dagblog - Comments for "Jared Loughner Is Insane (And We Just Noticed)"

Sorry to chime in late. I was

Doctor Cleveland — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 19:30:14 +0000

In reply to Jared Loughner Is Insane (And We Just Noticed)

Sorry to chime in late. I was posting from a hotel room on a holiday weekend. My bad.

I'm not interested in exonerating Loughner, as I said in the original post. Nor am I only interested in the mentally ill who might commit crimes if left untreated. I think leaving schizophrenics to suffer on the streets with their symptoms torturing them is a crime in itself.

I'm not interested in forcing people to take their meds, or in institutionalizing people against their will. I acknowledge that there is an extremely blurry and complicated line there. But I am interested in people having easy access to diagnosis and treatment. And I am interested in those people having access to diagnosis and treatment after they get too sick to go to school or hold a job. To be frank, other indistrialized countries with different health systems tend not to have lots of extravagnatly symptomatic mentally-ill people on their subways, while we view that as routine. I think many, many more people could be helped, and many become productive citizens, if we had a real metal-health safety net.

Can we afford that level of medical care as a society? I would answer with another question: how much are we paying, in real costs, by not having such a safety net?

A mentally ill person must be

cmaukonen — Sun, 29 May 2011 02:44:55 +0000

In reply to KGB's heart is in the right

A mentally ill person must be ADJUDICATED mentally ill. I have noted this fact before here without penetrating the apparent preconceived or naive notions of many thick skulled Dagbloggers.

And it is very difficult in most states to get this done. It has to be proven in front of a judge that the person involved is a danger to themselves or others by a registered psychiatrist and the person involved can have their own psychiatrist there to counter any arguments.

Adrian Lamo was sent to a

NCD — Sat, 28 May 2011 20:07:05 +0000

In reply to You seem to propose that

Adrian Lamo was sent to a hospital by police, was diagnosed with a mental illness, and his case has nothing to do with guns, or who can buy guns.

The unfortunate bottom line in America, is the system does work. The system as mandated by the NRA and its supporters.

The system: anyone can buy a gun if you have the money to pay for it. If you don't get one at a registered dealer, buy at a ATF form free gun show.

The authorities have the

kgb999 — Sat, 28 May 2011 18:56:01 +0000

In reply to But who would diagnose him,

The authorities have the power to put a person into involuntary psych evaluation specifically for the purpose of allowing health professionals to determine if the individual is a danger to himself or others (usually 72 hours). It pops up from time to time in the media when someone with resources is unhappy at being subjected to the process. Once a person finds themselves in such a situation, refusing to cooperate generally results in a two-week hold.

By the way, I am one of the "crazies". My point is that if all Americans had proper mental health care services (not to mention proper health care in general), we wouldn't need to make the point of diagnosis and treatment be a gun dealership. In a well-planned society, we'd also be diagnosing and treating folks with mental health issues who don't even want a gun.

An approach to protecting against mass murder that consists exclusively of preventing a herd of random wandering untreated insane people from accessing any way to kill other folks seems poorly thought out to me.

You seem to propose that

kgb999 — Sat, 28 May 2011 18:37:10 +0000

In reply to KGB's heart is in the right

You seem to propose that because a single clinical diagnosis isn't sufficient to curtail rights, that diagnosis becomes irrelevant to preventing the mentally ill from accessing firearms. How do you imagine that the adjudication process could possibly proceed without a diagnosis? It simply can't. Without a robust support for mental health services, which should always start with diagnosis and a treatment plan, the adjudication process is somewhat moot.

You also ignore the fact that every state I've ever checked (or been a licensed armed security guard in) also has ownership limitations based on mental sanity with additional specific requirements sometimes applying to municipalities. The question is far less cut-and-dried than you imply it to be here. In my experience, federal gun laws aren't generally the prevailing authority when it comes to real life implementation of firearm policy. The legal requirements go through at least one level of local before you even need to think about it. Which, again, is how it should be.

Of course your local college health clinic doctor cannot "take away your 'right' [sic] to get a gun." That would be absurd. Any loss of rights should most certainly involve a formalized due process with reasonable avenue for appeals, etc. But a college health clinic doctor *can* refer a case to authorities. People are involuntarily committed for psych evaluations all the time. Adrian Lamo is a recent high-profile example.

Far less people would be dying if anti-gun folks invested half the energy into making our systems work as they do into fighting against the constitution and refusing to explore any methodology for improving safety beyond blanket prohibition. Since prohibition is destined to lose every time (as it should), the dynamic leaves us with the NRA competing against the prohibitionists for who can most effectively prevent sane public policy from emerging.

KGB's heart is in the right

NCD — Sat, 28 May 2011 15:03:01 +0000

In reply to You make good points as

KGB's heart is in the right place, but he doesn't know squat about federal gun laws, or how the system works aka gun purchasing.

Diagnosed mentally ill people can buy guns.

Adjudicated mentally ill people cannot. (....they can if they check the NO box on the ATF form -have you been adjudicated mentally defective ATF Form 4473, question F...!)

A mentally ill person must be ADJUDICATED mentally ill. I have noted this fact before here without penetrating the apparent preconceived or naive notions of many thick skulled Dagbloggers. The Gun Lobby considers the right to guns is too important to be taken away by doctors alone, or merely by a doctor's diagnosis of mental illness.

Adjudicated does not mean TREAT or DIAGNOSE. Your local college health clinic doctor cannot take away your 'right' to get a gun and/or a massacre clip, nor can any other medical doctor unless:

A formal commitment of a person to a mental institution by a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority. Accordingly, persons with mental disorders who have voluntarily committed themselves to mental institutions and have not been judged by a government authority to be dangers to themselves or others, insane, or lacking mental capacity are not prohibited by federal law from possessing firearms. This is true even if such mentally ill persons are believed to be dangers to themselves or others.

But who would diagnose him,

Michael Maiello — Sat, 28 May 2011 13:58:17 +0000

In reply to Diagnosed schizophrenics

But who would diagnose him, if he refuses treatment or even evaluation? Should all prospective gun buyers have to submit to a mental health screening? Somehow I think that would never fly with the crazies, who have a powerful lobby (the bipolar lobby gives equally to both parties!).

You make good points as

Richard Day — Sat, 28 May 2011 13:55:07 +0000

In reply to Diagnosed schizophrenics

You make good points as always.

I do not wish to beat a dead horse but as O'Donnell pointed out several times on his program this crazy man was stopped as he attempted to change clips. Instead of 20 people left dead or wounded the number would have been ten.

I never intimated that Curly Rand had anything to do with the incident.

But the NRA certainly did!

We have lost the battle over guns in this country.

My problem with Paul is that one of the only good portions of the Patriot Act provided for a better tracing mechanism for following the purchase of arms on a data base.

Paul and other wackos do not like data bases for guns. We have data bases for cars for chrissakes.

Oh well.

Diagnosed schizophrenics

kgb999 — Sat, 28 May 2011 04:48:36 +0000

In reply to The poor will always be with

Diagnosed schizophrenics generally can not legally purchase guns or clips of any size regardless if they are taking their pills (at least nowhere I've specifically checked the laws, but it's difficult to run down every jurisdiction and potential circumstance). However, untreated and undiagnosed Americans who may or may not be schizophrenic can buy 'em pretty much everywhere.

The sad, simple fact is it appears nobody offered Loughner pills - or took any other approach - to "remove the voices" from his head. We likely should start by looking at this fact when seeking a way to better reduce the occurrence of armed schizophrenics. To me, in the wake of "the most sweeping healthcare overhaul in generations," if public health policy is such that crazy people remaining undiagnosed allows them access to firearms (with no change in sight), we should thank the '09 Democrats for enacting crummy public health policy, not Randy Paul.

The most logical lesson to draw from Loughner is that increased public safety calls for increased focus on diagnosing and treating people with mental illness rather than obsessing on the existence of clips arbitrarily characterized as oversized. If Loughner had been limited solely by hardware availability to 10 shots in his gun, this would have still been 10 shots (and one gun) too many - the guy is frikkin insane.

The American health system

mageduley — Fri, 27 May 2011 23:21:11 +0000

In reply to Jared Loughner Is Insane (And We Just Noticed)

The American health system has left that important work, in this case, to the criminal justice system. Loughner had to shoot people before anyone noticed how much help he needed. That doesn't excuse him, but it sure as hell indicts the rest of us.

Well some people noticed this trend. PBS Frontline did an expose back in 2005 called "The New Asylums"

You can watch it online through the PBS website here:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/