Well, then I guess he'll be too exhausted and hungry to go buying a firearm and shooting up the petrified park patrons. As long as we're being hypothetical...and all.
*and I don't even want to know where he's keeping his money.
Should mental defectives be identified?
- Thread starter cheygriz
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Well, then I guess he'll be too exhausted and hungry to go buying a firearm and shooting up the petrified park patrons. As long as we're being hypothetical...and all.
*and I don't even want to know where he's keeping his money.
Should crimminals have guns? What is "crime" anyway? Isn't crime something the state makes up to control people. Why do we even have prisons? We should do away with laws becuse they just make people into criminals. After all Stalin and Hitler had laws and they were used agaist the people. We should have no laws, only then will we truly live in a free society. 
If you had a daughter in college and a young man became obsessed with her. He felt she rejected him (not true). Thus, he threatened her life. He told a mental health professional about it with threats that sounded real.
Would you want the psychiatrist to report it? Would you want this person to go buy a gun? After your daughter was killed, would you go on the tube and regard the way the warning signs were handled as regrettable but you applaud the nonreport as it supports the RKBA?
http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/privacy/tarasoff.htm
The rhetoric of absolutism sounds great on the Internet as does the chest pounding commando rhetoric.
I suggest that if one really knows the legalisms and psychology, a reasonable system can be designed that will prevent such atrocities as Cho. The problem is that the debate starts to swirl around extremists of every ilk with no damn common sense and who only want to bellow.
Would you want the psychiatrist to report it? Would you want this person to go buy a gun? After your daughter was killed, would you go on the tube and regard the way the warning signs were handled as regrettable but you applaud the nonreport as it supports the RKBA?
http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/privacy/tarasoff.htm
The rhetoric of absolutism sounds great on the Internet as does the chest pounding commando rhetoric.
I suggest that if one really knows the legalisms and psychology, a reasonable system can be designed that will prevent such atrocities as Cho. The problem is that the debate starts to swirl around extremists of every ilk with no damn common sense and who only want to bellow.
pcosmar
member
#shooter
We could get by with a lot less. Nonviolent victimless crimes, should be done away with.
Save jail space for violent offenders.
We could get by with a lot less. Nonviolent victimless crimes, should be done away with.
Save jail space for violent offenders.
pcosmar
member
GEM
NO. Nothing will prevent another Cho. Nothing.
.
NO. Nothing will prevent another Cho. Nothing.
Yes... Do not give ANYONE the opportunity to break ANY laws... You and the pseudo-psychiatrists here have convince me... BAN all guns... lock-up anyone who MAY ever break the law.. any law. If we are all sure that we can pick every individual that will in the future be a criminal, we'll lock 'em up... we'll all be safe and sound, and 100% crime free... With an honest trustworthy government to insure our continued safety... I will then have no use for guns. BAN THEM!
Approximately 2.5-3 times as likely as someone who has NOT been a victim. Which is statistically extremely significant... sufficiently so to comprise the pool from which a very large number of offenders are drawn, but a RIDICULOUS comparison in reference to the likelihood of suicide by someone who has been previously diagnosed bi-polar, or depressive and hospitalized for suicide attempts, or homicide by an uncontrolled paranoid schizophrenic who has been previously hospitalized for aggression toward others.
Sorry, but it is still unqualified rhetoric, and proliferation of ignorance.
MrDig
Member
NO. Nothing will prevent another Cho. Nothing.
Give the Man a Cigar!!!
Yet the Reporting system as is currently defined is Woefully inadequate and misinterpreted. It really does need to be codefied and implemented better before we go enacting more legislation.
Give the Man a Cigar!!!
Yet the Reporting system as is currently defined is Woefully inadequate and misinterpreted. It really does need to be codefied and implemented better before we go enacting more legislation.
JerryM
Member
I wish there were a way to identify mentally ill. However, like most other things, no matter who was in "power" there would be abuse of it.
On balance, I do not want the so called mentally ill to be identified. If there are particular signs of violence then that would be OK, but as a general thing, NO.
Jerry
On balance, I do not want the so called mentally ill to be identified. If there are particular signs of violence then that would be OK, but as a general thing, NO.
Jerry
Being irrational is a nice way to get a gun ban. I'm very impressed. Why not open a gun store in the state prisons for the inmates? Isn't their right absolute?
Why not take the inmates of the most serious psychiatric hospitals for the dangerous for a range trip? Sign up to be a teacher's aide on that one?
As I said before, if we get the absolutists out of this, one could design reasonable systems. If that makes one not a purist of the RKBA - well - if this impresses you
Like I said, take your kid's stalker to the range and teach him how to shoot, if that seems like a good idea to you.
Why not take the inmates of the most serious psychiatric hospitals for the dangerous for a range trip? Sign up to be a teacher's aide on that one?
As I said before, if we get the absolutists out of this, one could design reasonable systems. If that makes one not a purist of the RKBA - well - if this impresses you
Like I said, take your kid's stalker to the range and teach him how to shoot, if that seems like a good idea to you.
GEM said:
Devils advocate:
Okay GEM.. Let's "put the shoe on the other foot".... YOUR daughter is in college... she is dating a young man for a month or two... He breaks up with her... she is distraught... she continues to call him, maybe watch him at school... yells at him for dating another young girl... The young man just wants it to be over and doesn't want to deal with her... He files a restraining order... A judge will certainly issue the order, as your daughter has no good reason to object to the order.. She is visibly shaken, crying upset... the court orders an "evaluation"...
Your daughter has now lost her RKBA... How will YOU sleep at night knowing she is no longer able to protect herself?
Cho was a Psycho... like many others... LAWS do not stop the Cho's of the world...only bullets do.
EDIT:
Which can also be described as 250% to 300% more likely right??? I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that it was merely a coincidence that you used the "little" numbers to describe the statistics. Pseudo-therapists are great. LOLCFriesen said:
I forget where I heard this story. But it goes something like this:
As a child I used to pray to God for a bike, morning, noon and night. Day after day, year after year. I never got a bike and I began to wonder if God hated me. Later I learned, steal the bike and pray for forgiveness.
If my daughter was being stalked and the LEO community could not/would not do anything about it I'd thump the stalker and deal with the consequences myself. I think more and more Americans are realizing they have to be more self sufficient in taking care of themselves instead of looking for someone else to blame or hide behind.
How nice. So do I.
Here's a bit of discussion from someone who DOES KNOW what he's talking about.
On Mental Health Commitments and the Virginia Tech Shooting:
Was the tragic incident at Virginia Tech the result of a failure of Virginia’s mental health system? Slate recently posted Seung-Hui Cho’s commitment papers and they are revealing: the magistrate who heard Cho’s case determined that he was “an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness,” but determined that there were “alternatives to involuntary hospitalization.”
After the shooting, Sally Satel at AEI argued that Virginia needs to reexamine its involuntary treatment laws and adopt a lower threshold for commitment, more in line with states like Arkansas and Hawai’i. Others, like Brian Jenkins at RAND, contend that the tragedy probably could not have been prevented and might not have a solution.
It’s impossible to make sense of the debate, though, without understanding the extent to which we’ve dismantled our mental health system in this country. Brick-by-brick, cell-by-cell, we deconstructed what was once a massive mental hospital complex and built in its place a huge prison.
The sheer magnitude of transformation is absolutely remarkable. It is visually shocking — especially given the exponential rise in incarceration in this country in the past thirty years. The following figure gives a snapshot. It shows the aggregate rate of institutionalization in the United States for the period 1934 to 2001, with disaggregated trend lines for mental hospitalization on the one hand and state and federal prisons on the other.
FIGURE: Rates of Institutionalization for Residents in All Mental Institutions and State and Federal Prisons in the United States (per 100,000 adults)
Although our current rates of imprisonment in state and federal prisons are extraordinarily high, the level of total institutionalization (in prisons and asylums) was higher during the 1940s and 50s.
We all know that prison populations skyrocketed nationwide beginning in 1970, rising from under 200,000 persons to more than 1.3 million in 2002. That year, in 2002, our prison rate exceeded for the first time the 600 mark (600 inmates per 100,000 adults) — by far the highest rate and raw number of incarcerated persons in the world.
But what is far less well known is that the United States as a whole institutionalized people at even higher rates in the 1940s and ’50s. If you look at rates of persons in mental hospitals and prisons per 100,000 adults, in the period between 1935 and 1963 the United States consistently institutionalized at rates above 700 per 100,000 adults — with highs of 778 in 1939 and 786 in 1955.
In a recent study, I collected state-level data on mental hospitalization for the twentieth century, and my findings are staggering. For one thing, there was a wide range of institutions. In addition to state and county public mental hospitals, there were public and private institutions for “mental defectives and epileptics” and for “the mentally retarded,” psychiatric wards in general and VA hospitals, “psychopathic hospitals,” city hospitals, and private mental hospitals.
There was also an entire parole system for persons institutionalized in mental hospitals and the parole numbers were non-negligible: on December 31, 1933, for example, 46,071 mental patients were on parole or otherwise absent, representing almost 10 percent of the total institutionalized patient population of 435,571.
One of the most perplexing things I discovered is that there is a strong statistical relationship between aggregated institutionalization (in asylums and prisons) and serious violent crime. Using state-level panel regressions spanning the entire period from 1934 to 2001, including all 50 states, and controlling for economic, demographic, and criminal justice variables, I found a large, robust, and statistically significant relationship between aggregated institutionalization and homicide rates. The findings are not sensitive to weighting by population and hold under a number of permutations, including when I aggregate jail populations as well.
I say “perplexing” because the populations in asylums and prisons were very different: residents in mental hospitals were more white, female, and older than our current prison populations. In 1966, for example, there were 560,548 first-time admissions to mental hospitals, of which 310,810 (55.4%) were male and 249,738 (or 44.6%) were female. In contrast, new admittees to state and federal prison were consistently 95% male throughout the twentieth century. There were also sharp differences in racial and age compositions.
Because of these sharply different populations, it’s not clear yet what to conclude from my study — and it’s far too early to draw public policy implications. But a few things are clear.
The first is that we should not be surprised that there are so many persons with mental illness behind bars today. We deal with perceived deviance differently than we did in the past: instead of getting treatment, persons who are viewed as deviant or dangerous are going to jail rather than mental hospitals.
The second is that we should not be surprised that our mental health systems are in crisis today. The infrastructure is simply not there. This is evident in states across the country where persons with mental illness are being housed in jails rather than treatment facilities.
What is also clear is that Seung-Hui Cho probably would have been institutionalized in the 1940s or 50s and, as a result, the Virginia Tech tragedy may not have happened. According to the New York Times, the director of the campus counseling services at Virginia Tech said of Cho: “The mental health professionals were there to assess his safety, not particularly the safety of others.” It’s unlikely we would have taken that attitude fifty years ago.
But the problem is, we would also be institutionalizing another huge swath of humanity — and it’s simply not clear how many of those other lives we would be irreparably harming in the process.
The classic texts of social theory from the 1960s — Erving Goffman on Asylums, Gerald Grob on The State and the Mentally Ill, David Rothman on The Discovery of the Asylum, Michel Foucault on Madness and Civilization, Thomas Szasz on The Myth of Mental Illness, Michael Ignatieff on A Just Measure of Pain, and many others — describe in chilling detail how closely mental institutions began to approximate the prison and the “total institution.” These critical writings should remind us of the other price that society pays when we commit and institutionalize each other. ###
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_04_29-2007_05_05.shtml#1177939981
Remember, according to the mental health folks, 1 in 4 of us is mentally ill.
You are next.
What about super tactical commandos?
What about Ron Paul?
What about true patriots, each with tattoos of the tree of liberty upon their backs, Jeff Cooper on their bellies, and trained from birth to have no other purpose but to kill with extreme prejudice all and any that threaten their way of life (other than the mentally ill of course, until such a point as they threaten it too). What about them? Could they stop Cho? What if they were also trained UFC fighters carrying vials full of ebola and canisters of compressed sarin gas? Could they stop Cho then???
You like big numbers Ride? Tell you what... do some homework.
Go find the statistics that speak to the comparative likelihood of succesful completion of suicide among bi-polar diagnosed persons with previous involuntary hospitalizations as opposed to the general population. Then go take a peek at the comparative incidences of assault, rape, homicide among diagnosed paranoid schizophrenics with previous involuntary hospitalizations involving aggression toward others as opposed to the general population.
I'm going to give you a hint. It isn't 2.5-3x "or" 250-300%
pcosmar
member
CFriesen said,
The only thing worse is a corrupt government, because the evil is on such a larger scale.
But this discussion has degenerated, as would be expected from psychology.
No, there will always be evil humans, and they will do evil things.
The only thing worse is a corrupt government, because the evil is on such a larger scale.
But this discussion has degenerated, as would be expected from psychology.
I agree, I was being sarcastic. It seems most people at THR have no problem taking guns away from criminals and trusting the judicial system to determine who is a criminal (just a personal observation). Yet when it comes to determining who is mentally unstable and a threat to society, the judicial system will be abused by shrinks and all of a sudden the court is not inappropriate or is inadequate to determine who can have a gun. Doesn’t this smell of hypocrisy?
Some have argued baring the mentally ill from having a gun is not right because they have not done anything to deserve removing this right but a criminal has. Why do we not let criminals have guns? Because it is hoped they will not use a gun in committing a crime in the future. But, just because a criminal committed a crime in the past is no guarantee they will commit one in the future and yet we still don’t want them to have the right to have a gun.
The same applies to the mentally ill, their right is taken away to reduce the chance of them committing a crime with one in the future. While they may not have committed a crime per say, they did do something or have an established history, to be presented before a judge and the court. What about severely mentally retarded people? Should they be allowed to own a gun? They may not have committed a crime, but most will agree their condition should bar them from owning a gun.
Can baring the mental ill from having a gun be abused? Of course it can. So can being falsely convicted of a crime. There needs to be safeguards in place for both. If we are willing to bar criminals who paid their debt to society from having a gun to prevent potential future violence, I see no problem using the existing infrastructure (judges, juries, and the courts) to determine and bar dangerous mentally ill patients from owning guns to prevent future violence.
JohnBT
Member
This is for the folks who asked about specifics. It's also for the folks who are running around with pitchforks and torches acting like peasants who are afraid of the dark.
Googled up at random, the following is on North Carolina's procedure and contains some specifics on the process and the behavior required to meet the definition of danger to self or others. Most states should have info available to a Google search.
_______
In North Carolina, in order to involuntarily commit a person, it must be clear that the person is mentally ill and a danger to self or others. "Danger to self or others" includes threats of suicide or suicidal gestures or plans, significant self-injury, threats of violence to others or actual behaviors that cause harm to others or to property, or a lack of self-care so serious and persistent that injury or disease is likely to result. In the presence of any of these behaviors in an emergency situation where intervention can not wait until later that day or within the next day or so, family members or friends can encourage the person to go to the nearest mental health center, hospital emergency room, or state psychiatric hospital. If the person refuses to go, the family or friends or anyone who has knowledge that the person meets the standards for inpatient commitment may petition the local magistrate. This will involve signing an affadavit stating the facts that indicate the presence of mental illness and danger to self or others. This affadavit must be filed in the magistrate's office, which is usually located in the local jail. If the magistrate determines there are reasonable grounds for inpatient commitment, a custody order will be issued, and a law enforcement officer will pick up and transport the person to a mental health center or hospital for examination. If the examining physician recommends inpatient care, the law enforcement officer will transport the person to a local psychiatric unit or the state psychiatric hospital where there will be an examination by a second physician, who may recommend involuntary comitment. The patient has a right to a court hearing within 10 days and the right to counsel (an attorney). The hearing is closed to the public, and the court records are kept confidential. If the judge does not decide that the person who was hospitalized meets standards for inpatient commitment, he will discharge the person from the hospital, though he may order outpatient commitment.
For more information about patients' rights, or if law enforcement officers or magistrates are unresponsive during psychiatric emergencies, contact the local chapter of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill or Mental Health Association.
-- www.psychiatry.unc.edu/STEP/what_to_do.htm
Googled up at random, the following is on North Carolina's procedure and contains some specifics on the process and the behavior required to meet the definition of danger to self or others. Most states should have info available to a Google search.
_______
In North Carolina, in order to involuntarily commit a person, it must be clear that the person is mentally ill and a danger to self or others. "Danger to self or others" includes threats of suicide or suicidal gestures or plans, significant self-injury, threats of violence to others or actual behaviors that cause harm to others or to property, or a lack of self-care so serious and persistent that injury or disease is likely to result. In the presence of any of these behaviors in an emergency situation where intervention can not wait until later that day or within the next day or so, family members or friends can encourage the person to go to the nearest mental health center, hospital emergency room, or state psychiatric hospital. If the person refuses to go, the family or friends or anyone who has knowledge that the person meets the standards for inpatient commitment may petition the local magistrate. This will involve signing an affadavit stating the facts that indicate the presence of mental illness and danger to self or others. This affadavit must be filed in the magistrate's office, which is usually located in the local jail. If the magistrate determines there are reasonable grounds for inpatient commitment, a custody order will be issued, and a law enforcement officer will pick up and transport the person to a mental health center or hospital for examination. If the examining physician recommends inpatient care, the law enforcement officer will transport the person to a local psychiatric unit or the state psychiatric hospital where there will be an examination by a second physician, who may recommend involuntary comitment. The patient has a right to a court hearing within 10 days and the right to counsel (an attorney). The hearing is closed to the public, and the court records are kept confidential. If the judge does not decide that the person who was hospitalized meets standards for inpatient commitment, he will discharge the person from the hospital, though he may order outpatient commitment.
For more information about patients' rights, or if law enforcement officers or magistrates are unresponsive during psychiatric emergencies, contact the local chapter of the Alliance for the Mentally Ill or Mental Health Association.
-- www.psychiatry.unc.edu/STEP/what_to_do.htm
JohnBT
Member
For those that skipped the long post above, here's the good part:
""Danger to self or others" includes threats of suicide or suicidal gestures or plans, significant self-injury, threats of violence to others or actual behaviors that cause harm to others or to property, or a lack of self-care so serious and persistent that injury or disease is likely to result."
John
""Danger to self or others" includes threats of suicide or suicidal gestures or plans, significant self-injury, threats of violence to others or actual behaviors that cause harm to others or to property, or a lack of self-care so serious and persistent that injury or disease is likely to result."
John
The only peasants with pitchforks are the ones claiming there is a psychotic maniac on every corner coming to get them and they must be stopped! When people want to make lists of the "mentally ill" because they may some day commit a crime...with or without a firearm.
If we are going to take away people's RIGHTS we may as well ban driver's license privileges to everyone because we all know they are way more likely to be in a car crash and they may kill someone someday.
CFriesen,
You are ENTIRELY missing the point... Here it is... I'll go slow...
You agreed that (your words here) "Of individuals who do sexually offend, a high proportion have been victims of sexual abuse."... My point was, do we now lock-up those that have been abused as children, simply because (again, YOUR words) "Of individuals who do sexually offend, a high proportion have been victims of sexual abuse."...
This relates to the mentally ill in that:
What portion of the mentally ill commit violent crimes as opposed to those individuals that commit the same crimes but have not been deemed "menatally ill"??
Here's a hint: it's a really small number (to your liking)
Why take the rights away from MANY because of the crimes committed by the FEW????
Does THAT make sense to you?
You are ENTIRELY missing the point... Here it is... I'll go slow...
You agreed that (your words here) "Of individuals who do sexually offend, a high proportion have been victims of sexual abuse."... My point was, do we now lock-up those that have been abused as children, simply because (again, YOUR words) "Of individuals who do sexually offend, a high proportion have been victims of sexual abuse."...
This relates to the mentally ill in that:
What portion of the mentally ill commit violent crimes as opposed to those individuals that commit the same crimes but have not been deemed "menatally ill"??
Here's a hint: it's a really small number (to your liking)
Why take the rights away from MANY because of the crimes committed by the FEW????
Does THAT make sense to you?
- Status
