We don't need gun registration, we need psychiatric registration

[ESB 247]

Why was Maine shooter allowed to have guns? Questions swirl in wake of massacre. (msn.com)

We don't need gun registration; we need psychiatric registration.  Not only those who have been committed to psychiatric hospital, but those taking or have taken drugs with homicidal or suicidal thoughts or tendencies as a side effect.  Guns are not the problem, mental health and those with issues are.  If gun companies can be held liable, pharmaceutical companies should be held liable anytime someone who has taken their drugs with suicidal or homicidal thoughts goes on a rampage.    

 

"Authorities at the state and federal level have not said that Card’s history of mental illness should have triggered laws that kept him from owning guns. There was nothing on Card’s record before the shooting that would have kept him from passing a federal background check to buy a gun, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said in a statement."

 

"Generally, though, not everyone who gets mental health treatment at a facility is considered involuntarily committed. That’s a determination legally made by a court or a board, which then communicates it to another state body tasked with sending that information to the federal background-check system maintained by the FBI.  Each state has an agency that should report it, but it’s not legally required everywhere, he said. "

"Jonathan Crisp, an army lawyer for two decades before starting a criminal defense practice, said when soldiers are committed involuntarily to mental health facilities by others in the chain of command, it is a “reportable” event under Army regulations that triggers a requirement to alert others, including the FBI. 

'If they took him and he didn’t want to go and he refused to be admitted, it’s a slam dunk,' Crisp said. 'This should have been reported.'"

 

Basically this person made several threats that was documented, was involuntarily committed, was supposed to have been reported to the FBI, but was not which allowed him to get and keep guns.  This needs to be the focus of gun control laws. Not banning guns, not gun registration.  

 

[CMJeepster 2,778]

But gun laws work!

[JeepGunner 109]

So they failed to enforce the law about involuntary commitment ergo you want more laws?

[CMJeepster 2,778]

1 hour ago, JeepGunner said:

So they failed to enforce the law about involuntary commitment ergo you want more laws?

That's how "they" work.

[JeepGunner 109]

37 minutes ago, CMJeepster said:

That's how "they" work.

Yep, but can't tell if the op is being serious or sarcastic.

[Scorpio64 5,156]

1 hour ago, JeepGunner said:

ergo you want more laws?

I don't think the OP is suggesting more laws will work.  I believe the OP is saying;  Just enforce the laws that are on the books now.  If the bureaucrats and administrative departments in law enforcement did their jobs according the the laws we already have, Card should have had his firearms taken. 

The federal government and its subordinate agencies responsible for our security, particularly the FBI, failed America YET AGAIN! 

[1LtCAP 4,264]

On 11/2/2023 at 9:00 AM, ESB said:

Why was Maine shooter allowed to have guns? Questions swirl in wake of massacre. (msn.com)

We don't need gun registration; we need psychiatric registration.  Not only those who have been committed to psychiatric hospital, but those taking or have taken drugs with homicidal or suicidal thoughts or tendencies as a side effect.  Guns are not the problem, mental health and those with issues are.  If gun companies can be held liable, pharmaceutical companies should be held liable anytime someone who has taken their drugs with suicidal or homicidal thoughts goes on a rampage.    

 

"Authorities at the state and federal level have not said that Card’s history of mental illness should have triggered laws that kept him from owning guns. There was nothing on Card’s record before the shooting that would have kept him from passing a federal background check to buy a gun, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said in a statement."

 

"Generally, though, not everyone who gets mental health treatment at a facility is considered involuntarily committed. That’s a determination legally made by a court or a board, which then communicates it to another state body tasked with sending that information to the federal background-check system maintained by the FBI.  Each state has an agency that should report it, but it’s not legally required everywhere, he said. "

"Jonathan Crisp, an army lawyer for two decades before starting a criminal defense practice, said when soldiers are committed involuntarily to mental health facilities by others in the chain of command, it is a “reportable” event under Army regulations that triggers a requirement to alert others, including the FBI. 

'If they took him and he didn’t want to go and he refused to be admitted, it’s a slam dunk,' Crisp said. 'This should have been reported.'"

 

Basically this person made several threats that was documented, was involuntarily committed, was supposed to have been reported to the FBI, but was not which allowed him to get and keep guns.  This needs to be the focus of gun control laws. Not banning guns, not gun registration.  

 

except for that involuntary commitment.......

[45Doll 5,877]

On 11/2/2023 at 9:16 AM, CMJeepster said:

But gun laws work!

It does appear the murder laws aren't working.

/SarcOff/

[Mrs. Peel 7,157]

On 11/2/2023 at 9:00 AM, ESB said:

We don't need gun registration; we need psychiatric registration.  Not only those who have been committed to psychiatric hospital, but those taking or have taken drugs with homicidal or suicidal thoughts or tendencies as a side effect.  Guns are not the problem, mental health and those with issues are.  If gun companies can be held liable, pharmaceutical companies should be held liable anytime someone who has taken their drugs with suicidal or homicidal thoughts goes on a rampage.    

Don't really disagree with any of that. But I think the problem is even bigger in that we need to completely re-build the mental health infrastructure! Most of the old psych hospitals at the state level across the country have been torn down in recent decades... but were never adequately replaced as they were supposed to be with community-based centers. As a result, we have fewer dedicated psych beds today than we did in the 1950's, despite having a much larger population. This causes very practical problems - like doctors will often hesitate to recommend commitment because they know all the beds in their local area are filled. There's also pressure on the institutions that do have psych beds to discharge people as quickly as possible, because there's a line waiting to get in. It also means that jails and prisons have become the new de facto psych hospitals, even though they are wholly unequipped to deal with that population. The dismantling of psych hospitals has also contributed to the flourishing of homeless populations in our cities (many of those folks suffer from chronic serious mental illness). So, the lack of psych beds has many tentacles... each of which is a problem in its own right.

Really addressing the mental illness problem would require a major investment in infrastructure... staffing... etc. No one seems willing to even broach it, much less execute on those kinds of expensive plans. Though my argument would be that the cost would be well worth it - we would save both lives and dollars in the long-run. 

[father-of-three 243]

Has it been confirmed that Card was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital?  An evaluation and 2 week stay does not always mean involuntary.  I work in the field and sometimes...no, often... psychiatric lingo gets ambiguous.  Often just because a person sounds like they should be involuntarily committed to a hosptal, does not mean that actually happens.  I have seen many reluctantly voluntary patients over the years.  New Jersey has a higher standard than other states, which I disagree with.

 

On the flip side, IF he was in fact involuntary in New York, I do question the possibility of that information not getting to a Maine background check.

[CMJeepster 2,778]

1 hour ago, Mrs. Peel said:

Don't really disagree with any of that. But I think the problem is even bigger in that we need to completely re-build the mental health infrastructure! Most of the old psych hospitals at the state level across the country have been torn down in recent decades... but were never adequately replaced as they were supposed to be with community-based centers. As a result, we have fewer dedicated psych beds today than we did in the 1950's, despite having a much larger population. This causes very practical problems - like doctors will often hesitate to recommend commitment because they know all the beds in their local area are filled. There's also pressure on the institutions that do have psych beds to discharge people as quickly as possible, because there's a line waiting to get in.

Pork Roll issue aside, it's the current catch and release policies, IMO, that are fueling this, along with insurance and greed from care providers.

[1LtCAP 4,264]

3 hours ago, father-of-three said:

Has it been confirmed that Card was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital?  An evaluation and 2 week stay does not always mean involuntary.  I work in the field and sometimes...no, often... psychiatric lingo gets ambiguous.  Often just because a person sounds like they should be involuntarily committed to a hosptal, does not mean that actually happens.  I have seen many reluctantly voluntary patients over the years.  New Jersey has a higher standard than other states, which I disagree with.

 

On the flip side, IF he was in fact involuntary in New York, I do question the possibility of that information not getting to a Maine background check.

LEWISTON, Maine — The Army reservist who killed 18 people and wounded at least a dozen more last week was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital in New York this summer after exhibiting erratic behavior during training, a hospital official told the Globe on Tuesday.

It was the first confirmation that Robert R. Card II’s two-week stay at the hospital in July was involuntary.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/10/31/metro/gunman-had-been-involuntarily-committed-military-hospital/

[JackDaWack 2,895]

It's been shown that we have nearly zero long term care facilities for mentally ill people unless they are committed for crimes.

All of them have been mostly closed down,  short term facilities replaced them where people like this guy are let go after 2 weeks because they have no compelling need or reseources to hold him. There are supposed to be levels of care that now just fall on the individual to follow up with. It would be up to the individual to continue any form of care.

Thats not inherently bad, and doesn't indicate a "broken" system. 

What is clear, there seems to be little continuity between state and national sytemes for background checks and mental health records. 

[RegRasc1 20]

I'm a little buzzed, so I apologize I'm advance if my thoughts don't sound coherent or complete.

This whole mental health crisis is completely contrived and manufactured.  Are there people with screws loose?  Of course.   But how many of them are truly fucked up versus the Adderall kids?

If, as a country, we put an ounce into reestablishing strong core family values as we did for fighting for LGBT2ZQ!∆¢! rights we wouldn't have shitheads like the Nashville shooter or Sandy Hook.

The lack of core family values has led kids to seek acceptance in outside forces like Facebook and their ilk that are far more influential than a single working mom and part time dad can ever be.

This isn't an issue of more beds and more hospitals.  It's straight out of Full Metal Jacket. What is your major malfunction?  Didn't Mommy and Daddy love you enough?

This can all be traced back to the free love generation of the 60's and women's lib.  This is when the family structure began to break down.  Don't get me wrong, their are more than their fair share of shitty fathers out there, but it always has been socially accepted that father don't know dick about parenting and that it was left to the mothers.

There is far more to this, but I just can't expand beyond what I've already typed at this point.  As I mentioned earlier, I'm a little buzzed.

I consider this community highly intelligent so I hope you can see my train of thought.

 

 

[JeepGunner 109]

We devolved from a society that used to love and care for our families and neighbors to one mostly of apathy and monetary pursuit.

A lot of people with serious mental issues aren't being treated, just encouraged in their delusions imo.

[ESB 247]

On 11/10/2023 at 4:58 PM, Mrs. Peel said:

Don't really disagree with any of that. But I think the problem is even bigger in that we need to completely re-build the mental health infrastructure! Most of the old psych hospitals at the state level across the country have been torn down in recent decades... but were never adequately replaced as they were supposed to be with community-based centers. As a result, we have fewer dedicated psych beds today than we did in the 1950's, despite having a much larger population. This causes very practical problems - like doctors will often hesitate to recommend commitment because they know all the beds in their local area are filled. There's also pressure on the institutions that do have psych beds to discharge people as quickly as possible, because there's a line waiting to get in. It also means that jails and prisons have become the new de facto psych hospitals, even though they are wholly unequipped to deal with that population. The dismantling of psych hospitals has also contributed to the flourishing of homeless populations in our cities (many of those folks suffer from chronic serious mental illness). So, the lack of psych beds has many tentacles... each of which is a problem in its own right.

Really addressing the mental illness problem would require a major investment in infrastructure... staffing... etc. No one seems willing to even broach it, much less execute on those kinds of expensive plans. Though my argument would be that the cost would be well worth it - we would save both lives and dollars in the long-run. 

This is actually what I was getting at.  Why where mental health facilities torn down and not replaced?  Because it is more lucrative to continually treat with drugs.  More the 1/3rd of Americans have been prescribed anti-depressants.  Many drugs have suicidal or homicidal thoughts as side effects.  Big pharma needs to be held accountable, not gun manufacturers.  

But big pharma will not be held accountable because they are the largest lobbying industry, spending twice as much on buying politicians as the 2nd biggest industry.  

[Scorpio64 5,156]

38 minutes ago, ESB said:

Why where mental health facilities torn down and not replaced?

My mom was a psychiatric nurse for 20 years and I'd heard all kinds of fucked up stories.  In a nutshell, ha ha, nut shell...  anyway, to put it simply, imprisoning people for being crazy had become politically unpopular because of the horror stories of abuse at the "asylums".  One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest had a tremendous social impact and put all mental institutions into question.

 

[Mrs. Peel 7,157]

On 11/15/2023 at 10:03 PM, Scorpio64 said:

My mom was a psychiatric nurse for 20 years and I'd heard all kinds of fucked up stories.  In a nutshell, ha ha, nut shell...  anyway, to put it simply, imprisoning people for being crazy had become politically unpopular because of the horror stories of abuse at the "asylums".  One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest had a tremendous social impact and put all mental institutions into question.

Hey... my mom was a career psych nurse, too! Takes a special kind of person to work with that population.... 

There were indeed some terrible abuses in the old state psych hospitals. But they should have fixed the abuses, rather than decimating the system without proper replacement. There were other factors, too... such as advancements in psych drugs that experts (wrongly as it turned out) believed would reduce the need for hospitalizations more than they actually did... and the rise of the powerful patient rights movement that, well-intended as it was, has had terrible unintended consequences.

Basically, in the effort to fix earlier problems, mental health activists were able to swing the pendulum so far that if went too far in the opposition direction IMO. Now we have a woefully inadequate # of psych beds, and too many seriously mentally ill people bouncing between our jails/prisons, emergency rooms, and homeless encampments. It's hard to argue that what we have today is a more humane or civilized solution, because it's actually not.