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Franken pushes mental-health bill to reduce firearm violence
duluthnewstribune.com ^ | January 10, 2013 | John Lundy

Posted on 01/12/2013 7:16:23 AM PST by Tailgunner Joe

Mental-health professionals, not more guns, are the way to address school violence, Sen. Al Franken said on Wednesday.

The Minnesota Democrat, in Duluth to announce legislation related to mental health, said he hasn’t seen support for proposals to arm teachers or place armed guards in schools.

“In the discussion that I’ve had with Minnesota teachers and school officials, they don’t think that’s the solution,” Franken said after a news conference at the Federal Building in Duluth. “There’s agreement in the educational community in Minnesota … that we need more counselors, and we need more mental-health professionals in our schools.”

The Dec. 14 slaying of 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., has reawakened discussion about school safety. The National Rifle Association proposed placing armed guards in schools. In Minnesota, state Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Vernon Center, said he’ll introduce a bill to allow teachers to carry weapons.

Franken, who met with school officials in Eagan on Monday, said addressing mental-health issues early would be a better investment.

The earlier mental-health issues are addressed, the less likely they’ll be to result in violent

behavior later on, Franken said. But Minnesota lags in providing counselors, he said. The state’s high schools have one mental-health counselor for every 780 students, ranking 48th in the country in that category, he said.

The legislation Franken announced on Wednesday deals with mental-health issues when they lead to criminal behavior. Co-authored with U.S. Rep. Richard Nugent, R-Fla., the legislation would:

Authorize investment in veterans treatment courts, which serve arrested veterans who suffer from post-traumatic stress, substance addiction and other mental-health conditions.

Support police academies including curricula on mental-health issues.

Extend the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act, first passed in 2004, for another five years, continuing federal support for mental-health courts and crisis intervention teams.

Franken said the bill is an attempt to favor treatment rather than incarceration for those who are mentally ill. He cited an estimate by Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek that up to 30 percent of inmates in county jails have mental illnesses.

“Of course, we want to put people who are violent in prison,” Franken said. But treatment is more effective and less costly than prison for the mentally ill who are nonviolent, he said.


TOPICS: US: Minnesota
KEYWORDS: banglist; guncontrol; secondamendment; stuartsmalley
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1 posted on 01/12/2013 7:16:29 AM PST by Tailgunner Joe
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To: Tailgunner Joe

2 posted on 01/12/2013 7:19:11 AM PST by EEGator
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Franken knows a lot about part of it, but not much about what happened in CT. Is that from his drying out days?


3 posted on 01/12/2013 7:21:57 AM PST by muawiyah
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To: Tailgunner Joe
Look in the mirror AL...


4 posted on 01/12/2013 7:22:10 AM PST by darkwing104 (Let's get dangerous)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

If no one wants to take measures to defend the children then don’t expect me to feel sorry for anyone when the attacks occur, because I am not going to.

The things that people don’t want attacked are defended by men with guns, and it is quite clear to me that school children are not one of those things, so be it.


5 posted on 01/12/2013 7:23:22 AM PST by chris37 (Heartless.)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

6 posted on 01/12/2013 7:24:04 AM PST by PLD
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To: Tailgunner Joe

How about we RELAX the privacy rules and the HIPAA rules and allow a public safety exception?

As it is now, parents might pay for the shrink, for their 25 year old kid, but parents are not notified, automatically, if the kid tells the shrink that he is thinking about killing people!


7 posted on 01/12/2013 7:24:26 AM PST by Kansas58
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To: Tailgunner Joe
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.


Communist Goals (1963)
8 posted on 01/12/2013 7:26:28 AM PST by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: Tailgunner Joe
The Left is pretty good about playing both ends of a crisis:

Shooting at Sandy Hook?? Let's approach this in two ways:


9 posted on 01/12/2013 7:28:19 AM PST by ClearCase_guy (Nothing will change until after the war.)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Strangely enough, he might actually have a valid point. Stopped clocks and all that...


10 posted on 01/12/2013 7:29:02 AM PST by null and void (Confiscating guns enables tyranny. Don't enable Tyranny)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

The Minnesota Democrat, in Duluth to announce legislation related to mental health
*******
Such legislation will inevitably lead to more agencies, departments and bureaucracy. And more government “investments”, as liberals love to characterize spending.


11 posted on 01/12/2013 7:30:33 AM PST by Starboard
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To: cripplecreek

WHOA. And thank you for that link...


12 posted on 01/12/2013 7:31:28 AM PST by SueRae (It isn't over. In God We Trust.)
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To: Kansas58

‘mentally ill who are nonviolent’

There’s the rub...They are all non-violent, until they are violent.


13 posted on 01/12/2013 7:31:56 AM PST by Delta Dawn
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To: Tailgunner Joe

How ironic.

Here is a mental health defective elected by the mentally defective voters of the sorry state of Minnesota pushing mental health.

Of course his mental health part of the ‘bill’ is to make certain that people die at the hands of criminals with guns.

Franken is a complete asshole who appears to have the IQ of somewhere under room temperature.


14 posted on 01/12/2013 7:32:21 AM PST by IbJensen (Liberals are like Slinkies, good for nothing, but you smile as you push them down the stairs.)
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To: Tailgunner Joe
>>The Minnesota Democrat, in Duluth to announce legislation related to mental health, said he hasn’t seen support for proposals to arm teachers or place armed guards in schools.

Liar! They're calling for that here at my local high school.

15 posted on 01/12/2013 7:32:37 AM PST by pabianice (washington, dc ..)
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To: Tailgunner Joe
Reading just the headline, I thought "well, diaper boy finally got one right." Then I read the story and found this:

"Franken said the bill is an attempt to favor treatment rather than incarceration for those who are mentally ill."

So we will continue to let identified unstable individuals with a high degree of probability of committing violence to walk the streets?

16 posted on 01/12/2013 7:33:41 AM PST by Yo-Yo (Is the /sarc tag really necessary?)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Classical lib - “lets throw another government make-work program at the problem.”


17 posted on 01/12/2013 7:38:10 AM PST by circlecity
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To: Tailgunner Joe

Watch. The result of all this mental health talk will be more psychotropic drugs used. The result of that will be more mass shootings.


18 posted on 01/12/2013 7:41:10 AM PST by csmusaret (I will give Obama credit for one thing- he is living proof that familiarity breeds contempt.)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

I have no problem with better mental health screening in schools. Some of these kids need SOMEBODY to pay attention to them and let them vent their issues.

Hey, I liked my guidance counselor in school.

My fear is with mental health screening of the population at large, and the potential political abuse of some who would use the law to label their political opponents “crazy.” This is a VERY slippery slope.


19 posted on 01/12/2013 7:43:49 AM PST by ez (When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.)
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To: Tailgunner Joe

How about mental health exams for politicians?

Keeping mental cases out of elected office would save more lives than every kind of gun control imaginable.


20 posted on 01/12/2013 7:44:36 AM PST by Iron Munro (I Miss America, don't you?)
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