Looking around the internet, I can't help but observe that the people who are screaming for better mental health screening and more
proactive response from law enforcement today are the very same ones who were
cutting checks to the ACLU to prevent stigmatization and loss of freedom
because of ableist mental health discrimination last week.
Make up your ****ing mind, ya buncha ****ing hypocrites. Do you want the Department of Precrime dragging people off or not?
A truly free society is going to have some inherent safety issues. (Conversely, people get shanked in prisons all the time.)
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All for thee, none for me. that is the call of all liberals.
ReplyDeleteThe national reaction to these incidents has become preposterous. People decide we need to trample constitutional rights to prevent a future incident, while the media turns network TV and the internet into a shrine for a pathetic, murderous dirt bag, who wanted everybody to pay more attention to him. Its like they act as publisher/editor/agent for his personal brand of crazy.
ReplyDeleteIf these weirdos can count on the media for this kind of cooperation(encouragement?), it won't matter how many of my constitutional rights are crapped on, more of these defectives will do very bad things.
As it has been observed before, the enemies of freedom will never let a tragedy go to waste, regardless of how illogical, unrealistic, or absurd they may sound.
ReplyDeleteOne could also note that the laws set forth by the usual suspects in the aftermath of Sandy Hook have been in force in California for quite some time. 10 round magazine limits, bans on features that make people uncomfortable, restrictive purchase laws, etc. All in force.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet it still happened.
Not counting himself, he killed just as many folks using something sharp and pointy as he did with a handgun and yet the coverage is all about the shooting. Isn't that odd??? I read somewhere that he had 41-ea CA legal 10 round magazines. Does it bother the mag limit folks that a crazy man just made them look stupid and ineffectual?
ReplyDeleteSo this guy is in therapy 14 of his 22 years and this is the result. Hmmmm.....
ReplyDeleteOne of the brightest psychiatrists I ever met once told me, "If there was a cure for personality disorders, there would be no crime."
Naw, Bill, that just gives them encouragement to demand new laws restricting and/or registering the magazines owned by us mere peasants, like they're trying in Connecticut.
ReplyDeleteThe banners, fail to notice that a 10 round magazine would suffice for 10 unarmed, helpless victims.
ReplyDeleteNo, I think most are aware, and will try to go lower than 10 given the opportunity. Apparently it's better to reduce the victim per magazine ratio than it is to take on the whole helpless victim problem.
DeleteI saw someone comment somewhere this weekend that we were supposed to have a discussion on mental health and gun rights after Sandy Hook, but we hadn't had the gun rights conversation yet and we needed to. I seem to recall the mental health discussion being forgotten since there was some Congressional action on gun rights and gun rights trumped liberal night terrors.
ReplyDeleteNone of these people has any kind of consistency of position--it's whatever they feel like arguing today.
ReplyDeleteRemember George Bush was an idiotic chimp or an evil supergenius depending on the day of the week? Well, that's what's going on here.
Not so much-
ReplyDeletehttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2013/06/murder_rate_in_prison_is_it_safer_to_be_jailed_than_free.html
And not NEARLY so much if you're a man aged 18-30.
Excellent post...
ReplyDeleteSays what I have been mumbling since I read that they passed the NICS Improvement Act in 2007. The problem is that same politicians that will be calling for more gun control declined to fund the gun control they already got...
Only one of the two main TV news reported on it.
ReplyDeleteBut probably because at the same time four people were shot and killed at the Jewish museum in Brussels and not to not give the spoilt brat from California any publicity.
From the National Institute for Mental Health, "nearly two thirds of jail inmates (64.2 percent) satisfying the criteria for a mental health problem currently or in the previous year."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nimh.nih.gov/statistics/1DOJ.shtml
We did not "deinstitutionalize" the mentally ill, we just changed the type of institution after they exhibited behavior that was harmful to others.
Should they be surprised that their proposals gained by the ACLU in court have brought forth poisonous fruit? They should, but being Leftist means never having to say you're sorry, or even admit causation. The new laws haven't gone hard enough or deep enough -- sorry, Far enough or comprehensive enough.
ReplyDeleteFine Tam, but I have to point out that as the owner of an evil BMW your hands are not clean here. Is that why you haven't mentioned the car he drove?
ReplyDeleteAdmit it, you're in the pocket of Big Bimmer, right?
Clayton Cramer wrote, "My Brother Ron" about mental health care in the US, and especially about paranoid schizophrenia, the illness most of these psycho killers have. He points out that the unwilling institutionalization of someone who didn't have it coming was actually very rare, as in, he couldn't find a documented case. It boils down more to feel-good and money issues causing the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. Or, as pointed out above, mostly moving them into prisons.
ReplyDeleteYou may have Dr. Sonya Friedman has been on all the usual news outlets declaring that the problems are the Constitution, the Y chromosome, and a "dangerous drug," testosterone, and suggests that the problem could be resolved if we just did away with that pesky old Constitution, and took away all those nasty old guns, and gave the cops unlimited powers to lock up anybody about whom they get an anonymous tip and hold them forever without charges on the say-so of "mental health experts," by which I assume she means people like her.
ReplyDeleteThe killer posted this ten-minute-long threat days before his murder spree. I seem to recall hearing that the cops DID pick him up, and they DID have him interviewed by "mental health professionals," who DID pronounce him A-OK and turn him loose less than 72 hours before he started killing.
As an aside, when I listen to this effeminate, squeaky-voiced, chinless twerp, I don't come away with the impression that his greatest problem was an excess of testosterone. Excessive love for the sound of his own voice, maybe.
As for psychology, well, I'm dating myself here, of course, but I am old enough to remember when Hinckley tried to kill President Reagan, and I followed his trial thereafter, during which the public was treated to the very education spectacle of the defense's hired team of "mental health experts" claiming that Mr. Hinckley was just a way-gone daddy-o, voices in his head, he did the bad brown acid, cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, and couldn't be held responsible for his actions and really ought to be turned loose, because you can't punish people for being sick, man. Don't you really want to live in a society where someone can try to kill the leader of the Free World and be back on the street with a clean criminal record two days later?
And the prosecution's team of "expert psychologists and psychiatrists" denied this vehemently and declared that Hinckley was absolutely 100% in his right mind, absolutely 100% sane and cognizant of the difference between right and wrong. When I think of sanity, that's a concept that I associate with attempting to murder a man to impress some skanky Hollyweird actress. Right?
After the jury rendered its NGRI verdict and the trial entered its sentencing phase, we got to see those selfsame "experts" hired by the defense and the prosecution swap their positions and swap their opinions on Hinckley's mental state.
The defense's hired shrinks argued that Hinckley was a sane, productive citizen, and he had been miraculously cured of his violent tendencies and could be released without danger to the public.
And the prosecution's hired shrinks said nuh-uh, Hinckley is crazier than a soup sandwich and y'all are gonna have to make him stand in a hole and build a prison, or a psych ward on top of him and lock him up until the day he dies because he is just that dangerous and crazy.
I was only twelve or thirteen years old, but I was looking at the TV screen and yelling "this is bullshit." In the 30+ years following, I have seen nothing to contradict this.
So, what we learn from this is, 1, there are professional shrinks out there who want a juicy lifetime government sinecure and unlimited life-and-death power over people who are to be stripped of all rights of citizenship and brought before them for judgment, but this could never be abused, ever. And 2, "mental health experts" really suck at figuring out who's dangerous and who's not. But we knew that.
Oh, come on. We have had multiple cases in recent years where the mental health people saw red flags (Jared Loughner, James Holmes, Nidal Hassan), reported it to the police or other authorities, and nothing was done.
ReplyDeleteWe need to be able to commit dangerous people, even against their will, if the psychiatrists say that those individuals are a danger to themselves or others.
A large part of the problem is that we don't actually have very good screening tools for separating dangerously crazy from the common and garden variety. The mental health folks who screened this guy did the same for forty thousand others over the last ten years, none of whom snapped and went on a murder spree. How many of them would you be willing to lock up to get him? How long would you be willing to lock them up for?
ReplyDeleteThrow another potato in the pot, Instalanche coming to dinner!
ReplyDeleteour founders promised us a free society, not a safe one.
ReplyDeletenowhere in the bill of rights does it enumerate a right to safety. only to the freedom to essentially be left the hell alone.
I prefer messy liberty to enslaved safety any day.