Re: Oregon incident.
 

From what little we know about Chris Harper-Mercer, he was a profoundly mentally ill person with depression, withdrawal, and expressing weird religious/antireligious thoughts. Much the same can be said of Dylan Roof, the Charleston mass murderer. These are clear signs that we have an equally profound breakdown of our mental health system.

If in both cases, those who were familiar with the killers, before they killed, had called the police they would have been taken to the ER and ended up receiving appropriate treatment for their mental conditions. That would have prevented these two tragedies from happening. In the case of Roof, one acquaintance was concerned enough to hide his guns for a time.

A major part of the problem is that those most familiar with these lost souls took no steps to start the process to rescue these guys before they acted out their scenes.

We've had a lot of finger-wagging at us from our friend in Ontario. It is instructive to note that following the Ecole Polytechnique massacre in Montreal in 1989, Canada enacted very restrictive gun laws. However, in 2006, a gunman killed 14 women in Dawson College, also in Montreal. He brought with him a number of guns, all of which he legally purchased, and in addition, he had a restricted Protection and Acquisition License so that his weapons were legally and duly registered with the Canadian gun registry. Apparently the only law he broke before opening fire was when he failed to obtain an Authorization to Transport (ATT) to bring the firearm to the school and by discharging it outside of an approved range. This shows that such laws are totally ineffective to prevent these tragedies if a mentally disturbed person obtains weapons and determines to use them.

Re: Oregon incident.
 

Without addressing the national question of whether or not mental health services are adequate or not, I'm not sure that before someone has committed a crime or a dangerous act a call to the police is going to result in the person being taken to the ER and receiving some kind of treatment.

Re: Oregon incident.
 

This isn't the wild west you know...

NAU freshman held in shooting that left 1 student dead, 3 wounded

Re: Oregon incident.
 

At least in Pennsylvania, the law, with which as a lawyer who has handled these cases I am reasonably familiar, the test is whether the person is deemed to be a "danger to him/herself and/or others." That determination is, in the first place, made by a psychiatrist after the person has been admitted for "observation." That admittance can be either by the individual in question, or by a police officer on the complaint of a family member or other responsible person.

The initial observation is 48 hours. After that period the person can release himself unless there is a petition to the court signed by the psychiatrist setting forth the basis for continuing observation. A judge in the Court of Common Pleas will decide, based on the evidence available. The detainee has the right to court-appointed counsel if he/she can't afford one and also has the right to an independent psychiatric evaluation at state expense.

As best it can be done, the rights of the person are protected, balanced with the safety of the public. Probably SC and Oregon have similar statutes. But someone must set the process in motion.

Since the mentally disturbed aren't usually running around in wild disarray and screaming nonsense, they frequently have periods of lucidity, recognize there is a problem, and admit themselves for observation as I noted above.

Re: Oregon incident.
 

Exactly, someone must set the process in motion. Have reports from the Oregon case indicated that people who knew the perpetrator, friends, neighbors, relatives, or others, had concrete enough concerns that they tried to get him hospitalized or assessed? If posting a lot of bollocks on social media is enough to get one assessed by a psychiatrist, we'd probably be paying a lot of overtime to psychiatrists...

Re: Oregon incident.
 

If right-wingers truly believe that murderers are mentally ill, then they should be demanding that murderers be institutionalized instead of executed. Funny how that works.

Re: Oregon incident.
 

;)

That is of course the problem.

Re: Oregon incident.
 

As usual you are busy telling other people how they should think and act based on your own world view point.

Re: Oregon incident.
 

Maybe the process should be part of buying a gun :) Might catch a few.

Re: Oregon incident.
 

I'm pointing out the obvious hypocrisy of the position. Are you suggesting that we should execute the mentally incompetent?

Re: Oregon incident.
 

Is that not what Stalin did?

Re: Oregon incident.
 

Or asking what all these other countries do right with mental health to avoid all the shootings.

Re: Oregon incident.
 

I think all the deaths are regrettable however I am still waiting to hear what these common sense gun controls are and how they would have impacted any of the "mass shootings". From what I have seen the shooters in these incidents all seem to have passed background checks to legally obtain the guns they used.

As far as I am concerned I have a Concealed Carry permit so there are no papers to fill out or waiting period

I believe the focus should remain reducing overall gun deaths. The are many example across the US where different cities have achieved progress on this

Re: Oregon incident.
 

I stll go through a background check despite the CC.

Re: Oregon incident.
 

I think they still do it here but with the CC there is no charge and it took about 10 minutes last time.