THE RED HERRINGS OF THE TUCSAN ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT AND MURDER

UPDATED POST:

After much internal debate over my post, and taking it down and putting it back up several times during the day today, I remain convinced that some sort of reporting system for mentally ill folks is drastically necessary to ensure prohibiting "known" mental patients from a gun purchase.

There would be, of course, an appeal process whereby at no cost to the applicant, the alleged mental patient could appeal his or her "NO BUY"
status as to firearms and ammunition. There would have to be some sort of mental exam process designed to vet out the faulty listings. Having worked with mental patients in various criminal justice areas for over three decades now, many of the petitioners would likely fail upon submission of their written request for review, based on the pervasiveness of their mental illness and their inability to control same.

One commentor, Bob S., took great issue with the diminuation of constitutional rights as I suggest. And I'll say, to a point, he's right. But I disagree when he says, and I'm paraphrasing here, that incidents like the attempted assassination of this Congresswoman are a cost of freedom.

I can't agree with that one.

As a gun owner, I urge others to revisit their position on this matter. The problem is, there is no reporting system for getting mental patients into the gun screening system unless that person has convictions, unadjudicated cases like deferred adjudications or was found guilty by reason of insanity. Otherwise, hundreds of thousands of mental cases are flying under the radar and the only protection we have against them buying guns is their self-report on the BATF form you fill out when you buy a gun.

Either gun owners step to the forefront of this movement or very soon, I predict, we'll have another anti-assault weapon law on the books.

The world is a very different place than it was when our founders (all white males, by the way) created this country and the documents we base our government and indeed, our freedoms on. I'm a white male too, but I realize that the constitution had to change for the very important social changes regarding non-whites and womwn over the years. That's why the Constitution is a "living" document.

Back then, every sidearm was a single shot weapon, and even for an extremely skilled reloader, it took a while to get those subsequent shots off after the first one.

Here, I don't see how anyone could argue that if this killer had been limited to 5 or 6 shots in a revolver or 10 in a semi-auto that the death/injury toll would have been less. Common sense will tell you that. Of course, he could have walked in with a body bomb, and taken out the whole building. I guess that's why bomb components are hard to get.

And that's my point. If we as law abiding gun owners want to lose the right to defend ourselves with so called assault weapons, we better be at the forefront of recognizing that there is a problem and us having the solutions. Otherwise, the anti-gun folks are gonna solve it for us, and I have a feeling that solution will be an absolute ban on these weapons, perhaps far more pervasive than the Clinton Ban from the 1990's.

Comment is closed on this topic. I think Bob S. expressed his viewpoints and undoubtedly those of many others quite well, and since I argue for a living, I choose not to do it on this thread.


The frenzy to lay blame began as soon as the news of this terrible tragedy hit the airwaves. The Sheriff of Pima County blamed the incident on the vitriolic nature of U.S. Politics, particularly the last two years.

WRONG, Sheriff.

Some laid blame on Sarah Palin, who according to some media accounts had some sort of language in her campaign literature "targeting" Congresswoman Gifford for political defeat, with rumors of some kind of picture that had the Congresswoman's picture on it with a crosshair of a scope superimposed.

WRONG.

Some will blame the Glock Model 19, and the extended magazine(s) that the shooter had, according to media accounts. Yes, it is true, a knife or sword would likely have inflicted far less damage, had the killer not had access to a Glock, but at the same time, had the killer just driven a car through crowd or building, he could have accomplished his same purpose. I won't make any other suggestions about how the killer could have accomplished his purpose without a gun, but we all know there are many ways this horror could have happened without a gun.

WRONG.

Some will blame his family for not keeping him under control. There hasn't been much media frenzy information come forth about his family, but from what has come out today about him being ejected from a "career-student" path at his local junior college this past October was some kind of harbinger of doom for the future. Likely, his family did everything they could to get him mental health help. And we all know that whether the family sought help from private insurance of the parents or from the government, there are woeful few resources available for middle and lower class folks who have mentally ill family members.

Those of us who have been in law enforcement, or the practice of law or medicine, or the many related occupations like nurse, social worker and so on, already know that many of those who do get some relief from their mental disease via medications, well, the patients don't like the meds. For many reasons. Many of the meds have serious side effects. Many meds work sporadically, as such is the nature of mental illness and meds today. Sometimes, the patient begins feeling better and stops taking their meds for whatever reason, and then relapses. The general term for this behavior is that the patient is in "non-compliance {with meds}".

Injections of these meds only work so long, and of course, when someone has delusions and active psychotic thoughts going on, it's not likely they'll remember to take their meds every 8, 12 or 24 hours. Unless there is a caretaker in the home who actively pursues keeping the patient in compliance, chances are folks like this lapse into non-compliance. And besides, many times with serious mental disorders, the type of which that would lead a person to kill for the reasons ascribed to this madman, well, many times even when taken as directed, it doesn't have the desired result.

WRONG

They'll blame his marijuana smoking as well, when any street cop will tell you that potheads usually are the least violent of drug using offenders. If anything, it keeps the "lid on their id" and reduces the likelihood violence will occur. Yeah, the pothead might shoplift some munchies from the corner store but not likely to hijack the store with a gun. That's for the crackheads, the xanax heads, the meth heads and the alki's, whose drugs of choice make them more aggressive.

Perhaps access to the California variety of prescription pot, the really potent kind you hear about in the news that just basically renders the user a couch potato, might have kept this guy at home, on the couch, making youtube videos instead of buying a gun.

Yeah, there will be those on the right and far right that blame the pot smoking.

WRONG

The Brady bunch and the Clinton folks who supported taking or took many of our second amendment rights away during the 90's will be once again hollering from the tallest tree about assault weapons and high capacity pistols and magazines.

The news reports say he legally bought the weapon last fall, sometime around when he was having his issues with expulsion from the junior college he attended for 5 years. Interestingly, there's no report in the media of him having ever worked a job, so I'd be curious where he got the cash to get a Glock, some ammo and extended magazines.

But the liberal left will blame the Glock and the extended magazines for this horror.

WRONG

So who is at fault? Well, we are. All of us. We don't have a mental health system in this country that reports individuals like this to some sort of clearinghouse, to be interfaced with the ATF and FBI and whoever else controls the sale of firearms in various states. Had the Junior College Police Department in this case had some place where his name as a prospective mental patient could have been reported, with no liability to them for doing so, then perhaps he could have been prohibited from buying this pistol new from a lawful dealer.

It's a constitutional infringement to be sure, but there could be a remedy to "clear one's name" from this clearinghouse via the courts. Obviously, this process would be rife for abuse for reporting otherwise sane folks as insane to cause them troubles, but such as in this case, apparent plentiful information existed to keep this guy on a list from buying guns.

It's not a solution but a start. What we really need are, hand in hand with community medical treatment centers to take the stress off of ER rooms, is substantial in-patient and out-patient government mental health treatment facilities. Living facilities. We've got scores of mental patients out there in the homeless ranks, and very few are like this killer, meaning violent and homicidal. Most of the mental patients out there are victims.

But until we take mental health care seriously in this nation, there will always be a dispossessed loner like this who "slips through the cracks" to one day emerge as an assassin, when if some kind of community based mental health care system existed, with the ability for law enforcement to report folks with serious delusions to track folks like this.

Again, prayers to the victims of this horrible attack and their families and friends. The hearts of a nation are with you.