Tucson Shooting

[m24]

A shooting near Tucson, Arizona, occurred on January 8, 2011. Nineteen or twenty people were shot, six of them fatally, during Representative Gabrielle Giffords' meeting with constituents held in a Safeway supermarket parking lot in Casas Adobes.Those killed in the incident include chief judge for the U.S. District Court for Arizona John Roll, a nine-year-old girl, a congressional aide, two 76-year-olds and a 79-year-old. Representative Giffords, a Democrat representing Arizona's 8th congressional district who was said to be the target of the attack, was shot through the head at point-blank range and is in critical condition.

Source: Wikipedia

Quote from parents of 9 year old who died in the shooting:

We're going to remember her for the nine years we had her," says Green, who continues:

This shouldn't happen in this country, or anywhere else, but in a free society, we're going to be subject to people like this. I prefer this to the alternative.

Source: Reason

Regards

[Steve007]

It would be good to loosen up on privacy restrictions on reporting --or doing something about--genuinely mentally-ill people.This guy was a complete nutcase rejected by the army for mental instabilty and repeatedly kicked out of college for the same thing. There has to be some compromise on legal rights of the menally ill and public safety. I am truly pro-gun, but putting the reported-by-authorities unstables on a no-buy list (FBI check is requred before gun purchase) would be a minimum action. You can't someone from getting a gun, but you can slow him down.

For decades in America there has been an effort to ensure that the rights of those who are not sane are the same as the rights of those who are. The person in custody for the Tucson crimes is, according to all accounts, profoundly crazy. For such as he, his right to live as a free man previous to his crimes should have been seriously questioned.

[xl_target]

What is surprising is that in Arizona, where a lot of people are armed, there wasn't anyone in the vicinity of this incident who was. The nearest person carrying was about 75 yards away and by the time he got there, it was all over and bystanders had the guy disarmed and pinned to the pavement. There were no law enforcement individuals on the scene till after the shooter had ceased to be a threat.

The sad part is that even though there may have been indicators of the shooter's mental instability in the past, he had no criminal record and he was able to pass the NICS check and acquire a handgun legally. Maybe the Sheriff Dept. who had dissuaded people from pressing charges against this guy in the past bears some responsibility, maybe not (that's just hindsight). This person had never been committed to any mental institution, so the question of there being any mental health records on him doesn't arise. The only records that they had on him was that he had been expelled from the college he attended. I don't think any one wants to treat people who are expelled from educational institutions as felonious criminals.

How do you predict that someone is going to commit a crime? I don't believe you can with any certainty, especially if they have never committed a crime before. One of the fundamental tenets of American law is that a person is innocent until proven guilty. This should apply to all individuals subject to the law in this country, without reservation.

My personal response to a situation like this would be to take responsibility for my own safety, to carry a legally permitted weapon to defend myself with; even in broad daylight with people all around me. There is no guarantee that there would be any police close by or that anyone else would be able to intervene in time to stop an attack against me or my loved ones.

[timmy]

The tough thing about the shooting involving Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is that there really isn't much one can do about such things. I note xl's points on this matter regarding the judging of one's qualifications to purchase a gun: How is the "correct" personality profile established? It's all well and fine to say, "Crazy people shouldn't have guns," but who defines what constitutes being legally "crazy"?

Surely one can see some very dangerous ground here, as the current bar for depriving a citizen of their rights on the grounds of "being crazy" is currently quite high in most places.

I can speak with personal experience here: I lived across the street from someone who was most certainly "crazy," given that he'd been institutionalized 4 times before, and had been pumped twice by a local law enforcement officer's 9mm. Still, he was able to purchase 4 more firearms. As I suspected when they hauled him away for the 5th time, he had been watching us thru the scope of his 284 Win. bolt action rifle. I went to the county attorney and swore out a complaint about this guy's behavior -- everyone in town knew he was nuts -- but as the county attorney told me, as long as he was obeying the law, nothing could be done about him.

Finally, he went to the nursing home and got his mother out at rifle-point. His reason for doing this was because he worked for the president and she was a spy for Khaddafi. (No, I am not making this up.) Then the police were called and he was dragged off.

For all I know, he has probably been released and institutionalized several more times since.

So, I come back to xl's point: How do you predict that someone will commit a crime? Or, how do you institutionalize people who are mentally ill (assuming that a meaningful benchmark for such a term can be legally created) without it being abused by people, say, by someone trying to scoop up someone's fortune by having them declared crazy?

If, as I and many others would hold, a person is too mentally imbalanced to be allowed to exercise his/her 2nd Amendment rights, does this not imply that any and all of their other constitutional rights could be questioned, as well? In many of my discussions with anti-gunners, I make the point that owning guns, free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, etc. All of these rights belong to each citizen, and it was the basis of our Revolution to make the bar very high for depriving anyone of these rights. It is at the peril of RKBA that we would permit separation of the 2nd Amendment from other constitutionally guaranteed rights, as gun owners.

I'd also like to mention one other thing: In the USA, our right to privacy also includes our medical records. As someone who has worked in a medical school (i.e., where physicians are trained), HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is a huge deal. Allowing increased public access to medical records has implications for employment, home ownership, and many other aspects of life that could be very unpalatable. Again, who decides whose records should be released, and on what basis?

[Steve007]

Loughner wasn't just "expelled from college". His behavior was becoming bizarre and disruptive. He was expelled from the school when professors and students reported fearing his irrational comments, believing they would lead to violence. College officials told Loughner he could not return to classes until he had undergone a mental health evaluation. That apparently never occurred, and Loughner did not return to school.

When he had contact with the object of his anger, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, he questioned her as to why the government was using “English grammar structure” in an attempt to brainwash Americans.

He was increasingly detached from reality.

The mental health system, pushed by the "rights" people including congress, has since the 1960s actively de-institutionalized many of those with serious mental health issues. The intent was honorable — to “mainstream” those who suffer from mental health problems, so they are not stigmatized. But opening the institutional gates has also taken away the very support system that could help those who need help, but cannot help themselves.

No reason a qualified Presidential panel can't come up with suggestions as to what steps to take to protect the public from nutcases, including limiting their access to guns. I believe in guns... but not for the certifiably unstable.

[timmy]

I agree that the deinstitutionalizing of many mentally ill patients back in the 60s was an ill-advised move. However, I'd note that, while the understanding of mental illness has increased dramatically since the 60s, there's still a lot more that needs to me understood, discussed, and agreed upon before we start talking about depriving folks of their constitutional rights. While the deinstitutionalization of the 60s was ill advised, there were also abuses to that system, where folks could be deprived of their rights on the basis of being committed. (The famous case of Gov. Earl Long comes to mind here!) While I'm in favor of public institutionalization as a concept, I'd note that the ideas of mental health and individual rights and privacy have come some way since the 60s. I'd need to see the specific proposals of such a panel before I could consider agreeing to any abrogation of our already too tenuous gun rights.

As far as this Loughner fellow and college security, I recently went back to college myself and graduated in 2007, in my 50s. It certainly wouldn't be my impression that people corresponding to the general behavior and appearance of Loughner, including his rantings and even outrageous behavior, are uncommon today in this kind of a setting.