On an internet forum there is a discussion being kicked around on gun control and the VTech tragedy has been revisited, especially in light of several motions recently to limit access to firearms. Things were a little dicey over this very provocative subject.
I wrote a couple pieces to the forum. These are only my opinion, but I wanted to share my thoughts on gun control and mental illness. I work with chronically mentally ill people of all stripes, substance abusers of every life imaginable, and plenty of criminals from petty crimes to crimes of violence, including murder. I also grew up with guns, and I know how to use them. I’m hoping to offer a different perspective on this very important issue. So here goes:
First post
The problem with certain kinds of crazy people eventually accessing guns and blowing people away stems from the mental health system. In the state of Virginia it is very hard to get people help, believe it or not. It’s not the same everywhere, but in far too many places it is–the mental health system is resistant to helping people unless they are showing clear intentions of committing suicide, homicide, or are seriously neglecting their own care (like they haven’t bathed for weeks or eaten in days due to their mental symptoms).
It is against the law to push someone into getting help against their will unless these three things can be observable by the assessing professional.
Why is this such a problem now–like at no other time?? We have DEINSTITUTIONALIZED mental illness. Remember how it used to be that people severely mentally ill would live in mental hospitals for years at a time? It was thought to be cost effective to get them out of the hospitals an into residential housing. This was fine, up to a point. What happened is that a lot of people fell through the cracks and loopholes, because emphasis is placed upon the individual adult’s choice (liberties) to not receive care–unless they become a danger to self or others. So a handful go out and shoot up the town because they aren’t getting any care, and appear somewhat well enough to not warrant a temporary detention order (hospitalization against their will for 72 hours).
Cho was never hospitalized against his will. According to the present law, anyone who has been “TDO’d” may never own a firearm. It’s a felony. Cho didn’t have that problem. But he was weird and scary enough to make people feel uncomfortable, and even feel threatened, but he didn’t make direct threats, so he slipped through the cracks.
There was an 18 year old man with schizophrenia who killed two cops in Fairfax VA almost 2 years ago, and he suicided by cop (they shot him). His family and other community mental health professionals tried to get him hospitalized over a period of several weeks. They knew he was in trouble. But his father made the mistake of having guns accessible to him (the man must not be very smart). He had the guns locked in a gun closet, but the son had access to the keys. And that was that.
The problem with saying crazy people can’t have guns is that you take them away from military veterans who have PTSD or any other mental illness–and that is actually happening (I posted a thread on it today).
What must change is the accessibility of mental health services to mentally ill people, and to keep it confidential from even the government. We must allow reinstitutionalization. I know many of those people did very well once they got into the community, but since they closed the long-term hospitals down, new people showing up with mental illness are not getting the help they need. So far most of the shocking acts of violence are coming from people who were diagnosed long after the early 90’s when they started closing long-term hospital care.
Even survivors of victims are reluctant to blame human beings, and that is understandable, so they want to hurt an inanimate object. We understand they are simply not thinking–and they can’t. It is incumbent upon the rest of us to tow the line of reason and make sure the public is educated.
So educate yourself on how the mental health systems are handled in your area–why are some people able to get help, and not others? How does a person slip through the cracks and why? It is preventative care to pay heed to this.
Second post:
VC said: Excellent post VG. That same 18 year old man went to the same high school as Cho.
Secondly, how can we reach out to the family of victims, and explain to them in a rational way that what they are proposing is going to create all students as sitting ducks?
Third post:
VC,
I think you have exactly the right approach to this and I am hoping people hear what you just said. These are grieving families who want do something to relieve their grief, but the only thing that will help such tragic loss is time, and even that is only a partial relief. Being very busy is another thing that can help–so channeling their anger against an inanimate object like weapons seems like a safe way to get out some rage.
We can’t blame grieving families for feeling this way and it’s necessary for the rest of us to rise up to mature levels, stop putting them down, and figure out a way that we can, as you say, REACH OUT to the families of the victims. Alienation is absolutely the wrong thing to do, and will only cause them to dig in deeper and hurt them further. I can see it happening, and if we want to change that future, we must understand how to change our approach and attitude now.
Sane, law abiding people who own guns are the only people who can protect and prevent the loss of their own lives and their loved ones in a confrontation with another weapon. It is the fact at VTech that not even ONE of the loved ones could legally carry a weapon to protect themselves. People have a hard time seeing this, and I think people are afraid to ponder how vulnerable we all really are, and are afraid to take upon themselves the responsibility of ensuring our own safety. Getting rid of guns won’t get rid of thugs; it won’t get rid of the 4% of the US population that have anti-social personality disorder; it won’t change the fact that sometimes someone with a severe mental illness slips through the cracks. These people are here to stay; they will be here in the future, for they have been with us since the times only discovered by archaeological digs. In fact, more people in modern times are killed than ever before. If we can get a cop to a bad scene fast enough, lives are saved. But sometimes cops can’t get there fast enough, and they are human too, for sometimes they get killed.
I had a friend who is a sheriff tell me he is trained to be one of several sharp shooters on his force. I don’t know if he’s ever killed anyone and didn’t ask. He told me of a story where the force had to respond to a call where there was a violent and drunk man out threatening with his gun, and the force had several with their scopes right on him. One of the other officers shot and killed the man. If you heard the details of the story you would agree they had no other choice.
The world is unfortunately this way, and it’s absurd to create more sitting ducks, and more victims.
I think what the families want is to at least prevent more people from being victims. And they want to get out some of their anger. We need to change the way we talk about this so that they can hear our view. We need to change our language. We need to speak on their terms.
For example, they want to prevent others from being victims, and they want to vent some anger. We need to agree with them. Tis completely sensible. I would listen to their thoughts on this, and eventually put forth that some day in the future there will be other people who face either a thug or a person who is completely out of their minds and in possession of a weapon. We know for a fact that criminals will obtain guns and whatever else they want with little thought to the law. They will always exist. So how do we at least reduce the numbers of victims? There aren’t enough cops, and we know that cops are not bound by law to respond to a call. If they are busy with other emergencies and there are more calls, they make their best judgment–and sometimes people still get killed.
So what is left?
What is left is that we the people must recognize that we have an innate, inborn, natural right to defend our own lives. The problem with this, is that even though it is our right just because we are born, many state governments refuse to guarantee that right to save our own lives by making it illegal to carry guns in certain places, and the only ones who obey the law in those places are the law abiding citizens. Law abiding citizens are not criminals.
And the vast majority of people with mental illness are not killers or would be killers either. Yet sometimes someone slips through the mental health system. The fact that Americans must face is there is no such thing as perfection: There is no such thing as a sure thing.
So we have criminals with guns and profoundly mentally ill people with guns. There will not be a time when these people don’t exist. What this means is that the rest of us are the ones who must make the adjustment, because we are the sane, law abiding ones who would like to be as safe as we can, without living out our lives in fear. This means we must take some responsibility for our own safety. For many of us, that means wearing firearms, and knowing full well how to use them, and how to be safe with them.
This means changing laws so that law abiding people are allowed to conceal or open carry weapons where it is now illegal for law abiding people to carry. I am a sitting duck at my office–and lots of criminals come through there. Just like VTech, I could be killed, too, in spite of the fact that I know how to use a firearm. It won’t help me if I have a weapon not within my reach if a criminal or profoundly crazy person comes through with an automatic weapon.
The law against wearing firearms on college campus caused law abiding people to die. If families want to vent anger against an inanimate object, this is the one: change the laws to reflect our God-given, natural born right to preserve our own lives.
It would have taken only ONE bullet to put Cho down. ONE. But there wasn’t any because all the victims were honest. They died and got wounded because they were HONEST.
What must change is that law abiding, honest people need to get even more honest with themselves and understand the police can’t always be there. We have to be responsible for ourselves, and we have to lift prohibitions on the right of choice to be responsible for ourselves. Anti-gun laws are prohibition laws against the right to save one’s own life.
Every one of those VTech victims were born with the right to save their own lives and state, local, and even federal laws prohibited this natural born right. The families of the victims have the right to express their anger–towards the short-sighted lawmakers who are not hearing us.
The rest of us must allow ourselves to imagine what the survivors and victims’ families must be going through. How would we feel in their shoes, and how can that be reconciled with the vision of people becoming more responsible for their own safety? These two concepts need not be in aversion. In a modern world where we have created a society where most people can live in trust with one another, so different from the history of mankind when thugs really did pirate the roads, woods, and seas, we are distressed at the realization that horrific things actually do occur in reputably safe places. It means we must reconcile ourselves with the fact that safety is an illusion. We must confront that each day we live is a risk. To be dependent upon our own decision making ability, I think, is often our greatest fear. It means owning our own lives.
This is the bottom line: The government cannot be allowed to own us. We must own ourselves.