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If we had $1 for every time a kid threatened to kill one of their siblings, we could pay off the federal debt.
The brother reportedly called the Police when he found the shooter's threat to shoot him on his FB page. This was classified as a terrorist threat. The shooter was recommended for anger management therapy or something along those lines. There's an enormous gap between what people post on FB and walking into a school with weapons and enough ammunition to take out half the student body.
How does anyone objectively predict the future?
Sometimes you can't, but we could do a better job at trying. I don't know all the details--all of that came out since I've read the articles. That's why I raised the questions--did he have an evaluation at that time, and was he still released without treatment? He was evidently on medication, but he told Tuffs that he quit taking his medication--did the family or someone else know about it? If he's bipolar, how had he reacted before when he was cycling through episodes? Had his behavior become increasingly worse? Had the therapist or his family expressed concerns? I"m not trying to blame anyone. I think we have a situation in this country where we don't have enough follow through with mentally ill people who need more help and supervision. It's a disease--not a character flaw.
Threatening your brother is one thing--my kids would all be locked up if that's all it took to get an involuntary commitment--but was there reason to believe that he would follow through on the threat? Have there been other instances where he's threatened others since then, or did this all just happen out of the blue? Has he ever been violent or suicidal in the past? A mental health professional would evaluate those factors before action was taken--no judge or professional is going to put someone through an involuntary emergency evaluation without reason. Saying "I want to kill myself" or "I'm going to kill my brother" as a joke or because you're mad or upset is one thing, but if you have a plan to do those things, and the materials available to do it, and particularly if there have been other attempts and the behavior is escalating, it's very serious. Back when I was working in that field, if a client told my staff that they were going to kill themselves, and upon investigation a therapist found that they had a concrete plan and the materials available, that was enough to put them in the hospital. I am NOT a therapist--I was the executive director, and I had a clinical director who ran the counseling program--so someone with a clinical background could shed more light on this than I can.
These type of lunatics should be locked up in an institution, like they used to do before the PC police got their way. The meds they gave them there were for the protection of the "zookeepers", not the public at large. The PC police make the mistake of believing the animals will keep taking the meds on their own. Most of us know better than that.
What type of lunatic? Easy to say when looking through the rear view mirror.
This NYT piece, written in 1984 traces the evolution of mental health care in the U.S. to the 1950's.
Follow the money. The states and the federal government chose to discontinue funding state institutions.
How exactly can anyone objectively determine someone's potential for future violence in absence of prior violence? Heck, based on posts to this forum, many feel those who voted for the other team are insane. How much more in incremental taxes are you willing to spend to lock up every person that is deemed capable of future violence? Shall we revisit the tax tiers that existed back in the 50's-60's?
Follow the money. The states and the federal government chose to discontinue funding state institutions.
How exactly can anyone objectively determine someone's potential for future violence in absence of prior violence? Heck, based on posts to this forum, many feel those who voted for the other team are insane. How much more in incremental taxes are you willing to spend to lock up every person that is deemed capable of future violence? Shall we revisit the tax tiers that existed back in the 50's-60's?
The flip side is that we've gutted community based mental health programs, so lots of the mentally ill just fall through the cracks. There has to be a happy medium between locking people up for life (most of the mentally ill are just fine living in the community with treatment) and providing no care or vastly inadequate care.
The flip side is that we've gutted community based mental health programs, so lots of the mentally ill just fall through the cracks. There has to be a happy medium between locking people up for life and providing no care or vastly inadequate care.
All people need to do is pay for it, in the form of increased state taxes.
Antoinette Tuff, the school employee at McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Atlanta, talked a suicidal gunman (who'd already exchanged fire with police) to put his weapons down and surrender before he could hurt any of the children at the elementary school. Her strength and calm composure under incredible stress is amazing--she handled the situation pretty much like you would a crisis call on a suicide hotline, but she was in the thick of it, knowing that he might kill her at any moment as well. I'm thinking THIS is the kind of training we need to offer school employees to deal with crisis situations--how to DEESCALATE the situation by staying calm, getting the disturbed person to talk about themselves and keep talking, listening and relating to them, and by being reassuring and letting them know you care and you're trying to help them until help can come. If she had pulled out a gun and started firing, there's a pretty good chance she would have been shot and killed herself, and if the gunman hadn't been killed, he could have proceeded through the school killing kids and teachers. It might not work in every situation, but it sure worked in this one. That type of crisis intervention training is something that could EASILY be broadly replicated in schools across the country, for use with both disturbed students and intruders.
You're missing the key point here, which is suicidal. This guy, by all accounts, did not go to the school with the intent of killing kids. The intent was to create a situation where he could feel the center of attention and be killed himself.
If someone pulls a gun on you and demands your wallet, he might shoot you and take it anyway if you refuse. But if you hand over the wallet, you haven't defused a violent situation. The intent was to get the wallet, not to kill you. If a serial killer has you at gunpoint and you offer him your wallet, he's going to shoot you anyway.
Now there is no question that Antoinette Tuff is a hero. She heartily deserves all the praise she gets.
The point I'm making is that the situation says nothing about gun control. This situation was the equivalent of handing the mugger your wallet. The disturbed guy was given what he wanted in a nonviolent way. If he had actually gone there with the express purpose of shooting children, nothing anybody said would have calmed him down.
All people need to do is pay for it, in the form of increased state taxes.
Then, like everything else in life, it becomes a matter of paying for what you want. If they want potentially dangerous people to have access to treatment and prevention programs, they have to be willing to pay for it. Efficient government is critical, but smaller government is not always more efficient, or more beneficial to the country and communities. Those who say the answer is to lock everyone up don't seem to understand that institutions are a million times more expensive option than broader based community mental health care, and that in the past, institutionalization violated the constitutional rights of thousands of patients who would have been just fine living in the community with treatment and support.
You're missing the key point here, which is suicidal. This guy, by all accounts, did not go to the school with the intent of killing kids. The intent was to create a situation where he could feel the center of attention and be killed himself.
If someone pulls a gun on you and demands your wallet, he might shoot you and take it anyway if you refuse. But if you hand over the wallet, you haven't defused a violent situation. The intent was to get the wallet, not to kill you. If a serial killer has you at gunpoint and you offer him your wallet, he's going to shoot you anyway.
Now there is no question that Antoinette Tuff is a hero. She heartily deserves all the praise she gets.
The point I'm making is that the situation says nothing about gun control. This situation was the equivalent of handing the mugger your wallet. The disturbed guy was given what he wanted in a nonviolent way. If he had actually gone there with the express purpose of shooting children, nothing anybody said would have calmed him down.
If his only intent was to kill HIMSELF, he could have done that with one shot in a parking lot. He went into a school with 500 rounds of ammo. You're jumping to conclusions that you shouldn't jump to. His plan will all come out in the wash, but I think it's fair to assume at this point that he planned on taking others--whether it was kids, police, school personnel, or all of the above--out with him.
Maybe its time we take initiative. With all of the resources we have it is not difficult to pick out the ones who are mentally disturbed.
How do you "pick" them out without infringing on rights? Forced psych evaluations?
What do you plan on doing if you find somebody who is mentally disturbed?
How do you determine if one can or will act on a "bad thought?"
We all have gotten upset at someone cutting us off or something, and we may have thought how nice it would be to hurt them, so what, is that OK since you wont "act" on it?
There are two factors that you have to take into consideration when talking about this subject.
first in a nation of 300 million + people, the chance that someone will do something crazy gets more and more likely the more people there are.
Second, while that reality does not mean a greater percentage of the population will do something bad, the fact that we have instant access to "news" at a level never seen before, we know more about every little thing that went unreported in previous years.
I do think there is cause to make some smart changes to laws that can save the lives of innocents and the lives of people suffering from mental illness. However, we shoud NOT over-react and create laws that send us back to a time when people suffering from a sickness (mental illness is a sickness just like cancer or any other serious illness) were often abused.
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