Fund-da-Mental

It’s pretty clear that the House of Representatives is going to block any significant gun control legislation proposed by the Biden report. The NRA is gunning for Republicans and Democrats who support any restrictions or limitation on oversized magazines, killer bullets or assault weapons. There will undoubtedly be legal challenges to the scope and efficacy of President Obama’s twenty-three just-announced Executive Orders on the subject, although most of his directives are more about better research on the subject and sharing of information among governmental agencies. Even requiring background checks at gun shows between private sellers seems to have generated negative reactions, although this aspect and focusing more heavily on keeping felons and those with affirmed mental illness issues appear to have having some potential of breaking through the logjam we call Congress.

First, even though there is a statute on the books requiring states to report mental illness findings to a central federal database, the system is currently failing. “Federal and state efforts to restrict firearms access to potentially dangerous people with mental illness have focused in recent years on extending the reach of states’ reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). In August, in response to the Colorado movie theater shooting, Mayors Against Illegal Guns released a report tallying the number of mental health records each state has submitted to the NICS and ranking each state’s reporting performance. Nearly five years after Congress enacted the NICS Improvement Act, only about half the states have submitted more than a negligible proportion of their mental health records.” An October 5^th report from Harvard’s Public Health Law Research, Petrie-Flom Center.

The public wants to find folks who evidence clear “warning signs” of being dangerous to be identified and for them to be banned from gaining access to guns of any kind. Felons. Easier. Mental illness cases. Not so easy, even if states did comply with reporting requirements, since those clear warning signs may not really be that clear most of the time. And most folks seeking counseling might not exactly be suffering from an impairment that has any bearing on their proclivity to pick up a weapon and begin shooting.

Sure, there are occasional clear signs which have been ignored. The 2007 Virginia Tech shooter who killed 33 people had been deemed mentally ill by a court before that tragedy. He bought his guns legally, because his condition had not been disclosed to the central reporting system that conducts the background checks on those buying weapons. The recently-passed rather stringent gun control legislation in New York State requires therapists to report those “likely to engage” in violent behavior to the police, who will then confiscate weapons in such individuals’ possession. But negating the therapist-client privilege might actually dissuade those who need to be in the system from seeking help in the first place. Currently, the only elements that are required to be reported – under the relevant ethical standards – are direct threats and involuntary hospitalizations.

And the path to clarity in this arena is anything but…. “One fundamental problem with looking for ‘warning signs’ is that it is more art than science. People with serious mental disorders, while more likely to commit aggressive acts than the average person, account for only about 4 percent of violent crimes over all…  The rate is higher when it comes to rampage or serial killings, closer to 20 percent, according to Dr. Michael Stone, a New York forensic psychiatrist who has a database of about 200 mass and serial killers. He has concluded from the records that about 40 were likely to have had paranoid schizophrenia or severe depression or were psychopathic, meaning they were impulsive and remorseless.

“‘But most mass murders are done by working-class men who’ve been jilted, fired, or otherwise humiliated — and who then undergo a crisis of rage and get out one of the 300 million guns in our country and do their thing,’ Dr. Stone said…  The sort of young, troubled males who seem to psychiatrists most likely to commit school shootings — identified because they have made credible threats — often do not qualify for any diagnosis, experts said. They might have elements of paranoia, of deep resentment, or of narcissism, a grandiose self-regard, that are noticeable but do not add up to any specific ‘disorder’ according to strict criteria.” New York Times, January 15^th. The problem seems to be that anyone who really wants a gun can find the right weapon with little trouble. And as my December 15^th blog points out (and as indicated in the above chart prepared by Mother Jones, which tracked and mapped every shooting spree in the last three decades), must of the guns that were used in such shooting were legally acquired (although not always by the gunman himself). Orange is legally obtained. Green is illegally obtained. Blue is where they were unable to determine.

Unfortunately, without getting the particularly vicious weapons out of the system, killers in this country can plan and execute with little deterrent. For those who tell you that if we make assault weapons and big magazines illegal crime rates will soar as only criminal will have those guns, my January 4^th blog provides contrary evidence based on Australia’s ban of personal guns after a mass killing in that nation back in 1996. Either we care more about having the right to maintain sophisticated weapon systems over protecting society from mass killers… or we don’t. Providing better evidence of relevant mental illness is just a red herring that hardly will provide any meaningful solution to the bigger problem of mass shooters having almost open access (one way or the other) to the massive number of assault weapons embedded in our citizenry. And why anyone would object to a background check for all gun sales is completely beyond me.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as one of the comment to a recent blog points out, to most of the world, when it comes to guns, America is “insane.”