Michael Moore tweet

[Playinghardball]

[gwheezie]

1. I've been saying this since Newtown

Let's improve mental health care because it is the right thing to do, not because we're scared.

[longship]

2. ^^THIS^^

And that, as well.

[Warpy]

3. Actually, he said it was a red herring

In this case, it was a rich kid whose parents got him lots of high priced therapy.

Guns were just too easy to get.

[gwheezie]

5. Oh I agree

This guy had mental health care for years, my response was too brief, the gun nuts would be very happy if we blamed mental illness for violence and then went on a spree of locking up the mentally ill to avoid making any improvements in gun legislation.

[malaise]

9. Correct

but that won't be discussed in the media or by anyone who supports the NRA

[Fred Sanders]

23. This tragedy highlights how the best mental health care does nothing for the easy as pie

availability of lethal weapons for anyone, the refusal to read the constitution like rational humans and not nostalgic rebels.

That is by far the main problem, by far.

[malaise]

24. Yep

the real problem is the access to weapons

[TexasBushwhacker]

27. Indeed. Why is it still so easy for the mentally ill to get weapons?

Police even went to his apartment on April 30th at the behest of a family member. The police decided he didn't meet the criteria for involuntary commitment and did not search his apartment. If they had, they would have found the 3 guns he had already purchased!

I struggle with depression myself and have been for over 30 years. When things get bad, I start looking at the gun ads. There is absolutely nothing stopping from going out and legally buying one. Frankly, it wouldn't bother me a bit if my psychiatrist put me on a "do not sell firearms to" list. Sure, if I really wanted to kill myself there are other methods, but nothing is as fast and lethal as a gun. Contrary to popular thought, if a person is stopped from using a particular method to kill themselves, they don't generally kill themselves another way. Studies of people who were stopped from jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge found most were alive and well years later.

I know this will piss gun rights advocates off, but there is no good reason that a person with mental illness should own a gun. If they are worried about personal security, get a home alarm system and buy a taser.

[hlthe2b]

4. Once again, MM gets to the point...

No one is saying MH issues don't need addressing in this country, but it is a convenient excuse to avoid addressing the bigger elephant(s) in the room.

[Plucketeer]

7. Mental health is an issue for sure

Too bad Wayne LaPierre can't get treatment.

[Lobo27]

8. Well a good guy with a gun might do the trick...

[Iliyah]

6. K & R!

[Indydem]

10. So if this guy was diagnosed as mentally ill, how did he get a gun?

This is California, which has much stricter gun laws than many red states. How was he able to slip through the cracks? Unless he was never reported as mentally ill, then I think some "top shrinks" need to go to prison for circumventing the law.

[SunSeeker]

11. Being "stricter" than the red states isn't saying much. nt

[gwheezie]

15. Mental health laws also protect the rights of the mentally ill

I a not sure about all states but the ones I've worked in leaves it up to a civil court to determine if someone loses their gun rights, a judge makes the determination, also voluntary treatment is not something that is on some kind of data base. Involuntary commitments are recorded as they are done in civil court. Also there are varying levels of background checks, if you are only doing a background checks for felonies, I'pretty sure a civil case would not pop up. Not all people who are detained on temporary detention orders wind up committed, so a background check on commitments would not show a tdo that has been vacated.
It's really not up to a psychiatrist, your mommy or the police if someone winds up committed, it protects our rights not to be held involuntarily in a hospital, we are not talking about criminals, we are talking about civil commitments to a hospital against your will. Psychiatrists cannot take away your rights, a court can. A mental health evaluator or professional can alert law enforcement if someone is an imminent risk to the public. The court can also order a duty to warn. I think every state has some kind of mechanism where LEO's can detain someone until they are evaluated, in Virginia we just had a big debate about emergency custody orders being extended from 6 hours to 12 I believe it is now. Most states also have a legal mechanism where if you lose your gun rights due to a civil court determination, you can attempt to have them restored.
So reporting someone as mentally ill so far is not something we do in this country. So far there is no database and I would strongly fight any attempt at a database of the mentally ill unless the person had their day in court with all the legal protections we all have.
After Cho and Va tech, we changed some of our civil laws in Virginia so now a court can commit you to involuntary outpatient treatment so that if you miss appointments, stop taking your meds or refuse to comply with a treatment plan you will be hospitalized, wonderful in theory but you have to fund it.

[passiveporcupine]

36. our system still doesn't work

A mental health evaluator or professional can alert law enforcement if someone is an imminent risk to the public.

In this case, this happened, yet the police did not follow through. They interviewed him, but they are not professional psychiatrists, so how could they know how to read him? He should have been interviewed by a professional. His home should have been searched. I think the police dropped the ball on this. But I'm not sure of the chain of communication from parents to police.

So reporting someone as mentally ill so far is not something we do in this country. So far there is no database and I would strongly fight any attempt at a database of the mentally ill unless the person had their day in court with all the legal protections we all have.

I don't believe there should be a list of "mentally ill" in this country. The problem is that the reporting is not happening when therapists detect a problem. The same thing happened with the Aurora shooting. His therapist was concerned and even talked to security about him. But the ball was dropped.

We need to find a way to stop dropping the ball on these kinds of cases.

That still does not address the issue of how easy it is to get multiple guns and ammo.

[gwheezie]

37. I agree with you completely

I was just responding to the idea that the police have some kind of list. From what I understand, the parents called the police about the youtube post but the police never looked at it. I wonder why the psychiatrist wasn't more assertive in getting this guy treatment if that person saw the video and the guy stopped taking his med's. I've also seen many commitment hearings where the patient isn't even asked about weapons. I have seen the court order all guns removed from a home but there isn't any follow up. I had a patient who was discharged from the hospital and killed 8 people a couple months after he was discharged, I'll never forget it, I met his sister and her husband who he wound up killing, the guns he used were not his but the several family members lived on the family farm in separate dwellings. He used hunting rifles and picked them off.
My worry is that the gun folks are going to make the mentally ill the scapegoats but agree more than you can imagine that the system is broken. I think all police calls for mental health check ups should include a mental health professional to also see the person. Sometimes we make laws to address a problem and it makes it worse, for instance here in Virginia after the Deeds incident, they have now extended emergency custody order limits to 12 hours. I live in a rural county, sometimes there are only 2 sheriffs on patrol. When you take a person in on an eco, law enforcement is responsible to stay with the patient in the emergency room and perhaps wind up transporting them 4 hours away to a hospital. That could take half our force out of the county for up to 12 hours. We don't have anyone that will come out and evaluate a patient in the field here, so they have to take the pt 40 miles to the er where I work, and if we don't have a bed, they may wind up going to another 100 miles, my concern is this will make it less likely the police are going to want to take someone in on an eco.
This young man seems to have had all the mental health help available to him one could imagine and he still wound up killing people.

[Darkhawk32]

12. Moore is right, DU has been flaying away at the issue... but the real issue is ...

too easy access to guns. Period. End of story.

[LAGC]

14. He stabbed 3 people to death and plowed into another with his vehicle.

There's a bigger proximate cause than the tool of choice.

[Darkhawk32]

16. First and foremost, he was a loon. n/t

[Hoyt]

28. He subdued them with his gun. If he only had a knife, I think

he would have been stopped right there.

[LAGC]

29. He held them at gunpoint while he stabbed them to death?

Well, that's an interesting angle, I guess...

[AtheistCrusader]

33. Source?

Because that's the first I heard of that claim.

[treestar]

13. This is true,

and he still qualified for the gun. How mentally ill does one have to be in California not to qualify?

[Darkhawk32]

17. Just a question: when did he post his videos on Youtube? And why didn't someone notify the police?

[LAGC]

18. He posted them some weeks back and his parents found out and called the police.

But when the police came to talked to him, he was able to bullshit his way out of an arrest, took down the videos, and didn't put them back up until just days before his rampage.

The problem is, it's just way too hard for the authorities to involuntarily commit someone, even when they've demonstrated serious psychosis. This is actually one area where I disagree with the ACLU. I understand the dangers of allowing authorities to commit people to mental hospitals without due process (after all, that's how Stalin got rid of many of his political enemies) but there has to be a middle-ground here.

This kid was throwing off red flags left and right. There should have been some intervention.

[Darkhawk32]

19. I'm seriously torn on this issue. I know a couple of years back or so, I was going through some

serious depression and a friend called the police and told them they were worried about me and the police made me go to a mental health hospital for an evaluation.

Of course, they found I wasn't going to hurt myself or others, I was just emotionally wrecked and sent on my way.

At the time, I was furious that my friend would do that, but now I understand... sorta. grr..

But in this nutjob's case, I would say at least that sort of evaluation could've been done, including viewing those videos.

[LAGC]

20. Indeed.

And just to add: an involuntary commitment would have prevented him from passing a background check on gun purchases as well.

Although in this case, it sounds like he bought his guns way in advance, so it may not have mattered.

[Darkhawk32]

21. The officer explained that they needed probable cause to believe that the person ....

could or would be a threat to himself or others. Probably cause is a very vague term and could've been used in this case, if the laws applied the same in California.

[LAGC]

25. I agree.

Those videos he posted to YouTube were more than just disturbing, he was clearly deranged and out of his mind.

The police should have taken them seriously and done something.

[Fred Sanders]

22. More mental health is a deflection from the problem of a plague of weapons.

[Hoyt]

34. Exactly. As Rodger said in his manifesto:

"After I picked up [from gun store] the handgun, I brought it back to my room and felt a new sense of power. I was now armed. Who’s the alpha male now, bit#*&s."

I think that pretty much describes how most of the gun culture feels.

[Jake2413]

26. It's the guns

not the people with mental health issues. thank you

[llmart]

31. Amen.

n/t

[Hoyt]

30. Personally, accumulating guns, toting them, etc., in today's society is symptomatic

of abnormalities. Those into guns will never admit. If I were into something helping to destroy society, I'd give it up and encourage others to do the same.

[LittleGirl]

35. Yep, the NRA is so powerful

that even those in therapy have a LEGAL access to deadly weapons like guns. Therein lies the problem.