Would profiling "craziness" be more appropriate than regulating firearms?

This is not a snarky comment. Given that all healthcare systems employ some degree of rationing, should those who may fit a pattern of potential violent behavior be moved to the top of the list for any future universal healthcare system? If not, what are the reasons for not constructing a correlation database? Cost? Incorrect data?

Most people who violently snap exhibit observable behavior that is not subject to 4th amendment protection. Setting a pet on fire or domestic abuse charges are nothing you can really hide from. People's employment status is not some big secret either.

Are people who snap appreciably different from you and I? Should we continue to study patterns in criminal behavior or devote more resources to creating effective police responses to crisis as they occur?

More like how car insurance rates are set in a general sense.

instances of mental health interventions, even institutionalizations, but their records are sealed and protected under privacy acts such as HIPPA.
Many of the RWers are very much against allowing past mental health records become available to the law enforcement agencies who do the instant background checks for every legal firearms purchaser.
I have often wondered if this is because so many RW's have past mental health records....


mark

Cho at Virginia Tech had one of his teacher/advisors interviewed after the carnage.

The professors said she knew he had some serious mental problems but she did not want to have him committed because it could create a stigma that might follow him for life.

At the time she was trying to do him a favor I'm sure, but now she has to live the rest of her life with the "what if" questions in the back of her mind.

As long as people continue to view potential mental health issues as something to be hidden there is no realistic way to stop people from committing mass murder, guns, dynamite or trucks full of fertilizer and diesel fuel.

Sadly, the only reaction will be a series of outraged people calling for feel good bans on standard size magazines for guns.

The russians had 'mental hospitals' for dissidents.

But yeah, you're right, it's all the crazy people's fault.


How about "Register bipolars, not guns"

You could have mandatory round ups and restricted movements.


fock me, it'd be just like 1929 Bavaria!!!!!

get discharged from a state mental hospital. Several of them had been in this institution since the 1970's, and were regarded as lifetime inmates/patients. At the same time, there are some who should never be free to harm others again.
I am sorry if you feel that speculation on an idea to protect people against harm is bigoted.
If it makes you feel better, I am certain nothing will be done to change the current system because of politics.


mark

Damned slippery slope. WHO would set the guidelines? Would the *labeled* person have recourse to fight the labeling? We don't have the best history of handling potential psychiatric problems in this country, and this could well cause MORE problems because it's such a sticky area.

Regulating the guns is far easier.

n/t

I don't understand your response. Are you questioning the utility of laws?

without either letting so many slip through the cracks that the program is a waste of time and money, or infringing upon the rights of an enormous number of false positives. To put it more succinctly, I don't think we can identify "those likely to crack" with any degree of precision.

would have to involve due process.

Something along the lines of mental-health professional 'jury' to declare someone too dangerous to own guns(?). But then they should not be allowed to do alot of other things too, like walk around free in society.

:shrug:

for those who can afford treatement that is.

Yes, and I think you have made a sensible suggestion importnat because it shifts the focus from the tool to the tool-user, and that is not only appropriate its something that is overdue.

can be deadly. My neice was killed by her step grandfather. He had no mental issues until he went ballistic due to his dying wife's will that he learned would cut him out. He used the gun he had kept for "protection" of his property. He had been drinking, got furious and started shooting. He killed himself after killing my neice and wounding his wife and my neice's mother.

This guy had been law abiding and was certainly not mentally ill, just temporarily crazed. Had the gun not been there, my neice would not have died.

Not just gun crime, but all crime.

This isn't a gun issue, it's a health and economic issue.