And most people never need inpatient care - does every person who visits a therapist lose their guns? Even the military allows people to sign up as long as they are not currently on meds for the most part (I've had to indicate that a person I treated is no longer in treatment and not been on meds for a year, even though they had a documented history of inpatient treatment and substance abuse - they still got in). So the civilians are going to be held to a HIGHER standard than the military?

The problem with saying in a broad way that we should do a mental health eval on everyone is that it is like saying we should ban all guns. Too broad, too simplistic, and in the end, not likely to result in an outcome that really addresses the problems.

Heres the problem I see with all this stuff.... every one is more than happy to infringe on other peoples rights as long as it does not effect them.

Let's just take away gun owners rights and coral them because I don't like guns and they should not have any.

Lets put all mentally ill people on a list and commit them and visit their homes because I'm not mentally ill.

Securing our schools will cost ME too much so that is just a stupid idea.

And if everyone else would raise their kids better, I would be much happier.

Just like tax and spend... I'm OK if you spend other peoples money, and I'm OK with you taxing who ever you want as long as it isn't me.

I think we are well on our way to getting this problem resolved.

And THAT'S where you and I differ.  I'm sorry, I think that's crap.  I have watched it repeatedly, and to horrible ends.  If you are committed in some way, because a family member, a friend, a police officer, etc......can articulate a threat you made to kill yourself or others, you absolutely need inpatient care.  Look around.....that's NOT normal.  That person needs to be locked up/committed/put away (whatever you want to call it) until someone can now articulate that you think it's a bad idea to kill yourself or others....LIKE THE REST OF US!!!!!!

Geez.....how hard is this?

Here is another thing I want to know.... mass shootings get all the ratings, and we want to ban guns because a very statistically small occurrence. When these talks come up, inner city crime is used to some how make it out that all American streets are strewn with gun violence. Then, as with the NRA, we wonder if it is OK for kids to play first person shooter video games....

Yet nobody blinks an eye or dares to call out Rap. Rap groups/singer regularly open speak of violence and crime... straight up murder.. bragging incessantly about how they have no problem gunning anyone down anytime... over and over... of course in between shooting they regularly beat their women and anyone else they don't like... and yet why have I not heard this brought up once???

We are concerned with gun violence right.... oh ya, that right, 1st Amendment rights... can't be regulated, and we can't silence those that would incite others to violence... who would dare.

I'm a hunter, but I don't think the 2nd amendment exists to protect my hunting rights
or my right to self protection against criminals. 

I think it's there as a last check against a tyrannical government.

To be clear, I don't think we have such a government now.
However, there's nothing to prevent the development of that in the future.

My understanding of the SCOTUS ruling D.C. v Heller in 2008 made it clear that the 2nd amendment
protects the right of the individual citizen, not a collective militia. And further gives the individual the right to own appropriate firearms should such a conflict be necessary.

It seems to me that those that are looking to ban 30 round magazines, they mistakenly called "clips", or semi-auto carbines, using the made up nomenclature "assault weapons", are looking for a feel good emotional answer to the problem rather than a rational one that will have an effect.

Take a hunting shotgun such as the semi-auto Remington 1100, one of the most popular waterfowling shoguns over the past half century. Load it with 00 buckshot shells, each holding 8 or 9 pellets similar to some bullets used in 9mm cartridges, and you have a lethal weapon in the hands of evil doers capably of unleashing from 40 to 50 of these pellets in a matter of seconds. Much more devastating to my mind than what a semi-auto carbine rifle can do in less than expert hands.

Are you going to ban the Remington 1100 shotgun as well?
Or 00 buckshot that is used for deer hunting? 

To my mind, the answer is to work to change the culture that forms this kind of evil violence.

Re-read what I wrote and you highlighted. Most people with mental illness do not need to be hospitalized. Most of them never make a threat against safety (their own, or anyone else's). Commitment laws require more than just having a mental illness- they require the presence of dangerousness. Not just "I could kill you!" or "I wish I was dead!", but some sort of evidence that there is (a) an actual threat and (b) mental illness. In the old days, it took next to no evidence of either to end up being committed. You could be committed because you acted "oddly" - appeared disheveled in public; or were gay; or were drunk in public (evidence of "dipsomania") - with little recourse to being discharged except essentially at the whim of the attending psychiatrist. No need to appear dangerous. 

Even under current laws, I routinely see in the ER someone having a petition filed by a partner/spouse or "friend", which does not warrant being upheld. A petitioner can be literally anyone, saying anything they want. It is the job of the evaluation to determine if it warrants being upheld - that is why (in PA, at least), it takes either 2 physicians (one to petition, one to examine), or 3 people (a petitioner - anyone, literally; a crisis intervention person to uphold the warrant of the petition, and a physician to complete the examination), not just the word of one person. 

A petitioner who is a cop, or a mental health or medical professional, will be taken much more seriously. You should not want to see people locked up MORE easily than on the word of a disgruntled friend/neighbor/coworker. Would you really want Nervous Nellie your coworker to able to commit you after you say at the office "I could have killed that guy" after a bad meeting, or complaining about the guy who cut you off on your commute? With no other evidence than her petition that "He said he could kill that guy, and I know he has guns! I think he is going to go postal in the office!"?

And not to derail your post GB you are making with LB, which I understand...  I would also like to say MOST gun owners do not shoot people... actually, that is quite an understatement...

99.99% of gun owners don't shoot people. You would have to carry it out two more decimal places to get to the number of gun owners that don't commit homicide.

I would suspect if you did the math... the number would probably be similar for your field... the trick is, how do we focus our efforts to catch the... .0003%... and not the other 99.99%???

30,000 gun deaths per year, 100,000 people shot per year puts the percentage a wee bit higher than your math states.

300,000,000 guns 'out there' (though significantly fewer owners most own more than one weapon and some have entire arsenals)

More ridiculousness and grandstanding.  You know damn well that doesn't happen and isn't what I'm talking about.  You can state all you want that cops and immediate family are taken muchmore seriously than others......and all the while you know that they are basically the ONLY people signing affidavits for involuntary committal.  Look, you let too many people out who shouldn't be let out....that's the end of the story.  I realize that your space is limited....but that should be something that your profession is addressing.

I (the collective I) send you bat chit crazy, dangerous people.....you (the collective you) let them out as soon as you can remotely justify it to make room for the next one....I get it, I'm not blaming you personally....just don't try to defend the system  to me, I deal with it every day.  It's broken!

Great, you moved the decimal point one place......still less of a problem than incompetent doctors.....I'm just saying.  See what happens when we just throw junk at the wall?

Hey, I counted today....I own 43 guns......is that an "arsenal"? 

Hey Tritoy - how do we address this problem?

"Preventable Medical Errors – The Sixth Biggest Killer in America
According to the Institute of Medicine, preventable medical errors kill as many as 98,000 
Americans everyyear, and injure countless more. If the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) were 
to include preventable medical errors as a category, it would be the sixth leading cause of death 
in America. Yet despite this, much of the medical negligence policy debate has revolved around 
indirect factors, such as doctors’ insurance premiums. Any discussion of medical negligence 
that does not involve preventable medical errors ignores the fundamental problem. Preventing 
medical errors will dramatically lower health care costs, reduce doctors’ insurance premiums, and 
protect the health and well-being of patients"

I'm sorry to do that to you....but if you want to start throwing numbers around, you won't win.

In the interest of fairness, here's the entire link:

 http://www.justice.org/resources/Medical_Negligence_Primer.pdf 

A little over 30,000 actually. Roughly 10,000 are homicides... 19,000 are suicides... that's not homicide as I said. Roughly 18,000 suicides do not involve a gun.

The best figures I could come up with are between 30-40% of Americans own guns.. but obviously nobody really knows. At 30%... thats around a 100,000,000... now... care to run the math on 10,000 homicides per 100,000,000 gun owners? At 40%... we are looking at an even smaller %.

Sorry the numbers do not shape up to paint gun owners as crazed killers...  I would say love to hear your reasoning of why we should punish 10,000 to "ATTEMPT" to stop one. If that is how you feel, then locking up 10,000 people with mental illness to catch one should not be a problem.

Huh....I never thought of it that way, but that's an excellent point.  

If we can prevent another Sandyhook by locking up 10,000 people who could be considered dangerous, should we not do it?  

If we KNOW that one person among that 10,000 will commit the next mass murder, even though we don't know which one, should we not commit them all?  I would submit that locking them all up is a better solution than a gun ban that means nothing.  

Who would be for it?

As our President and Vice President said, if it would save just one life wouldn't it be worth it?

Merry Christmas everyone, friends and frenimies alike. Wishing all ya all the always!

1 - It isn't what happens now, but it absolutely IS what happened prior to the overhaul of the mental health commitment laws beginning in the 1960's. And in part BECAUSE those kinds of things happened. And for certain sub-groups (e.g. the mentally retarded), I have seen that happen well into the 1980's. So when you start talking about locking up the mentally ill in the broadest possible terms, that is what we used to do.

2 - Not necessarily immediate family. Don't conflate them with the police or a petition submitted by the ER personnel. I have seen plenty of times that the family was not any more reliable than the patient; and in a lot of cases, even less so. Not counting all the times we get the husband petitioning against the wife one month and then the wife against the husband the next. All for basically nothing.

3 - Again, not always. I have had petitions placed by schools (as a child psychiatrist); by employers in a few cases; and by other agency-type people (CYS, or crisis intervention) - granted the latter are treated more or less like the cops in terms of how seriously we will take the petition.

4 - As I mentioned elsewhere, commitments are time limited. You have to meet specific criteria to commit someone. And while some places, the commitment hearings essentially rubber-stamp the petitions, in others, the PD does a good job proving that there is insufficient evidence that the person meets those criteria. 

It may well be that in certain places, people get let out too soon. If so, it is likely because there are sicker people waiting to get treatment, who cannot be admitted due to lack of psychiatric beds. (And frankly, the same thing happens in the criminal justice system - I personally have seen it from the MH end of things). We spend a fortune building prisons and jails, and next to nothing on mental health. Until we start to pay for facilities and staffing (with appropriate training), the bed shortage will continue.

If you need a more graphic example of how little we value mental health care in this country, go to your local hospital and see how the psych unit looks compared to the medical floors. Go to your local university, and look at the buildings for training psychologists compared to the business school - it is clear where the money is spent, and which graduates have more money to send back to the old alma mater. 

Finally, I would again reiterate that the way the laws are written, in response to past abuses in the system, a person CANNOT be held in a psychiatric unit against their will if they do not have a treatable mental disorder, that is related to dangerous behaviors. Most patients are NOT dangerous. Some are not treatable (mental health facilities are not a substitute for incarcerations).  Few places allow outpatient commitments (which have their own set of problems) that would allow us (collectively) to keep someone in treatment who is fine when they take their meds and dangerous when they do not. If they are given treatment in the hospital, recover their thinking and are no longer an acute danger, we CANNOT keep them. Don't like it? Get the laws changed. But be aware of the history of HOW those laws came into being - it becomes relevant in attempting to reverse them - both in terms of how easily it would be done and why it might not be a great idea.