Got an agenda? Mental health of shooter provides opportunity to push your favorite

[HereSince1628]

Senator Blumenthal says mental illness is the key

Senator Coburn says its all politics...

Harry Reid says no to politics, he isn't going to risk any powder on attempts at gun regulation...there aren't votes for it.

But every tragedy is also an opportunity and the push is on to use the Naval Yard shooting as a shock to break loose the lever holding back a range of ideas from more sharing of mental health records and tighter mental health provisions in permitting gun ownership through funding of teacher education to more money for access to mental health care...

Unfortunately, once again, access to such care wasn't really the problem for the perpetrator. Health care didn't detect the problem. Security, was present, there was a gated entrance to the workplace, they failed to detect the problem. I guess they expected a AR-15 and not a shotgun (shotguns do have a lower risk of being used in these things). Good guys present with guns didn't stop it, and they actually had their guns stolen. God only knows how deficient a past public school teacher was in not keeping this one from falling through the cracks.

And if only people didn't slip up all the time... you know? There ought to be a law.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/us/politics/mental-health-again-an-issue-in-gun-debate.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Seeking Congressional action on gun violence, Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, held a news conference on Wednesday at the Capitol with the Newtown Action Alliance and relatives of victims.

By JEREMY W. PETERS and MICHAEL LUO
s

WASHINGTON — Despite deep divisions that have kept Congress from passing new gun safety laws for almost two decades, there is one aspect of gun control on which many Democrats, Republicans and even the National Rifle Association agree: the need to give mental health providers better resources to treat dangerous people and prevent them from buying weapons.
Related

Yet efforts to improve the country’s fraying mental health system to help prevent mass shootings have stalled on Capitol Hill, tied up in the broader fight over expanded background checks and limits on weapons sales.

Now the shooting at the Washington Navy Yard by a man who authorities say showed telltale signs of psychosis is spurring a push to move ahead with bipartisan mental health policy changes. The new debate over gun control is beginning to turn not on weapons or ammunition, but on the question of whether to spend more money on treating and preventing mental illness.

<snip>

Mr. Alexis appears to be only the latest gunman whose mental health issues did not reach the level at which he would have been prohibited from buying a firearm under federal law. And it is unknowable whether even the most drastic improvements to the nation’s mental health system would have caught and treated the symptoms of someone like Mr. Alexis. The same can also be said for laws that restrict gun ownership for people with histories of mental illness.

The Veterans Affairs Department said Wednesday that on the two times Mr. Alexis visited an emergency room in August, he seemed alert and denied being depressed or thinking of harming himself.

Similarly, Jared L. Loughner, who killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, in Tucson in 2011, and James E. Holmes, who killed 12 people and wounded dozens of others in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater last year, were not barred from buying firearms under federal law, despite their own serious mental health issues.

[Tobin S.]

1. That's bullshit

The article, I mean. I do not own a gun. But if I wanted one and there was some way to keep me from buying one legally due to....whatever, I know where I could obtain one with ease. In fact, I know where I could obtain a bunch of them with ease.

There is no attainable solution to this problem in the current political environment of this country. As long as there are guns there will be gun violence, including mass shootings. There is nothing we can do about it.

[HereSince1628]

2. These shootings tend to be perfect storms with failures

at multiple, critical, hazard control points. Because few controls are perfectly implemented and allow for small probabilities of failure, the possibility of multiple failures and catastrophe cannot be nonzero even if it is very small.

But within a large population these rare occurrences occur. And they are moments of opportunity to exploit the shock and willingness of society 'to do something'. It seems all sides have players trying to do 'something'. It's just another forum for implementing shock doctrine.

Unfortunately, whether any legislation is successful or not, is that using fear of the mentally ill for political purpose endorses fear of the mentally ill.