Back From New York City
I'm drained--it may be tomorrow before I post anything. I had hundreds of emails waiting for me, and most of them, amazingly enough, weren't spam.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
What, Realistically, Can Be Done?
It appears now that Cho's mental illness problems didn't make it into the NICS because he chose to be voluntarily hospitalized--perhaps because he was given that as an alternative to involuntary commitment. I suspect the unwillingness of one of his stalking victims to press charges might have played a part in this as well.
So, what can be done to deal with situations like this? If we make voluntary commitments an NICS reportable firearms disability, it will discourage some people from checking themselves in--and that would be a serious problem. That's part of why a lot of mental health professionals in California initially opposed such a state law.
Perhaps situations like Cho's, where there was reason to suspect that he might be dangerous, justify involuntary commitment--regardless of whether anyone wants to press charges.
The problem is that involuntary commitment in some states, especially for observation, does not have enough protections against abuse of the process. In California, Welfare & Institutions Code 5150 allows:
This can be, and has been abused. I know someone who got upset with a bureaucrat at the Sonoma County Planning Department some years ago, and made some rather stupid and rash statement along the lines, "If I have to do any more paperwork for this subdivision, I'll kill myself." The bureaucrat apparently was sufficiently displeased that he called the police. Within an hour, this guy had been picked up and taken to a mental hospital. Two hours after his admission, he was back out. The staff could see that this guy was no threat to himself or to others--but that 5150 was now a problem, and he had a bit of work to go through to get his firearms disability removed, including petitioning the court--but the burden of proof is to prove that there is good reason to remove that disability. In some counties of California, where hostility to gun ownership by judges is widespread, that would be a high standard to meet, I fear.
There needs to be some minimum level of due process to cause a person to lose their right to possess firearms--and it should not be a lifetime disability. There are people who go through difficult times, especially teenagers and young adults, and then straighten their lives out. Five years doesn't seem unreasonable; if someone keeps getting locked up for observation or commitment more than once every five years, he either has a serious problem, or he needs to move to a less abusive locale. Most of the serious mental illnesses will have such a person committed far more often than that.
Even then, let's be realistic about the net effect. If Cho's mental problems had made into NICS--and this had caused his purchases to be declined--would it have disarmed him? It appears that whatever Cho's problems, they were not glaringly obvious--not obvious enough to make the gun dealer Cho bought guns from nervous about him.
Could Cho have bought guns privately? Very probably. There are mental patients who are so obviously disturbed that a gun dealer would not sell to them--or even allow them into the store. Even the most opportunistic criminal would think twice about selling guns to someone who appeared to be crazy, both out of fear of the mental patient coming to the attention of the police, and out of fear of being injured by the patient.
All background check systems work at the margin. They don't work perfectly. They may only prevent the prohibited person from buying at a dealer, causing him to look for a private seller. But any system that isn't hideously expensive--and still works at the margin--can be a good thing.
If 2% of prohibited persons, because they can't buy from a dealer, decide not to buy a gun, or need to spend more money or time to find a private seller, this can be a good thing. They may not find a private seller. They may be delayed long enough to give up on their project. They find the cost prohibitive--or not have enough to buy the vast quantity of ammunition that Cho apparently used.
We have a choice on this: try to fix a significant hole in the system, even if it isn't perfect, or find ourselves confronting the same problem a few years down the road. I would rather not wait for another mentally ill person to buy a gun from a dealer, and murder 32 people.
It appears now that Cho's mental illness problems didn't make it into the NICS because he chose to be voluntarily hospitalized--perhaps because he was given that as an alternative to involuntary commitment. I suspect the unwillingness of one of his stalking victims to press charges might have played a part in this as well.
So, what can be done to deal with situations like this? If we make voluntary commitments an NICS reportable firearms disability, it will discourage some people from checking themselves in--and that would be a serious problem. That's part of why a lot of mental health professionals in California initially opposed such a state law.
Perhaps situations like Cho's, where there was reason to suspect that he might be dangerous, justify involuntary commitment--regardless of whether anyone wants to press charges.
The problem is that involuntary commitment in some states, especially for observation, does not have enough protections against abuse of the process. In California, Welfare & Institutions Code 5150 allows:
a peace officer, member of the attending staff, as defined by regulation, of an evaluation facility designated by the county, designated membersOnce you have been 5150ed, you lose your right to possess firearms for five years. See Welfare & Institutions Code 8103(f).
of a mobile crisis team provided by Section 5651.7, or other professional person designated by the county may, upon probable cause, take, or cause to be taken, the person into custody and place him or her in a facility designated by the county and approved by the State Department of Mental Health as a facility for 72-hour
treatment and evaluation.
This can be, and has been abused. I know someone who got upset with a bureaucrat at the Sonoma County Planning Department some years ago, and made some rather stupid and rash statement along the lines, "If I have to do any more paperwork for this subdivision, I'll kill myself." The bureaucrat apparently was sufficiently displeased that he called the police. Within an hour, this guy had been picked up and taken to a mental hospital. Two hours after his admission, he was back out. The staff could see that this guy was no threat to himself or to others--but that 5150 was now a problem, and he had a bit of work to go through to get his firearms disability removed, including petitioning the court--but the burden of proof is to prove that there is good reason to remove that disability. In some counties of California, where hostility to gun ownership by judges is widespread, that would be a high standard to meet, I fear.
There needs to be some minimum level of due process to cause a person to lose their right to possess firearms--and it should not be a lifetime disability. There are people who go through difficult times, especially teenagers and young adults, and then straighten their lives out. Five years doesn't seem unreasonable; if someone keeps getting locked up for observation or commitment more than once every five years, he either has a serious problem, or he needs to move to a less abusive locale. Most of the serious mental illnesses will have such a person committed far more often than that.
Even then, let's be realistic about the net effect. If Cho's mental problems had made into NICS--and this had caused his purchases to be declined--would it have disarmed him? It appears that whatever Cho's problems, they were not glaringly obvious--not obvious enough to make the gun dealer Cho bought guns from nervous about him.
Could Cho have bought guns privately? Very probably. There are mental patients who are so obviously disturbed that a gun dealer would not sell to them--or even allow them into the store. Even the most opportunistic criminal would think twice about selling guns to someone who appeared to be crazy, both out of fear of the mental patient coming to the attention of the police, and out of fear of being injured by the patient.
All background check systems work at the margin. They don't work perfectly. They may only prevent the prohibited person from buying at a dealer, causing him to look for a private seller. But any system that isn't hideously expensive--and still works at the margin--can be a good thing.
If 2% of prohibited persons, because they can't buy from a dealer, decide not to buy a gun, or need to spend more money or time to find a private seller, this can be a good thing. They may not find a private seller. They may be delayed long enough to give up on their project. They find the cost prohibitive--or not have enough to buy the vast quantity of ammunition that Cho apparently used.
We have a choice on this: try to fix a significant hole in the system, even if it isn't perfect, or find ourselves confronting the same problem a few years down the road. I would rather not wait for another mentally ill person to buy a gun from a dealer, and murder 32 people.
Applaud People Who Put Principle Above Profit
Like this black-owned media firm:
Like this black-owned media firm:
ST. LOUIS | A St. Louis company that operates four TV stations and a hip-hop radio station said today it is banning programming and music lyrics that it deems violent, sexist and racist.Wow! This takes real courage--and a willingness to cut into one's profit margin. Sad to say, hip-hop is offensive because there's a sizable audience for it--especially among white suburban kids.
The decision by black-owned Roberts Broadcasting Cos. comes less than a week after Don Imus was fired by CBS Radio for calling members of the Rutgers women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos.”
Fallout from the incident renewed debate about lyrics of many rap and hip-hop songs that are racially charged and derogatory toward women. The Rev. Al Sharpton has called entertainment the next battleground after Imus.
St. Louis brothers Michael and Steven Roberts operate a multifaceted business that includes an aviation company, shopping centers, hotels, construction firms and residential developments. The broadcasting unit includes four television stations — WRBU in St. Louis, WZRB in Columbia, S.C., WAZE in Evansville, Ind., and WRBJ in Jackson, Miss. The company also operates WRBJ-FM, a hip-hop station in Jackson.
“We take tremendous pride in being African-American and refuse to let anyone, white or black, strip us of that pride,” said Steven Roberts, president and chief operating officer of the company.
The decision will have an immediate impact on WRBJ-FM. Rather than censoring offensive words of songs, Roberts spokeswoman Keesha Dhaene said, “We’re going to ban them altogether, which is a hard move for a hip-hop station. If it’s offensive in any way toward women, toward African-Americans, it’s not going to be played on Hot 97.7.”
WRBJ-FM general manager Terrill Weiss said his staff faces a daunting task in sorting through song lyrics.
“There’s probably a higher incidence of derogatory language in general in hip-hop music because it’s a language of the street,” Weiss said. “It reflects life, and their art involves a lot of language that could be deemed objectionable.”
Still, Weiss applauded the move by Roberts. “I’m glad they made a decision to take a stand,” he said.
In a letter to the staff of WRBJ-FM on Wednesday, chairman and chief executive Michael Roberts wrote that the Imus case “has certainly put new fire under the need to respect ourselves first — specifically the hip-hop nation and rap music’s role in desensitizing our country to derogatory comments toward women and each other.”
Reminder: I'll Be Out Of Town For A Few Days on a Book Tour
I'm not taking my laptop with me, so I won't be blogging much if any. And I probably won't be checking my email, either. But make sure that if you are within several hundred miles of northern New Jersey, you come and see me speak!
I'm not taking my laptop with me, so I won't be blogging much if any. And I probably won't be checking my email, either. But make sure that if you are within several hundred miles of northern New Jersey, you come and see me speak!
Tragedies That Won't Stop
Boise doesn't have very many murders--there were a total of eight in the years 2003 through 2005--which is pretty impressive for a city of just under 200,000 people. When there is a murder here, it is a front page story for days, such as the two murders (one in Moscow, Idaho, the other in Boise) alleged to have been committed by a very confused and troubled young man named John Delling. This article describes the anguish of Dellings' parents:
These tragedies just don't stop.
Boise doesn't have very many murders--there were a total of eight in the years 2003 through 2005--which is pretty impressive for a city of just under 200,000 people. When there is a murder here, it is a front page story for days, such as the two murders (one in Moscow, Idaho, the other in Boise) alleged to have been committed by a very confused and troubled young man named John Delling. This article describes the anguish of Dellings' parents:
In the letter, Delling's parents say they are searching for answers and express their "deep sadness at the loss and injury of those three fine young men." Delling's parents also appear to say they tried to get their son help but that his problems overwhelmed the people who tried to help him.Here is something that Delling wrote on a Christian recovery website a while back that captures his mental illness.
"John was very sick and needed more than this system had to offer," the Dellings wrote.
These tragedies just don't stop.
Swinging Pendulum
I mentioned yesterday that Cho's Creative Writing professor was so disturbed by some of his work that she tried to get him to go in for counseling. This should be no surprise; over the last forty years, one of the consequences of the deinstitutionalizaton of the mentally ill has been not the release of those who were hospitalized, but the reluctance to hospitalize those whose behavior was peculiar or worrisome.
I mentioned a few days ago the story of Joyce Brown, whose bizarre behavior living on a steam grate in New York City in 1987 led to a confrontation between Mayor Koch and the ACLU--and the ACLU won. That's by far the more common side of the problem--mentally ill people living in misery and squalor because their mental illness prevents them asking for, or accepting hospitalization and treatment. The ACLU thinks it is looking out for the dignity of people in this situation. It is a tragedy, but one largely confined to that person.
The less common side of the problem is what happens when a mentally ill person goes on a rampage. I say that this is "less common," because it really is relatively rare. But when it happens, everyone knows about. It isn't a localized piece of suffering that ends when someone dies of pneumonia or exposure, but the cause of multiple deaths.
Martin Bryant, somewhat retarded, who killed 35 people in Tasmania in 1996, after providing at least clues to his dangerousness because of his involvement in two previous suspicious deaths.
James Huberty, who killed 21 people in San Ysidro, California in 1984.
Charles Whitman, who murdered 18 people sniping from a tower at the University of Texas in 1966--and who autopsy showed had a golf-ball sized tumor in his brain, and had been receiving psychiatric treatment that didn't look for this physical cause.
Thomas Hamilton, who murdered 17 people at a school in Scotland in 1996. His unhealthy interest in little boys was well-known to the authorities; there are some reasons to wonder if Scottish police may have allowed him to have a pistol permit (not easy to get in Britain) covered up aspects of the crime to hide their involvement with Hamilton and child pornography.
Michael Ryan, who murdered 16 people in Hungerford, England in 1987.
And there are so many others, like Richard Baumhammers, who showed clear evidence of serious mental illness, or the guy who murdered my landlord's daughter in San Francisco in 1982, but no action was taken until they started killing people.
There was a time when a person who was just a little eccentric might find himself locked up in a mental hospital without reason. I mentioned O'Connor v. Donaldson (1975) a while back. Lynn Vincent and Robert Stacy McCain's Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party on pp. 181-2 describes how in 1961, a local sheriff brought prostitutes to President Kennedy's suite at the Olympic Hotel in Seattle:
American society was too willing, not that many years ago, to lock someone up in a mental hospital on the say-so of an authority figure. But we have clearly gone too far the other direction--and the consequences of this unwillingness to hospitalize those who are deeply troubled sometimes gives a bitter and bloody harvest.
UPDATE: It now appears that Cho was hospitalized, apparently against his will, in 2005--which makes me wonder if the Brady Law background check works:
I mentioned yesterday that Cho's Creative Writing professor was so disturbed by some of his work that she tried to get him to go in for counseling. This should be no surprise; over the last forty years, one of the consequences of the deinstitutionalizaton of the mentally ill has been not the release of those who were hospitalized, but the reluctance to hospitalize those whose behavior was peculiar or worrisome.
I mentioned a few days ago the story of Joyce Brown, whose bizarre behavior living on a steam grate in New York City in 1987 led to a confrontation between Mayor Koch and the ACLU--and the ACLU won. That's by far the more common side of the problem--mentally ill people living in misery and squalor because their mental illness prevents them asking for, or accepting hospitalization and treatment. The ACLU thinks it is looking out for the dignity of people in this situation. It is a tragedy, but one largely confined to that person.
The less common side of the problem is what happens when a mentally ill person goes on a rampage. I say that this is "less common," because it really is relatively rare. But when it happens, everyone knows about. It isn't a localized piece of suffering that ends when someone dies of pneumonia or exposure, but the cause of multiple deaths.
Martin Bryant, somewhat retarded, who killed 35 people in Tasmania in 1996, after providing at least clues to his dangerousness because of his involvement in two previous suspicious deaths.
James Huberty, who killed 21 people in San Ysidro, California in 1984.
Charles Whitman, who murdered 18 people sniping from a tower at the University of Texas in 1966--and who autopsy showed had a golf-ball sized tumor in his brain, and had been receiving psychiatric treatment that didn't look for this physical cause.
Thomas Hamilton, who murdered 17 people at a school in Scotland in 1996. His unhealthy interest in little boys was well-known to the authorities; there are some reasons to wonder if Scottish police may have allowed him to have a pistol permit (not easy to get in Britain) covered up aspects of the crime to hide their involvement with Hamilton and child pornography.
Michael Ryan, who murdered 16 people in Hungerford, England in 1987.
And there are so many others, like Richard Baumhammers, who showed clear evidence of serious mental illness, or the guy who murdered my landlord's daughter in San Francisco in 1982, but no action was taken until they started killing people.
There was a time when a person who was just a little eccentric might find himself locked up in a mental hospital without reason. I mentioned O'Connor v. Donaldson (1975) a while back. Lynn Vincent and Robert Stacy McCain's Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party on pp. 181-2 describes how in 1961, a local sheriff brought prostitutes to President Kennedy's suite at the Olympic Hotel in Seattle:
Miffed that he hadn't been able to deliver the prostitutes to the president personally, the sheriff warned the hookers, who were already inside the suite: "If any word of this night gets out, I'll see that you both go to Stillicoom [a state mental hospital] and never get out."And at the time, that was a realistic threat.
American society was too willing, not that many years ago, to lock someone up in a mental hospital on the say-so of an authority figure. But we have clearly gone too far the other direction--and the consequences of this unwillingness to hospitalize those who are deeply troubled sometimes gives a bitter and bloody harvest.
UPDATE: It now appears that Cho was hospitalized, apparently against his will, in 2005--which makes me wonder if the Brady Law background check works:
April 18, 2007 — Virginia Tech police say Seung-hui Cho was sent to a nearby mental health hospital for evaluation in December 2005, after two female schoolmates said they received threatening messages from him and school officials became concerned that he might be suicidal.UPDATE 2: A forensic psychiatrist concludes that Cho was schizophrenic:
That information came to light two days after Cho, a Virginia Tech senior, killed 32 people and then himself in a shooting rampage on the university's campus.
University officials said the school had obtained a "temporary detention order" from a local magistrate that allowed them to refer Cho to an off-campus medical facility.
According to Virginia law, "A magistrate has the authority to issue a detention order upon a finding that a person is mentally ill and in need of hospitalization or treatment.
"The magistrate also must find that the person is an imminent danger to himself or others," says the guideline from Virginia's state court system.
"We normally go through access [appealing to the state's legal system for help] because they have the power to commit people if they need to be committed," said Wendell Flinchum, chief of the Virginia Tech police department.
What then leads you to believe Cho had schizophrenia?This is not surprising. A lot of schizophrenics start to show symptoms in late teens or early 20s.
How he related to his roommate was just too bizarre to be depression. The bizarre content of his plays — mashing a half-eaten "banana bar" in someone's mouth, the hypersexual, nihilistic (death obsessed) obsessions in the absence of depressive guilt or tearfulness are another clue. The progressive decline of a period of years. Those with schizophrenia, especially in their earliest years, are not readily recognizable as such — their condition is evolving. But here was someone who, as early as 2005, was carrying himself so strangely that he was a spectacle. The depressed withdraw and disappear. Those who are so peculiar in their manner so as to be inappropriate (taking cell phone pictures of his teacher, speaking inaudibly, pulling a cap low over his eyes) exhibit signs and symptoms more indicative of schizophrenia. He was communicating in a rambling manner reflective of what we appreciate as autistic thinking — characteristic of schizophrenia. In a similar vein, Mr. Cho's stilted communication in his homicide note (deceitful charlatans — not the language of a 23-year-old college kid) is also the manner of a schizophrenic's communications, as is his pronounced delay in responding to questions.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Prophetess
A posting over at the Liberty Zone from last year that correctly predicted what would happen:
A posting over at the Liberty Zone from last year that correctly predicted what would happen:
Wednesday, February 01, 2006These are the times that I'm sure Nicki wishes that she had been wrong.
College students in Virginia will remain vulnerable
And here I thought Virginians had some common sense when it came to gun rights. Guess not.A bill that would have given college students and employees the right to carry handguns on campus died with nary a shot being fired in the General Assembly.And I'm sure the armed criminals are appreciative of the General Assembly's actions as well. This will help them victimize their prey and give them a full college campus of disarmed targets.
House Bill 1572 didn't get through the House Committee on Militia, Police and Public Safety. It died Monday in the subcommittee stage, the first of several hurdles bills must overcome before becoming laws.
The bill was proposed by Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah County, on behalf of the Virginia Citizens Defense League. Gilbert was unavailable Monday and spokesman Gary Frink would not comment on the bill's defeat other than to say the issue was dead for this General Assembly session.
Virginia Tech spokesman Larry Hincker was happy to hear the bill was defeated. "I'm sure the university community is appreciative of the General Assembly's actions because this will help parents, students, faculty and visitors feel safe on our campus."
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