Following the recent Navy yard shooting … much talk of gun control.
But the more “clever” and “sophisticated” response is to advocate cracking down on crazy people. You know, “put away” people who are a danger to themselves and others. So argues Charles Krauthammer, the psychiatrist-turned-columnist.
Not so fast, writes Brian Doherty at Reason: “No, Arbitrarily Locking Up People Instead of Restricting Guns Isn’t a Good Option Either.”
There are all sorts of things we could do … to violate the rights of citizens because they are in a class that sometimes but really hardly ever goes on to commit a crime. Of course, it’s best, as Krauthammer does, to say it’s not just for our (possibly presumed) good that we do it: it’s for theirs.
Wanting a quick cure for the problem of mass shootings is not the same thing as having one.* Doherty notes that, “like most gun control solutions offered,” the idea of locking up the mentally ill is “just one more thing to say that pretends on the surface to be a solution” but that “would not necessarily have prevented the particular problem.”
Science has come a long way, but studies show, as fellow Reason writer Jacob Sullum recently put it, that even “mental health professionals are notoriously bad at predicting which of the world’s many misfits, cranks, and oddballs will become violent.”
An easy fix? Science fictional, not scientific. And we know what science fiction says about locking people up for institutional convenience.
That’s truly crazy.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Wanting a quick cure for the broader problems of the mentally disturbed is also not the same thing as having one.
6 replies on “Crazed Killers, Columnist”
Randomly locking people up to try to prevent mass killings may not make complete sense, but…And but is a big word. There have been abuses in the past of the laws that allowed relatives to have people ‘put away’ in institutions. But (and there is that word again) the 180 degree change in direction was also a bad idea. And that opinion comes from a woman that has been trying to get help for and deal with a paranoid skitzophrenic son since he was in middle school. Have you ever tried to get a mentally ill person that throws things, screams abuse, slams doors, talks out loud to people who aren’t there, refuses to bathe or wipe themselves after a bowel movement to sit in a packed emergency room long enough to see a doctor only to have that doctor’s decision about whether they need to be hospitalized be based on the answer to one question? “Do you want to hurt yourself or others?” That’s the question. Always answered truthfully, I’m sure. Especially by someone who is paranoid and knows everyone is out to trick them up and hurt them. Have you been investigated by Adult Protection Services because you made a paranoid individual mad or they thought you were ‘out to get them’? For their own good? There are lots of us out here who could answer that question. If you haven’t walked in our shoes, don’t be so quick to judge.
I tend to agree to a point. Taking away guns will never work for obvious reasons since there’s no reason to believe people inclined toward criminal acts or violence will comply. Locking people up pursuant to a diagnosis of insanity, or even a violent thoughts and tendencies, is a dangerous practice.
But from what I know of several cases, including the DC Navy incident the perpetrator had a history of violent acts. Nowadays a violent history, including arrests, are now overlooked, as was the case with the Navy and the shooter in DC.
So how many people would still be alive if tpast perpetrators that had a history of violent acts or arrests had been incarcerated, either in jail or a mental institution?
It also is a curious coincidence that these spree shooters uniformly have two things in common: they are Liberals/Democrats and they have mental problems.
Paul, both yourself and the unnamed person commenting earlier are as wrong as wrong can be. The ONLY way to prevent persons who are under treatment for severe mental disturbances from acting out their disturbances is by having the person under such treatment hospitalized at the advice of the psychiatrist treating the mental illness. Such medical people are well aware of the proclivities of the mentally ill person and and whether or not they should be hospitalized. This is not imprisonment, but use your common sense, we cannot have people like the Navy Department killer out on the loose with the dire results seen last week.
So what Doherty is saying is that the rights of the majority shouldn’t be taken away because of a violent few? I thought that was what the little “r’s were saying, too.
I know exactly what 2WarAbnVet means! Liberal Democrats with mental problems have been conspiring against me for years. They open my mail, eavesdrop on phone calls, and hack my computer.
They always whisper about me behind my back. When I demand to know what they said, they stare at me as though I’m the one who’s crazy!
I’m pretty sure they’re using some kind of mind control drugs and that is no “curious coincidence!”