Mental health and gun violence

The last category of President Obama’s action plan on gun control is mental health and making it more available to the public.  In his plan, he states,

                “Today, less than half of children and adults with diagnosable mental health

problems receive the treatment they need. While the vast majority of Americans with a mental

illness are not violent, several recent mass shootings have highlighted how some cases of mental

illness can develop into crisis situations if individuals do not receive proper treatment.”

A perfect example of this would be the Virginia Tech Massacre of 2007.  Seung-Hui Cho was a senior student at Virginia Tech when he killed 32 people (33 including himself), injured 17, and 6 others were injured from jumping from windows to escape.  Just a few years before that in December of 2005, Cho was found "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization" by New River Valley Community Services Board.  Based on this mental health examination and because Cho was suspected of being "an imminent danger to himself or others", he was detained temporarily at Carillion St. Albans Behavioral Health Center in Radford, Virginia, pending a commitment hearing before the Montgomery County, Virginia district court.  He used a Glock 19 and a Walther .22 caliber pistol; the shocking part of it all? 

 

He passed background checks for both guns.

               

                “Virginia state law on mental health disqualifications to firearms purchases, however, is worded slightly differently from the federal statute. So the form that Virginia courts use to notify state police about a mental health disqualification addresses only the state criteria, which list two potential categories that would warrant notification to the state police: someone who was "involuntarily committed" or ruled mentally "incapacitated.”(Wikipedia)  This means that since he went to the mental health center “voluntarily”, he was never disqualified from purchasing a gun under the Brady Act.  It was also argued that while in professional care (voluntary or not) health professionals had previously stated Cho was a direct threat to himself and others, and he had been "adjudicated as a mental defective" and not reporting this to the state was in non-compliance with federal law.  Via federal law, this would have disqualified him from ever purchasing a gun. 

                If we make mental health more available to the public, and our mental health professionals actually follow through with their legal obligations to not only state laws but federal laws too, less people will fall through the cracks of our laws put in place to keep America safe.  As of right now, it is not required for states to report mental health records to the NICS, and the NICS only have about 20% of the mental health information they should.  In 1991, 2.1 million people had been involuntarily committed to a mental health institution; in that year, the NICS had record of only 402,000 people disqualified from gun ownership due to mental health issues.  This is an alarming number, and in just one case slipping through the cracks, 33 people died.

 

 

 

 

 

http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/10/politics/background-checks-mass-shootings

http://www.mayorsagainstillegalguns.org/html/local/mental-health.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seung-Hui_Cho#Court-ordered_psychiatric_assessment

 

Mental health impact

The Virginia Tech shooting clearly illuminates the flaws in our background check system, more specifically on the question of a person’s mental health.  The Gun Control Act we currently have in place restricts people from purchasing a firearm if they have been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital or adjudicated as a mental defective (which today has almost no clinical meaning and is offensive).  With such an obvious loophole in the area of mental health, it seems as though it should be easy to mend this, right?  The main thing to think about is how do we amend the disqualifications?  What happens when we do?

When talking about people with severe mental illness, we must keep in mind that it is a statistically rare and virtually unpredictable event.  Furthermore, even when comparing crimes committed by people with mental illness only chalks up to 3-5% of all total crimes (not just gun-related crimes).  So what could we change?  What could make it so that people like Cho don’t slip through the loopholes of background checks?  If we change the restrictions to anyone with a mental illness or on medication cannot purchase a firearm?  That would be a huge part of the U.S. being restricted; keeping in mind that depression is considered a mental illness.

                “Mental disorders are common in the United States and internationally. An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.¹ When applied to the 2004 U.S. Census residential population estimate for ages 18 and older, this figure translates to 57.7 million people.”  According to the National Institute of Mental Illness.  If we put ‘flags’ on people because they have a treatable mental health issue, what would that do to the person?  That’s like saying a person is never allowed to go outside again once they get the chicken pox, because it is contagious when you have it.  It’s absurd!  This would cause a sense of alienation, loss of privacy, and could potentially cause someone to not seek help for a treatable health condition without the “social cost”.  The right to privacy is there for a reason, and with so many conditions being considered a mental illness, it is hard to put specific guidelines on what needs to be shared.  Gun violence in mental health patients is practically impossible to predict who to watch more closely.

http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1707738

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16877653

 

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=sQxNVhV-W7oC&oi=fnd&pg=PA33&dq=mental+health+and+gun+violence&ots=M_ct8DHYdx&sig=S8A32P9SIB49APZLnnHYcq0Ruks#v=onepage&q=mental%20health%20and%20gun%20violence&f=false  pg 33

No more school shootings

One major area President Obama is targeting to reduce gun violence is in our education system and our youth. We hear about school shootings in the news, but do you know exactly how bad it is?  A school shooting is defined as “an incident where a firearm was discharged at a school infrastructure, including incidents of shootings on a school bus or near school property while school is in session” according to Wikipedia.  In the past ten years, there have been over 70 school shootings, and only 23 of those had no fatalities.  This is an alarmingly high number, and only the truly cruel school shootings get their 15 minutes of fame across the nation on the news.  Isn’t that what they want?  Attention?  School shooters are seeking it in the most brutal ways possible, but we are giving it to them!  We are giving in to what they want.  Is it not going too far to say that plastering these tragedies all over the media is establishing a precedent for later shootings?  That future school shooters will try to copy-cat a former shooting because it got media coverage?

                So how does this get fixed President Obama?  How do we make the schools safe for children?  In this section of his plan, he states,

                “The Administration is calling on Congress to help schools hire up to 1,000 more school resource officers, school psychologists, social workers, and counselors, as well as make other investments in school safety. We also need to make sure every school has a comprehensive emergency management plan so they are prepared to respond to situations like mass shootings. In addition, the Administration is proposing to help 8,000 schools put in place proven strategies to prevent violence and improve school climate by reducing bullying, drug abuse, violence, and other problem behaviors.”

So more counselors, more officers and more plans; it all sounds like it will work, right?  But let’s get down to the real question- how are we going to pay for all of this?  Does President Obama have some magic pot of gold we didn’t know about?  The money that this plan takes to execute is really starting add up, my hope is we don’t have to sacrifice any of the aspects of this plan that can really do some good.

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-5526-4_12#page-1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States#List_of_U.S._school_attacks

http://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=C5RW_NSf8UaSsLYbCiwLunoCwCPus4LcD0_fcyXGe39QWCAAQAVDYtM4GYMmmgYzMpNQZyAEBqgQiT9CEeI4IjCDf_jqe_DOWVhwEYwsrgOK5l6hEPuYnwKbNQroFEwju7Kzq3N-4AhWlZEIKHdljAAbKBQCAB5OlsB4&ei=NSf8Ua7-KqXJiQLZx4Ew&sig=AOD64_3OqRcEmdac6Tv2Bv9m_mCTAaK9Bg&rct=j&frm=1&q=national+debt+2013&sqi=2&ved=0CC8Q0Qw&adurl=http://www.concordcoalition.org/issue-page/national-debt