The danger of treating gun violence as a mental-health problem
In any event, mental health professionals are notoriously bad at predicting which of the world’s many misfits, cranks, and oddballs will become violent. “Over thirty years of commentary, judicial opinion, and scientific review argue that predictions of danger lack scientific rigor,” notes University of Georgia law professor Alexander Scherr in a 2003 Hastings Law Journal article. “The sharpest critique finds that mental health professionals perform no better than chance at predicting violence, and perhaps perform even worse.”
So even if the mental-health criteria for rejecting gun buyers (or for commitment) were expanded, there is little reason to think they could distinguish between future Lanzas and people who pose no threat. Survey data from the National Institute of Mental Health indicate that nearly half of all Americans qualify for a psychiatric diagnosis at some point in their lives. That’s a pretty wide dragnet.
Should half of us lose our Second Amendment rights, at least for the duration of whatever mental disorder (depression, anxiety, addiction, inattentiveness, etc.) afflicts us? Assuming a prescription for Prozac, Xanax, or Adderall is not enough to disqualify someone from owning a gun, what should the standard be?
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When faced with irrefutable facts…leftest contort.
trs on December 26, 2012 at 9:22 PM
Hi.
When will HotGas join the modern age and allow commenting which includes the exact words and terms in the articles it posts? Stupid.
Bishop on December 26, 2012 at 9:33 PM
the danger of not treating liberalism as a mental health disorder….
mittens on December 26, 2012 at 9:33 PM
The danger of treating gun violence as a mental-health problem: The danger? There is an imminent threat of getting to the core of the problem. That’s the problem. Also, look at the gratuitous violence in movies.
Django runs trailers with non-stop shooting while freaking Jamie Foxx begs for less gun violence on youtube.
Hypocrites.
hawkdriver on December 26, 2012 at 9:35 PM
Wow – I quoted the last sentence in the above excerpt, and my comment gets sucked into the HotGas moderation vortex. I think the mods are VERY SENSITIVE to mental health issues – this ain’t the first time one of my comments on the subject has disappeared.
Harbingeing on December 26, 2012 at 9:46 PM
Back in the day, if there was any doubt you might be a danger to yourself or others- they would lock you up.
Valiant on December 26, 2012 at 10:03 PM
And your mother wouldn’t have to beg and plead with them to do so.
MelonCollie on December 26, 2012 at 10:11 PM
The article points out psychology is hokum.
Fine we can all agree there isn’t much science in figuring out who is crazy.
But that’s psychology’s fault not lawful gun owners.
Psychology needs to become more scientific and less bunk.
Not we need to restrict the 2nd Amendment.
LincolntheHun on December 26, 2012 at 10:21 PM
It won’t just be mental-health professionals. After all, it would be very, very concerned family members bringing the individuals to the shrinks’ attention. But you see, the shrinks don’t have to be able to predict violence. They can achieve most psycho removal by just being able to determine a patient is incompetent.
A lot of our shooters may or may not have been predicted, but long before they fell deeply enough into their psychosis to get violent, many were pretty incompetent. How many mass shooters were living at home, despite being of age? That Joker guy and Virginia Tech didn’t noticeably snap until they were already moved out and in college, but if they had graduated or dropped out in the same mental state, they would have likely been kept at home. Gifford’s shooter and the recent baby killer were kept at home. The majority of people far gone enough to shoot six-year-olds, if moved out of their parents’ homes, would likely have lined the walls of some Section 8 hellhole with tinfoil and starved to death, or ended up on the streets. Travis Bickle is mostly a myth (dangerously psychotic, but actually able to take care of himself adequately. I realize the guy who shot Wallace was such a person, but more common is the incompetent).
Sekhmet on December 26, 2012 at 10:41 PM
Yessssss! This! A mentally unstable individual doesn’t necessarily have to be capable of violence in order to be ruled incompetent to handle his own affairs, but it seems to me that more often than not, the two factors do go hand-in-hand.
gryphon202 on December 26, 2012 at 10:47 PM
Ok I’ll try again and try not to use moderated words – in reference to the last paragraph of the excerpt above – A person with any history of mental health treatment, especially where prescriptions were involved, will already be disqualified from military service, working as a policeman and other armed service professions, presumably for life. The form I sign when I buy a firearm requires me to affirm under oath, that I have never had mental health treatment, for example.
The real danger comes when simply the desire or intention to own a firearm becomes a diagnosable “mental” condition, thereby criminalizing anyone who wants to own a firearm, without passing a single law. With most in the mental health industry being paid largely by gov’t funding now, and the pervasive liberal, agenda-driven mindset among those in the mental health industry, gun ownership could easily become a ‘diagnosed’ mental health condition, that would disqualify anyone they choose from owning a firearm. Considering how mental illnesses are routinely voted into existence with no verifiable pathology, merely for billing code purposes as it is, gun ownership is closer to becoming a political thought crime than you might think. Very slippery slope indeed.
Harbingeing on December 26, 2012 at 11:15 PM
I can totally see why liberals would have a problem with this.
MikeA on December 26, 2012 at 11:18 PM
Lets stop all this gobbledygook about mental health and get right down to the real source of the problem: The will of evil does not sleep.
nobar on December 27, 2012 at 12:00 AM
Which is why the Left is so intent on suppressing any mention or identification of anything or anyone (or any action) as “evil”: it’s accurate to the problems but it “offends the feelings” of some. Feelings of offense trumps “what’s evil” in the mind of Liberals.
Lourdes on December 27, 2012 at 5:46 AM
I have a problem with GOVT being involved in addressing the Left’s problems about “GUNS” by transiting from controlling the hardware to controlling the mind.
Meaning, though I most definitely do think the actual issue with these mentally ill people using guns to attack others is that they are mentally ill – it’s an issue of their mental capacity, mental wellness or lack thereof – to encourage government to use this issue to workaround the unpopularity of “gun control” would be disasterous for everyone.
People who are threatening to themselves or others CAN be institutionalized for three days without their consent and those who attempt suicide for longer periods of time for observation (meaning, they’ll be observed by medical professionals to try and determine what’s ailing them, and from which more confinement/treatment can be ordered or, they can then be released without any further observation or treatment).
Lourdes on December 27, 2012 at 5:52 AM
The whole area of “mental health professionals” is a problem in that there are a myriad of people with a myriad of training and competency (and capacity to properly diagnose and treat) psychiatric (“mental health”) problems.
There are somewhat problematic (to others) people with undergraduate Sociology degrees or a graduate degree of same who fancy themselves “therapists” and oftentimes bandy “diagnoses” about that are just not accurate as they are also used to essentially insult others (Sociology terms used as pejoratives to promote hostile socio-political views and such).
I think that ^^ pool of people is where all the “you’re homophobic” and “you’re a sociopath” and such originates: people who really are not competent to investigate and then diagnose to treat such problems who use these terms in their campaigns to promote socio-political views.
On the other hand, a competent psychiatrist — someone with a medical degree who has specialized in psychiatry of one type or another — also, themselves, undergoes psychiatric care: it’s a requirement to continue to practice clinically (or, to engage with ‘patients’ as a psychiatrist)…this helps to avoid the “crazy psychiatrist” problem that many fear occurs or will. While with the non-medical people such as Sociologists who “become Psychologists” and “counselors”, they actually are simply academics and not medically competent clinicians.
And then the practical limitations of doctors: they can’t, as psychiatrists, be affixed to their patients after clinical meets, so without confinement of people with problems, they’re left to roam among society and some will and do run amok, even IF seeing a psychiatrist: simply because they’re on their own when out of the doctor’s office.
Lourdes on December 27, 2012 at 6:03 AM
So we won’t allow the certifiably crazy to own weapons but our nut job vice president is going to be the one spearheading the charge for tougher gun laws? Oh the irony.
I don’t know what the libs would propose. Even if you could identify every person before the fact who is mentally ill and might become violent, how does gun control eliminate the possibility of violence? If guns are not made available, some other means will be sought. Are we going to control who owns knives too? TNT? Rope? Rat poison? Gasoline and matches? The progressives need to drop the charade and conservatives need to stop being useful idiots and giving them cover by asserting this is all about mental illness. These people KNOW you can’t identify who will and will not snap and go crazy with a gun. All the more reason for them, then, to take guns away from everyone. That’s their ultimate goal here, don’t fool yourself. The mental health angle (which is a totally separate issue IMO) is only meant to distract and obscure.
NoLeftTurn on December 27, 2012 at 7:43 AM