Connecticut shootings: Isolated incident or cultural problem?

There is nothing conservative about advocating for locking up the supposedly “mentally ill” based on psychiatric quackery. Those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither. Newtown and Aurora are a small price to pay for freedom.

Armin Tamzarian on December 16, 2012 at 6:27 PM

Are you saying that people, who have demonstrated a desire to do exactly what James Holmes did in Aurora, for example, have a right to live freely amongst us? He had already telegraphed via a journal and his sessions with a psychiatrist that he was going to do exactly what he did.

There was nothing “supposedly” about the mental health of Loughner, Holmes, Cho, etc. Their schizophrenia or schizophrenic tendencies were WELL KNOWN to their families, schools, and communities beforehand. That’s why, after almost all of these rampage killings, we hear from the people that knew them, “I feel bad for the victims, but I’m not surprised. The dude was a mental case. Always has been.”

Resist We Much on December 16, 2012 at 6:44 PM

davidk on December 16, 2012 at 7:01 PM

According to one poster, we do not, apparently, have the right to have those that actually threaten harm removed from society. Their right to live amongst us is greater than our right to demand, at least, a certain floor of acceptable behaviour and decorum in society.

In the wake of the Holocaust, millions of people wondered “How could Hitler have done what he did? We had no idea that he hated Jews and others so much.” Maybe, if they had bothered to actually read Mein Kampf and take his words seriously, people would have known what to expect or, in the very least, not been so shocked in hindsight.

As I always tell people, if someone says that he is going to kill you, believe him…until proven otherwise. The families and friends of a lot of abused spouses, for example, learned the hard way that when the abusers said that they would kill their loved ones, they meant it.

Resist We Much on December 16, 2012 at 7:12 PM

From Ann Althouse:

“Curiously, during the period before deinstitutionalization, the mentally ill seem to have been less likely to be arrested for serious crimes than the general population.”

“Studies in New York and Connecticut from the 1920s through the 1940s showed a much lower arrest rate for the mentally ill. In an era when involuntary commitment was relatively easy, those who were considered a danger to themselves or others would be hospitalized at the first signs of serious mental illness. The connection between insanity and crime was apparent, and the society took a precautionary approach. Mentally ill persons who were not hospitalized were those not considered a danger to others. This changed as deinstitutionalization took effect.”

From “Madness, Deinstitutionalization & Murder,” by Clayton Cramer.

Nothing “curious” about it.

Resist We Much on December 16, 2012 at 7:32 PM