As a gunowner, I am worried that this incident will cause the legislatures to enact more stringent laws to deny our basic rights.
As someone who worked in the mental health field, I am now worried that people are going to demand that mentally ill people be detained and restricted from exercising their basic rights. I have done involuntary admissions before and it is a difficult and lengthy process, which is as it should be. You are depriving someone of their freedom based on a potential danger to themselves or others. In many cases they have not done anything serious, but may have indicated that they want to do something.
I have no idea what Cho's records indicate, so I certainly can't speak with any kind of authority. That being said, I would wait before assuming that he fell through the cracks and that someone released him when they shouldn't have. I hope that this incident isn't used as an excuse to open up everyone's medical records to governmental scrutiny to determine who is mentally able to own guns. Do we really want to go there?
As someone who worked in the mental health field, I am now worried that people are going to demand that mentally ill people be detained and restricted from exercising their basic rights. I have done involuntary admissions before and it is a difficult and lengthy process, which is as it should be. You are depriving someone of their freedom based on a potential danger to themselves or others. In many cases they have not done anything serious, but may have indicated that they want to do something.
I have no idea what Cho's records indicate, so I certainly can't speak with any kind of authority. That being said, I would wait before assuming that he fell through the cracks and that someone released him when they shouldn't have. I hope that this incident isn't used as an excuse to open up everyone's medical records to governmental scrutiny to determine who is mentally able to own guns. Do we really want to go there?