Posted on 06/23/2014 12:43:28 PM PDT by Kaslin
The left consistently blames guns for school shootings, while mostly ignoring the big elephant in the room: mental illness. Up until the 1960s, the severely mentally ill were locked up in psychiatric hospitals, for their own good and for the protection of society. The ACLU and the left changed that, by successfully suing to get them released out onto the streets. So now, they make up much of our homeless population. From there, many have predictably ended up in our prison system. The rate of mental illness in U.S. prisons is five times greater than in the regular population, and people with serious mental illness are three to four times more likely to be violent than others.
While access to guns has decreased, there is one common denominator that most, if not all, mass shooters reflects, which is mental illness. While some liberals are finally gingerly mentioning mental illness now, most liberals dare to state the obvious - the mass shooters should have been locked up when there were telltale signs. In 2005, Virginia Special Justice Paul Barnett wrote in an order that future Virginia Tech mass shooter Seung-Hui Cho "presented an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness," but instead of committing him to an institution - which would have also removed his ability to buy firearms for his future mass shooting - he only recommended outpatient treatment. The mother of Adam Lanza, the Sandy Creek Elementary School shooter, who was also one of the victims fatally shot by him, had been making plans to have him institutionalized. The mother of Elliot Rodger, the 22-year old who went on a shooting and knifing spree in Isla Vista, Calif., last month, called the police on her son prior to the shooting incident. While in college, he tried to push a girl off a ledge.
The father of Jared Loughner- who seriously injured Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and fatally shot others in Tucson - used to disable his son’s car every night in order to stop him from leaving the house, confiscated his shotgun, and urged him to get help for his erratic and drug-addicted behavior. Lanza was heavily addicted to violent video games, and apparently refused to talk to anyone, including his dad and brother. He would communicate with his mother, whom he lived with, only over email. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who shot fellow students at Columbine High School in 1999, were both addicted to violent video games and discussed building explosives on their blog.
Many of these mass killers were no longer children. While many parents are conflicted about locking up their minor children; once those children become adults at around age 18 or so, parents need to take the tough love steps to have them committed if they believe they are a danger to society.
Loughner was 23 when he shot Congresswoman Giffords and others in Tucson. Adam Lanza was 20 when he shot students and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Seung-Hui Cho was 23 when he killed 32 people and wounded 17 others at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Elliot Rodger was 22 when he went on his killing spree in California last month.
Sadly, society has swung back so far from committing the mentally ill, that parents are given mixed signals about what to do with disturbed children. No one wants to offend parents, or mistakenly commit children who may have less severe problems - a legitimate concern - so the medical community errs on the side of not committing the seriously crazy to mental institutions.
A generic prohibition on blocking all “mentally ill” - a very broad term which could be used to hurt the innocent - from buying firearms will not fix the problem. Statistics from Colorado reveal that doing this in recent years has had only a negligible effect on violent crime. “Adding the mental health records [to the background check system] only prevented an estimated 14 violent crimes a year, or less than one half of one percent of the state’s overall violent crime.”
In order to fix this, aren’t there common denominators we all can agree upon when someone should be institutionalized? Who would not agree, looking back at the revealing early signs from most of these mass killers, is that most, if not all of these egregious examples, should have been institutionalized?
Gun laws are ignored by criminals, so increasing the number and severity of gun laws won’t solve the problem either. Many of the killers obtained their weapons illegally. Harris and Klebold had an 18-year-old friend purchase firearms for them. Lanza stole his mother’s firearms. Many of the guns used by the mass shooters were pistols or shotguns - yet the gun control crowd always clamors to restrict AR-15s or “assault weapons,” not pistols. Rodger used a knife to stab his three roommates to death.
Mass shootings today come down to a gradual deterioration in societal values, bullying innocent kids, lazy parenting, mainly due to the incredible demands today. Children are bombarded with increasing violence in video games, movies and TV shows glorifying gun violence. Their brains are at a developmental stage that is at a highly influenceable stage as teenagers. Unless parents take responsibility and limit exposure to this violent media, there is a risk that the least unstable children among us will be wrongly influenced by this garbage.
Once parents start seeing signs that they have children who are extremely mentally unstable, they need to take steps to fix the problem. And the system should support them, not negatively influence them. This isn’t going to be popular to say, but the laws must be changed to make it easier to lock people up - even against their will.
“...Time To Go Back To Institutionalizing The Severely Mentally Ill...”
Absolutely. About 85% of the Democrat Party fits that description nicely.
“Sandy Creek Elementary School shooter”
Come on, get the names right at least. That being said, I’d start with every Democrip politician
Now here is something Joe Biden can really take the lead on!
um yeah... except this time the libtards want to define ‘mentally ill’ to include those crazy people with conservative leanings....
Start with the ACLU & SPLC
The psychiatric beds and institutions no longer exist.
Plus, you’re going to be locking up 1,000,000 for the one that is the problem.
if we did this, the democRATS wouldn’t have any candidates.
I totally disagree. 100% of the Democrat party fits that description nicely.
The rate of mental illness in U.S. prisons is five times greater than in the regular population...
Should read,
The rate of mental illness in U.S. prisons is five times that in the normal, unincarcerated population, but less than that of the liberal segment of the populace...
/s
“Absolutely. About 85% of the Democrat Party fits that description nicely.”
You are too kind with your estimate. Few, if any rats, are mentally stable.
The problem seems to be the meds, they don’t take their meds. Like that “I can’t get a girlfriend” shooter Elliot Rogers, they prescribed him an anti-psychotic and being that he had an almost Obama-like ego - well maybe 0.0000000000000000000000001% the ego Obama has which is still pretty huge, he refused to take it because he felt it made him less than perfect. But you know, how do you force someone to take medication, especially if they haven’t acted out in any dangerous way?
There is something in Florida called “The Baker Act.” Any cop can have somebody institutionalized for evaluation. It almost never happens. Why? Because there’s no budget for it. If there was a budget for it the budget would get used up in no time. Do you have any idea what it costs to keep somebody to modern psychological care standards? Probably several thousand a week.
Before their release by the courts after the ACLU win these people were not treated to modern standards, they were warehoused. Most were released with a bottle of pills which they promptly threw away.
I was a kid when suddenly it wasn’t safe to walk city streets where I had felt safe before.
Support Institutionalization Now!
“The beds are there, they’re just in prisons now, and only used after the swath of destruction occurs, and sometimes not at all.”
Would you actually trust government agents with the power to preemptively lock people up?
QUOTE: “Mass shootings today come down to a gradual deterioration in societal values, bullying innocent kids, lazy parenting, mainly due to the incredible demands today. Children are bombarded with increasing violence in video games, movies and TV shows glorifying gun violence. Their brains are at a developmental stage that is at a highly influenceable stage as teenagers. Unless parents take responsibility and limit exposure to this violent media, there is a risk that the least unstable children among us will be wrongly influenced by this garbage.”
I agree with all that, but there is something glaring missing. The schools are teaching/treating boys as girls, disfunctional girls, and worse drugging boys so they might be as compliant as girls. Add that to all that above and it’s a recipe for disaster.
Properly done, I agree many of these mass killers should have been institutionalized. What bothers me is that the Rats have suggested on several occasions that veterans and Christians security threats, not far at all from arbitrarily designated “mentally ill”. On matters like this, I have confidence that the Rats will ALWAYS do the wrong thing for political advantage.
The 1962 publication of ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ did a lot to change attitudes about this. The movie compounded it.
I agree, but laws will have to be changed. It is nearly impossible for even family to get anyone forced into treatment and few will go willingly. Not only were laws changed to make it very difficult to force someone into getting help- very little money has been spent on research so most of our treatments simply don’t work- some of the meds prescribed make the person more dangerous. Mental illness has just been swept under the rug even though many lives have been ruined and lost because it is not being dealt with.
I know there were absolute horror stories about mental institutions years ago, there were reasons the changes were made. In typical liberal fashion though instead of making improvements they trashed the system and didn’t replace it with anything.
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