http://www.shotgunnews.com/2012/08/02/more-holmes-weve-seen-this-movie-before/

Denver media are now reporting that the psychiatrist treating accused mass murderer James Holmes warned a “threat assessment team” at the University of Colorado-Denver about him more than a month before he went on a shooting rampage.

As reported by Reuters: “The Denver Post reported that Fenton raised her concerns about Holmes with the university’s Behavioral Evaluation and Threat Assessment team in early June. Denver’s KMGH-TV, also citing unnamed sources, said school officials did not contact Aurora police before the shooting and that no action was taken because Holmes was in the process of dropping out of school.”

Now, I’m not one to take the word of “unnamed sources” as gospel, but if true, what we have here is a bureaucracy that said, “he’s a dangerous nut, but soon enough he won’t be our dangerous nut, so let’s let this one ride.”

You hate to apply 20/20 hindsight to tragic cases like this. But it seems in every one there is a point at which someone, if he’d taken the time and effort, could have thwarted a horrific crime. Why not? In some cases, it’s just laziness or indifference. But in others, it’s a fear of lawsuits or regulatory punishment.

No group in America stands more for privacy than gun owners. About once a month, I get a letter asking that SGN be delivered in a plain brown wrapper, and I know lots of newsstand buyers won’t subscribe because they don’t want the mailman knowing what they’re reading.

But when someone’s not in his right mind, the presumption of privacy has to be weighed against the right of the rest of us to keep breathing. If officials at UC-D shirked their duty on grounds Holmes was not their problem, they failed, catastrophically, the community they serve.

 

 

 

Read more: http://www.shotgunnews.com/2012/08/02/more-holmes-weve-seen-this-movie-before/#ixzz238tpR8lb

 

by Robert W. Hunnicutt • July 30, 2012 • Comments (9)

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Whenever we have a mass shooting, and it’s a great pity we have to say “whenever,” there are three inevitable stages in characterizing the criminal:

1. Friends and neighbors say, “he seemed perfectly normal; nice guy, just kept to himself.”

2. One or more acquaintances or relations says, “there was just something a little off about him. He made me nervous and I can’t say why.”

3. It turns out he was a loon who popped Prozac like Pez and had left detailed plans for his killing spree.

We have now reached Stage 3 with Aurora, Colo., mass murderer James Holmes. It turns out that he was under the care of a university psychiatrist whose specialty is schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder. As of this writing, nothing has emerged about psychotropic drugs he might have been prescribed, but no one who’s been around the gun community for long will be surprised to hear that he may have been medicated for mental problems.

SGN columnist Clayton E. Cramer is intimately familiar with severe psychological problems, as you can surmise from the title of his latest book:

My Brother Ron: A Personal and Social History of the Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill. When not doing yeoman work in support of Second Amendment rights, he’s been involved for many years in the debate over deinstitutionalization, which is pretty much a 10-cent word for dumping crazy people on the streets, where they freeze to death, poop in the San Francisco subway until the escalators won’t work and occasionally murder people by the job lot.

As you can imagine, he has some very useful insights about the Aurora crime, noting, for example:

“There is usually advance warning, as there was with the rampage at Virginia Tech, at Cafe Racer, and most of the other mass murders done by mentally ill people. But our society chooses to make it impossible to take any preventative action about an individual with serious mental illness problems until blood is dripping out of bodies. Unless, of course, that preventative action is something very broad, like gun control laws, which apply to everyone. This unwillingness to look at individuals and their problems is absurd.”

If you like his columns in SGN, you owe it to yourself to check out his blog: http://claytonecramer.blogspot.com/ where you can enjoy his insights on guns and a variety of other subjects, from astronomy to writing software code.

 

 

Read more: http://www.shotgunnews.com/2012/07/30/james-holmes-reaching-the-third-stage/#ixzz238utIkYW

my question is, how did he pass a background check in the 1st place,, seems goverment law failed once again..

All these laws in place and they cannot even keep a nutcase from purchasing a weapon...

the best "prevention" was the gun range owner who said "nah, can't be a member here...something not right."

the best "prevention" was the gun range owner who said "nah, can't be a member here...something not right."

 

I Agree, but you KNOW that if the Club owner had made any type of report about this guy, he would have been villified in our own community.

It mirrors the Laughtner case. The University wanted him gone , and it was documented that he was at risk for commiting an act of mass campus violence. Campus police handled it , they got Laughtner out of their hair without notifying official authorities which keeps the crime on campus booklets the parents research looking minimal ..and he goes and buys weapons legally. Laiughtner had "arrests" by campus "police" . Had they called the real police on him he would have had a record.

 

Let's not even get into Penn State. But it does seem that campus secrecy in the name of preserving the crime stats of a University has acted as a shroud for more than one known potential mentally ill individual , which allowed them to slip through the cracks and kept out of mainstream law.

I, for one, am happy the gun comunity is starting to talk about this. It is, as anyone on this forum knows, a subject I have strong feelings about.

 

The mental health care system is broken and is not going to be fixed anytime soon. There is no mechanism in the united states that would quickly identify a person that is determined to be a danger to themselves or others to NICS. It does not exist.

 

It is mostly broken from being under funded. It is broken because drug companies have manufactured solutions and managed health care pays for the pills because it is cheaper than keeping a person in a hospital.

 

Most insurance provides for all of 14 visits to a psychiatrist for a year. If you need more than that you either pay a big fat premium, pay cash or get to take a pill.

 

But guess what? Not only do paranoids not like to take pills, they frequently can't hold a job. So no insurance in the first place. That means the only thing left to them is state agencies with eroding budgets. Those agencies are also happy to give a pill and send you on your way. And, in case we think that more funding solves ALL the problems, this guy had money, had acces to mental health care and was in studying in a field that actualy recognizes psychotic begavior.

 

The truth is, if being institutionalized is the only way to get a hit in a NICS check, that means you have to be put away before you commit a crime.

 

Now, knowing that, how exactly is the public going to get to a point where the mentally ill will be blocked as effectively as felons through a NICS check?

 

Please discuss

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

After the Laughtner shooting , Obama did mention the mental healthcare crisis in the same sentence as gun laws. None of his followers latched on to anything but the gun law part though , at least not in the media.

It mirrors the Laughtner case. The University wanted him gone , and it was documented that he was at risk for commiting an act of mass campus violence. Campus police handled it , they got Laughtner out of their hair without notifying official authorities which keeps the crime on campus booklets the parents research looking minimal ..and he goes and buys weapons legally. Laiughtner had "arrests" by campus "police" . Had they called the real police on him he would have had a record.

 

Let's not even get into Penn State. But it does seem that campus secrecy in the name of preserving the crime stats of a University has acted as a shroud for more than one known potential mentally ill individual , which allowed them to slip through the cracks and kept out of mainstream law.

 

Colleges are not the only ones cooking the books. Lets not forget in New Jersey, a home invasion is just a burglary. I won't even go into NYC crime reporting methodology.

It also is annoying that the the last year any institution tried to keep track of how many civilians were able to prevent crimes with a gun was 1993. The estimate at that time was as little as 68,000 to as much as over 100,000 people stopped an act of violence against them in its tracks because the potential victim produced a weapon . In the majority of cases not even having to use it.

 

"They" hate any numbers that don't support their cause , so they just ignore it.

It mirrors the Laughtner case. The University wanted him gone , and it was documented that he was at risk for commiting an act of mass campus violence. Campus police handled it , they got Laughtner out of their hair without notifying official authorities which keeps the crime on campus booklets the parents research looking minimal ..and he goes and buys weapons legally. Laiughtner had "arrests" by campus "police" . Had they called the real police on him he would have had a record.

 

Let's not even get into Penn State. But it does seem that campus secrecy in the name of preserving the crime stats of a University has acted as a shroud for more than one known potential mentally ill individual , which allowed them to slip through the cracks and kept out of mainstream law.

 

You should see what Rowan is like. We had a murder on campus a few years ago, and they never caught the murderer. I believe it was a robbery or something, not a targeted crime, which means it could easily happen again. Of course, I've been there 2 years and didn't hear about it until a few months into my fourth semester. They keep that stuff pretty tightly under wraps. It only happened about 4 years ago also.

 

There are tons of robberies and assaults at Rowan, but you never hear about them because they don't want to scare away prospective students, so the problem only ends up getting worse. That being said, even the regular police in Stratford don't do much, after a string of car break-ins, they finally caught the guy and just let him go.

You should see what Rowan is like. We had a murder on campus a few years ago, and they never caught the murderer. I believe it was a robbery or something, not a targeted crime, which means it could easily happen again. Of course, I've been there 2 years and didn't hear about it until a few months into my fourth semester. They keep that stuff pretty tightly under wraps. It only happened about 4 years ago also.

 

There are tons of robberies and assaults at Rowan, but you never hear about them because they don't want to scare away prospective students, so the problem only ends up getting worse. That being said, even the regular police in Stratford don't do much, after a string of car break-ins, they finally caught the guy and just let him go.

 

A friend of mine was robbed at gunpoint on campus at TCNJ. It was a very long time ago since I graduated in 1998, but as I recall they kept it pretty quiet.

 

There was also a dead body discovered on campus while I was there. They think he drank himself to death. a local Ewing guy. That, they couldn't keep quiet.

The things I hear about the Rutgers Newark campus...but never seem to read about. It is a trend , without a doubt.

The sad irony of people like Arizona killer Jared Loughner, Batman-movie killer James Holmes, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Son-of-Sam’s David Berkowitz, Ronald Reagan’s would-be-assassin John Hinkley, et al – all of them seriously mentally ill people, yet none of them received the treatment they needed until after they had killed innocent people.

 

A day after the Batman-movie shooting, my sister sent me an email where she expressed; "I'll bet once the dust is settled they find out that James Holmes was seeing a psychiatrist and they determine he's suffering from schizophrenia and is considered a danger to others."

 

Interesting read on Jared Loughner:

http://treatmentadvo...-ironic-tragedy

 

PS - Today is the anniversary of David Berkowitz’s arrest on August 10, 1977.

The sad irony of people like Arizona killer Jared Loughner, Batman-movie killer James Holmes, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Son-of-Sam’s David Berkowitz, Ronald Reagan’s would-be-assassin John Hinkley, et al – all of them seriously mentally ill people, yet none of them received the treatment they needed until after they had killed innocent people.

 

A day after the Batman-movie shooting, my sister sent me an email where she expressed; "I'll bet once the dust is settled they find out that James Holmes was seeing a psychiatrist and they determine he's suffering from schizophrenia and is considered a danger to others."

 

Interesting read on Jared Loughner:

http://treatmentadvo...-ironic-tragedy

 

PS - Today is the anniversary of David Berkowitz’s arrest on August 10, 1977.

Yet precious little is said about the Psychiatric community and the apparent shortcomings in diagnosis,treatment and managed care for such individuals. But the authorities and anti gunners fully expect some salesman with little more than a gut instinct and a cumbersome background check to weed out the crazies.......Trying to wrap my head around this concept makes me fear for my sanity.

 

 

Interesting read on Jared Loughner:

http://treatmentadvo...-ironic-tragedy

 

PS - Today is the anniversary of David Berkowitz’s arrest on August 10, 1977.

 

That is a great link Parker

Colleges are not the only ones cooking the books. Lets not forget in New Jersey, a home invasion is just a burglary. I won't even go into NYC crime reporting methodology.

 

 

A bit off topic, but if someone "invades" your home, but doesnt actually steal anything... is it still a burglary? what then does it become?

Yet precious little is said about the Psychiatric community and the apparent shortcomings in diagnosis,treatment and managed care for such individuals. But the authorities and anti gunners fully expect some salesman with little more than a gut instinct and a cumbersome background check to weed out the crazies.......Trying to wrap my head around this concept makes me fear for my sanity.

 

What it is going to take is a way for a professional Mental Health practicioner to input a name to NICS and alert authorities (all a salesman has is a NICS check, that is all it should take).

 

THAT is a hard sell to the Pro-gun community. As I have seen even in this forum not to mention across the web, is a fear that anti-gun psychiatrists will just block anyone willy nilly. It is a valid concern of course, but somehow the country is going to have to do more than just give lip service to blocking the mentally ill from obtaining weapons.

A bit off topic, but if someone "invades" your home, but doesnt actually steal anything... is it still a burglary? what then does it become?

 

Breaking and Entering??

the strangest part to me.. honestly is this.. and I mean it without being cold hearted or anything.. but today.. over 100 people will die in a motor vehicle accident.. the point being people die.. in many cases it is preventable.. sometimes it is a lunatic with a gun.. sometimes it is a dunk driver... sometimes it is some obese sloth who's heart gives out.. sometimes it is drugs.. but for some reason... when it is a gun.. the world stops and everyone freaks out.. I really don't understand.. to me it just illustrates how illogical society is as a whole..

my question is, how did he pass a background check in the 1st place,, seems goverment law failed once again..

All these laws in place and they cannot even keep a nutcase from purchasing a weapon...

 

Most people in New Jersey would consider you a nutcase if you told them how you really felt about firearms ownership and possession. Including a simple majority of MD General Practitioners in NJ, and 90% of the AMA members nationwide. And if you threw in you weren't voting for Obama, forget it. Red flags all over the place.

 

13 people were killed. That day, 100 people were killed in auto accidents. 20 people were murdered without firearms.

 

The 100 people killed in auto accidents and the 20 people murdered without firearms happens every single day of the year, not the two or three or four times a year that 5 or 12 or 20 people are killed in sensationalized episodes.

 

The only way for you to get what you propose is to tighten firearms laws and to more closely link firearms ownership with various peoples' opinions of you. Doctors, friends, enemies, employers, former employers, etc.

 

Throw all of our rights and 340 million people under the bus to save maybe 5 lives out of 50 lost every year to these types of episodes.

 

I'm seeing a lot of this coming from this NJGunForums lately. You guys are no longer worried about criminals having guns, or criminals ignoring gun laws in the first place, now your are demanding further scrutiny and laws for legal gun owners.

 

Welcome to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

 

We have not received your pledged contribution yet. Please go here to finalize your membership via PayPal or credit card:

 

http://handguncontrol.org/

 

 

What it is going to take is a way for a professional Mental Health practicioner to input a name to NICS and alert authorities (all a salesman has is a NICS check, that is all it should take).

 

THAT is a hard sell to the Pro-gun community. As I have seen even in this forum not to mention across the web, is a fear that anti-gun psychiatrists will just block anyone willy nilly. It is a valid concern of course, but somehow the country is going to have to do more than just give lip service to blocking the mentally ill from obtaining weapons.

 

^See what I mean?

the strangest part to me.. honestly is this.. and I mean it without being cold hearted or anything.. but today.. over 100 people will die in a motor vehicle accident.. the point being people die.. in many cases it is preventable.. sometimes it is a lunatic with a gun.. sometimes it is a dunk driver... sometimes it is some obese sloth who's heart gives out.. sometimes it is drugs.. but for some reason... when it is a gun.. the world stops and everyone freaks out.. I really don't understand.. to me it just illustrates how illogical society is as a whole..

+1

+1

 

And that was my prevailing argument against my loud mouthed anti friends. Should we ban alcohol because so may people get ripped and get behind the wheel and kill people?

 

No , because that would target victims ( i.e those under the spell of an addiction) .

 

Sigh.

^See what I mean?

 

Yep. That's me! guilty as charged. Point your little niave wiggly finger right at me and hope for a witch hunt!

 

 

The facts are in front of our faces and we agree with the statements "criminals and mentally ill should not be allowed access to guns."

 

Well, get a criminal record and the NICS check bounces you. See a psyciatrist and she can talk to threat assessment teams and the police and blab to everyone she knows that this person is a danger and nothing happens. Turns out she was right.

 

It would be silly for you to disagree with the statement: "the most high profile gun related incidents of mass murder were comitted by the mentally ill." What that means is because of the mentally ill, and the resulting demands for striclter guns laws, legal - sane- gun owners are held accountable.

 

Here it is, plain and simple because complex troubles you - the mentally ill have done more to get anti-gun laws passed than any criminal but the country has no provision to block their access other than bringing them to court. Of course the colleges BETA team wanted to pass, thay had to sue.

 

So yes, you will continue hear this in this forum. I will say it over and over. If you want to pretend you are some watchdog over my free speech because you are from PA then go right ahead - order some lube too - because you will be stroking yourself for a long time.

 

 

I know it's a stretch but perhaps you might need to learn something you don't know about, like mental illness for one.

 

 

Yep. That's me! guilty as charged. Point your little niave wiggly finger right at me and hope for a witch hunt!

 

 

It sounds like you are the one on a witch hunt.

 

Well, get a criminal record and the NICS check bouces you. See a psyciatrist and she can talk to threat assessment teams and the police and blab to everyone she knows that this person is a danger and nothing happens. Turns out she was right.

 

It would be silly for you to disagree with the statement: "the most high profile gun related incidents of mass murder were comitted by the mentally ill." What that means is because of the mentally ill, and the resulting demands for striclter guns laws, legal - sane- gun owners are held accountable.

 

YOU are the one demanding stricter gun laws and/or government/medical discretion of gun ownership.

 

YOU

 

Here it is, plain and simple because complex troubles you - the mentally ill have done more to get anti-gun laws passed than any criminal but the country has no provision to block their access other than bringing them to court.

 

And it sounds like you plan to do even more to get anti-gun laws passed. The criminally ill have not done more - people like you have. People who continuously decide everything would be better if the population could be monitored more closely and firearms ownership was more carefully restricted. No crazy person ever did that. Just a few millions of your like-minded friends over the last century.

 

So yes, you will continue hear this in this forum. I will say it over and over. If you want to pretend you are some watchdog over my free speech because you are from PA then go right ahead - order some lube too - because you will be stroking yourself for a long time.

 

LOL, are you for real? I'm not sure where all this is coming from, but has anybody checked you out? That's a big long string of strange paranoia. I don't want to be the guy who didn't speak up if you do something crazy

J

It sounds like you are the one on a witch hunt.YOU are the one demanding stricter gun laws and/or government/medical discretion of gun ownership.YOUAnd it sounds like you plan to do even more to get anti-gun laws passed. The criminally ill have not done more - people like you have. People who continuously decide everything would be better if the population could be monitored more closely and firearms ownership was more carefully restricted. No crazy person ever did that. Just a few millions of your like-minded friends over the last century.LOL, are you for real? I'm not sure where all this is coming from, but has anybody checked you out? That's a big long string of strange paranoia. I don't want to be the guy who didn't speak up if you do something crazy

Typical stroke. Naive and dodgyAnything to say about the mentally ill and the what the OP posted?Or am I still a Soviet in your mind LOL!Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Bulpup,

 

You and I will never see eye to eye on this. So let's cut the crazy out of this.

 

Saying we need to more closely tie mental health to firearms ownership to prevent one or two emotionally upset people from doing something sensational in a year is ridiculous.

 

You won't catch the one or two emotionally upset people by rounding up a million of them. It doesn't work for a million criminals, it won't work for one or two people that got dumped by their girlfriend or couldn't handle the pressure of pre-med.

 

I really think that you should consider you are proposing gun control that will affect millions and a new tool in the toolbox of Obama and legislators to marginalize or refuse rights (or detain people) based on political expression.

 

You are either trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist - pandemic of mass shootings

 

Or trying to solve a problem that shouldn't exist - stop every person out of 300 million from making gun owners look bad.

 

Bottom line is, you want more gun control.

On a different note, in certain parts of the world that see violence like this as almost common practice, you hardly ever see it in the news and no one ever sensationalizes over it. One difference is that when mass shootings of innocent people occur here in the U.S., we usually call the shooters “lunatics” and “crazies.” When mass shootings of innocent people occur in 3^rd-world countries, it’s usually done by people we call “terrorists” (and they’re all lunatics).

 

Another mass shooting five days ago, in Nigeria: http://abcnews.go.co...28#.UCezjXqoyHs

Bulpup,

 

You and I will never see eye to eye on this. So let's cut the crazy out of this.

 

That would be nice

 

bottom line is, you want more gun control.

 

Great, a "bottom liner."

 

You posted a whole lot about what you think I am saying but you aren't hearing a word. You can't "bottom line" this situation. Here is a quick go at what I have already said in case anyone else wants to see if I am a Soviet or not.

1. The thread is about being warned in advance of Holmes deteriorating mental condition as put forth by an article in the Shotgun News.
   
   • His therapist's hands were tied
     

• It was said that the campus police are at fault for doing nothing
  
  • Their hands are tied because he committed no crime. To have him committed would require a lawsuit that would open the college up to a lawsuit if it failed.
    

  [*]The therapist approached the Police about Holmes.

  • Some say she was looking to see if Holmes had a police record. This may indicate that they were going to try to get evidence to have him committed. If true that course of action still would not have been in time.
    
  • She may have been trying to see if the police could arrest or intervene. Again, their hands are tied.
    

  [*]Jared Lougner's friends thought he would be a huge risk to bring to a rifle range.

  • Should they have told someone? Sure. Would it have done anything? No. Their hands are tied.
    

  [*]The school Jared Loughner attended kicked him out because they thought he was unstable. They told him he could come back after getting a clean mental evaluation

  • Should the school have done more to "stop," him? Stop what? He didn't do anything. All they did see that he was unbalanced. All they could do was release him from school. Why? Because that is all that they can do
    

We can point the finger at the Schools, the therapist, the BETA team or the campus police, but the fact is that for all they knew and saw - there was nothing they could do without due process and a trial. This is the way it is. This is the way we like it. Even the NRA and the ACLU agree on it. Even miapafox.

 

So if we all agree that a mentally ill person should not be locked up without a months long lawsuit;

 

 

How can we point fingers at campus police, threat assesment teams and individual therapists for not doing something that they can not do?

 

 

See the circular logic? It's not that we can't have it both ways, we DO have it both ways. Once you point at the aforementioned people and groups there is a whole new can of worms - questions about mental health and the limits. Point at them and you are pointing to new laws. It is a given. So either stop pointing fingers at powerless people or give them the power. Miapafox isn't going to have any of that, neither is the ACLU or the NRA and likely the rest of the country as well, since no one wants to take the time to learn about mental illness. It is a mute point.

Or is it, since the Shotgun News article is basically saying the same thing.

 

So you can't really "bottom line" the issue.

 

Well maybe I can. Bottom line is I want CCW because I actually know what can not be done to keep the mentally ill from being a danger to others.