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.
Franken knows a lot about part of it, but not much about what happened in CT. Is that from his drying out days?
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.
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!
Shooting at Sandy Hook?? Let's approach this in two ways:
Strangely enough, he might actually have a valid point. Stopped clocks and all that...
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.
WHOA. And thank you for that link...
‘mentally ill who are nonviolent’
There’s the rub...They are all non-violent, until they are violent.
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.
Liar! They're calling for that here at my local high school.
"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?
Classical lib - “lets throw another government make-work program at the problem.”
Watch. The result of all this mental health talk will be more psychotropic drugs used. The result of that will be more mass shootings.
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.
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.
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