By Warren Lind
On July 9th the U.S. Secret Service released a report on mass attacks. Here are the key findings, followed by my analysis:
- One-third of the attackers who terrorized schools, houses of worship or businesses nationwide last year had a history of serious domestic violence, two-thirds had mental health issues, and nearly all had made threatening or concerning communications that worried others before they struck.
- Most attackers were male, ranging in age from 15 to 64. The domestic violence history often included serious violence. While 67% had mental health issues, only 44% had a diagnosis or known treatment for the issue.
- As for motive, more than half of the attackers had a grievance against a spouse or family member, or a personal or workplace dispute. Also, 22% had no known motive. In nearly half the cases, the attacker apparently selected the target in advance.
From the Associated Press on the PBS News Hour July 19, 2019:
[Head of the Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center Lina] Alathari and her colleagues want communities to be aware of concerning behavior and these trends so officials have something to look out for.
We want the community to know that prevention is everyone’s responsibility, not just law enforcement. The Secret Service is tasked with researching, training, and sharing information on the prevention of targeted violence, using the agency’s knowledge gleaned from years of watching possible targets that may or may not be out to assassinate the president.
Alathari said her team is working on a new report on school shootings and how to prevent them, and investigating attacks to try to figure out why someone didn’t follow through.
For decades I have been tracking mass murders; thus, I am not surprised by these findings. These are my observations.
First is the disturbing fact that 67% of attackers had a mental illness, but only 44% had previously been diagnosed. Almost none of us with mental illnesses commit violence, but the fact that most mass killers do is striking. But committing psychiatrically ill people to treatment is difficult under our evolved civil rights standards and the mental health system does not currently have the resources to treat everyone who needs it.
Second, whenever I hear of a mass shooting, such as the one that took place at a Chicago hospital in November last year or at a plant in Aurora, Illinois in February, I immediately suspect a relationship dispute (Chicago) or a workplace dispute (Aurora). Almost invariably, the security at the sites of such shootings proved to be inadequate.
Third, there are warning signs leading up to such shootings that are frequently known to many people, but are not communicated to authorities. The mounting pressure to enact “red flag laws” in every state is a misbegotten response to this problem. All the laws necessary to report concerns and for authorities to act are already on the books.
I should know: I am a retired licensed clinical social worker, and carried out the Civil Detention Laws of Illinois and Missouri for nine years. As such, I was able to hospitalize persons involuntarily for a 96-hour period if they met the criteria of having a mental illness, and being at imminent risk of harm to self or others.
Fourth, even when such concerns are communicated, there is too often a breakdown in communication between various systems, i.e., law enforcement, mental health, schools, etc., and therefore in their responses. (Ref: the Parkland shooting.)
All these factors must be addressed if we are to reduce the prevalence of mass shooting attacks in our country. The most serious mental illness tend to strike in adolescence or the early twenties. These are the ages in which alienated, isolated young men are at the highest risk of committing violence anyway.
You’ll notice that I did not suggest any new restrictions on firearms. Most mass shooters obtain their weapons through family or by passing background checks and buying them legally in the marketplace. The few who don’t, didn’t need to bother.
Neither category of murderers would be the least bit impeded by universal background checks, the panacea offered by fools and anti-gun politicos.
It’s a paradox. There are no easy answers—yet the tools are already available for those to use who are more serious about intervening to protect the public than about looking “correct” themselves.
Warren Lind is a retired licensed clinical social worker and former security officer who writes extensively about crime, survival, and self-defense. He is a member of too many pro-2A organizations to list.
This article was originally published at drgo.us and is reprinted here with permission.
Someone posted the Secret Service report a couple of months ago at northwestfirearms.com. interesting read.
One issue: any law that stigmatizes the mentally ill will discourage people from voluntarily seeking treatment, probably the very people who should be encouraged to seek treatment.
One caveat: Anyone who falsely “red flags” someone (i.e. commits perjury on a red flag declaration) should be guilty of a felony.
So we use the mass shooter data to dismiss gun control measures and completely ignore all the gun violence statistics that run counter to the mass shooter background checks? Cherrypick at your peril.
You cannot have it both ways. Which is exactly why we are losing our seat at the political table. What good is an old broken record in the digital age. Gun control is proceeding at the pace of FUDD funerals because the tactical cool kids just offend the masses and can’t stutter beyond reciting the latter third of the second amendment even though they can’t tell you what the third, forth or sixth amendment say.
Let me preface this by saying I spent a number of years legally representing mentally ill and disabled people and their families; my business partner was the father of a disabled person, his wife headed a very large disabled persons advocacy group. I experienced that world next to first hand for almost 20 years.
Here’s the problem. Those people and those families don’t have guns already, they know the dangers even if their sick family member is literally unable to intentionally commit violence. They also don’t want you and your advocacy to in anyway infringe upon their advocacy and/or encroach in the support systems and structures that they have created to cope.
Long story short, they “know” that they have things under control and that the love for their family member and their support structure is sufficient to keep it that way. They “know” that their’s and their family members’ rights are superior to anyone else’s and they will not give you a mm of slack. They “know” that any law that “stigmatizes” the mentally ill or disabled will end in their family member being seized and institutionalized (never mind that the institution system was dismantled 1/2 a century ago). They “know” that theirs’ and their family members’ right to not be institutionalized or stigmatized is greater than any right you may have, after all you haven’t gone through what they have gone through. They know (no quotes intentionally because this is true) that gun agnostics will favor their side in any argument. They know that in any advocacy fight they will win because they know how to scream louder and have literally lived their lives advocating and fighting (seriously, the legal bills these families incur is staggering). And in the end they “know” that you don’t really need a gun anyway.
Point being, this is the hill to die on but it is going to be a bloody battle that few have the stomach for.
I’m a mental health professional as well. It’s difficult to see these mass murders. Unfortunately the mentally ill people that are seeking treatment, are stigmatized. They are rarely perpetuaters of violence.
It is obvious these shooters have something “sick” about them. If it’s a chemical/brain dysfunction or a personality dysfunction, or a small (member) & hunger for power. These violent offenders need to be removed from the ability to do evil. Unfortunately there isn’t a “perfect” way to do so. The best way to handle them is to be armed and alert. Be ready to respond with “violence of action”.
As someone else is saying, most states have laws to force someone that is at risk for commiting acts of violence to seek mental health treatment through petition and certificate. In MI we have Kevin’s Law.
Petition and Cert allows a person to agree with getting treatment, or if they are not ill they can request a trial with a jury to prove they are not ill.
They have to prove they are not ill?
After the petition and Cert process. Which means someone in the family/community went to a hospital with the person or the court house and filed for a petition. The court agrees and then the person sees a physician or licensed psychologist who agrees or disagrees with the petition. If the physician agrees, the person is able to be held 24 hours in a psychiatric hospital. In that 24 hours a psychiatrist has to also agree and complete a second certification. If there is a second cert completed the person is offered a chance to agree with treatment, or work with an attorney towards the trial.
Creating new laws gives the appearance of “doing something”. Suddenly enforcing existing laws and following processes that were previously barely or rarely done creates the awkward question of why this wasn’t done before.
In organizational improvement, there’s a hack … the scheme to date helped us learn how to do it better.
In a free society bad things can happen. The alternative is another Soviet Union. There was very little street crime….if that’s your only concern.
Hello comrade. The state would like to check your mental fitness. We have heard reports from a relative you may be a danger. We also pulled up your social media history and found you follow militia groups and fire arm enthusiest youtube channels.
Now come with us to our van for evalution.
Victoria, street crime in the U.S.S.R. was much higher than was known at the time. The Kremlin kept a lid on all information. After all it was a running joke. A mother gives her son two kopecs to buy a copy of Pravda. Dad stops him and asks where he’s going. Dad says we don’t need Pravda, we have the radio. Mom sees the son, where’s the copy of Pravda? Son says, Dad took the two kopecs. He said we have the radio. She gives him two more kopecs. Son says, but Dad said we have the radio. Mom says, tell your dad to wipe his ass with the radio. You don’t think an economy like that breeds crime?
In Soviet Communism, criminals were considered ideologically close and civilians were considered ideologically apart. Criminals were given preferential treatment in the prisons. The bottom rung was for political prisoners who were regarded as worse than sex offenders.
No, the former Soviet Union is not the only option. The USA used to have a much stronger mental health system. We tore it apart starting in the 1950’s, wrapping it up in the late 1970’s/early 80’s. We put mentally ill people out of hospitals and into prisons, homes, vastly reduced numbers of psychiatric hospital beds, private homes and into the homeless population.
The reason was a bipartisan effort to respond to abuses. Liberals and Conservatives were involved, protecting the rights of the ill people and saving taxpayer money at the same time.
We should have fixed the system, not tore it apart. What we have today is underfunded, under-trained and inadequate to the size of the problem.
Just remember Mrs. Lanza who struggled to get her son mental health care. Rebuffed all the way, until finally he killed her first.
Yes comrade lets expand the government. Lets make more government programs. It will solve our issues like it always has. If you are observant and understand history you know the government is the big problem solver.
Good comrade.
Well said.
The media likes to drumbeat the mental health angle but nobody ever looks at the society-wide problem of neglecting institutional mental health treatment.
Biatec’s jibe is good snark but ignores the fact that you weren’t discussing the national government. You described a national trend that genuinely occurred. This was a trend that made everyone feel good about themselves but was harmful to society. Despite the ample evidence of the ills this has wrought, as a nation, we have refused to fix what we broke.
They were called “state hospitals” because states manages and paid for them. That ain’t big government. That’s just how we do business in a federal republic.
Likewise, it isn’t a sign of communism or socialism for our society to provide for the care of the ill or incapacitated. It’s a moral and civil obligation. But we don’t honor that obligation. Instead, as a society we seem to be okay with just turning the chronically mentally ill out into the wild.
There are real and awful costs for fouling up mental health care. Aurora, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech. All of these involved people who should have been under treatment or in an institution. The innocents who died because guys like these weren’t addressed are the true cost of breaking the social safety net for the truly mentally ill.
If gun owners stay silent on the need for mental health care, then we will bear the cost of misguided social do-gooders laying the blame at our feet. Gun restrictions haven’t helped make DC or Chicago safer but somehow we are supposed to believe that national restrictions will protect us all from spree shootings. Dumb isn’t a mental health disease yet, but it really should be.
Ummm…ok. I learned nothing. ILLinois already has redflag laws. And most “mass” shooter’s have a history of violence. Or crazy behavior. Tweedle dee dumb.
In Florida we called it a Baker Act or a Marchment Act, depending on circumstances. Used both several times. The issue was that these individuals were not crossed referenced to FCIC/NCIC. Can you say HIPPA? The left wants background checks, but don’t want medical records revealed. So, they have a better solution. Let’s just ban firearms. Brilliant.
The bottom line is, there are among us folks who have all the signs that they are walking time bombs. We had a ‘system’ for them that kept them separate from the greater population. Insane asylums. Well, up until the late 60s to early 70s when the Leftists managed to shut them down and dump them on the street.
I believe it’s high time we seriously propose re-opening them again for the violent ones. The Leftists will scream and shout (truthfully) about ‘rights’ and won’t let it happen, but at least we can point the finger right back at them and say “We offered an effective solution, but you wouldn’t allow it. Society will just have to accept spree killers as the price of living in a free society…”
Geoff,
I understand why you say that, but, memories make me hesitate. My uncle was committed due to mental illness. I used to visit him up at Rockland. One of the better places, but still very unpleasant for him. I became his caretaker when the Reagan budget cuts led to Rockland’s closure. Yes, I still think Reagan was a great president. Incarcerating dangerously mentally ill people would be very expensive to do humanely. The system would have a perpetual backlog of lawsuits. Maybe there are good arguments for doing so, maybe it would prevent some mass killings; maybe it would not. I am certain, however, that a well-armed citizenry is our best defence.
“Incarcerating dangerously mentally ill people would be very expensive to do humanely. The system would have a perpetual backlog of lawsuits.”
Yes, and yes. Look, it isn’t going to happen, for the very good reasons as you outlined.
Simply *proposing it* is the strategy here. Let the Leftists be the ones who won’t let it happen. Then we hang the Albatross around their necks…
“Simply *proposing it* is the strategy here. Let the Leftists be the ones who won’t let it happen. Then we hang the Albatross around their necks…”
*Evil grin* OK, then what? What’s the next step, the proverbial knee to the solar plexus?
“What’s the next step, the proverbial knee to the solar plexus?”
We have to do what they are doing, and that is appeal to emotions.
After they refuse to re-open the asylums, loudly bleat after every shooting “We have a solution that works, but you don’t want to do it”.
For good measure, pound home the idea that modern problems require impinging on some civil rights, that’s the same game they play with us on gun rights.
Facts are nice to have on our side, but we need to add the extra ‘spice’ of emotions to our arguments…
That whole “You don’t care about dead children”, used judiciously, might help too. Maybe some facts about civil rights as well.
And from there all you have to do is start building a web of ideas and emotions that results in the immediate knee jerk reaction of “you’re a Leftist and that’s bad” the same way they’ve done to us and you’ve got a caricature of a Leftist that they help us out by playing right into. One that causes immediate distaste in a lot of the population (see a paw/tail, immediately know it’s a lion) and suddenly… we’re on equal footing.
It’s not tasteful but it is effective and all’s fair in love and war. Plus turnabout is fair play and a bunch of other adages that I’m too lazy to type out.
You can put the blame on the ACLU.
The ACLU put insane people into a “protected” class.
What the author doesn’t note in his article; Seeking help for some forms of depression and taking meds, is a self indictment to a ban on gun ownership, in some states.
I sent E-mails to my congress critters today, asking them to not support the red flag crap. Don’t know if it will do any good. One of ’em is a RINO.
I was the caretaker for an uncle diagnosed with schizophrenia. So, my experience dealing with mental illness is only from a caretaker’s perspective. I do not see a way to prevent shootings. Even banning guns will not prevent murder by gun. Our best approach is a well-armed citizenry. Mass shooters stay away from other people with guns. Ban private establishments from prohibiting firearms. Arm well-trained, well-qualified school staff. Encourage firearm training and ownership. Make mass-shooting unappealing by making it too dangerous to attempt. It is not a perfect solution, but a perfect solution does not exist.
“As such, I was able to hospitalize persons involuntarily for a 96-hour period if they met the criteria of having a mental illness, and being at imminent risk of harm to self or others.”
In California, it is 72 hour hold “for evaluation and treatment” under Welfare and Institutions Code 5150. It is an involuntary hold, but herein lies the problem. That particular law allows the hold ONLY by a police officer or a mental health worker. And the first point of contact, more often than not, is the police. The fact is that the police are often reticent to act. California’s red flag law was passed in response to a mass shooting by a disturbed young man in Santa Monica whose parents had, on multiple times, called the police to go to his apartment for the purpose of having him restrained. But being a smart and effective manipulator, the police left after talking to him on at least two different occasions. (I should mention that the law that was passed would NOT have offered a remedy to the parents to have him committed because they did not live in the same residence. And the bill was proposed so fast after the incident that it was patently obvious that the bill was already prepared and waiting for a good excuse to introduce it.)
With the closing of the mental institutions, you have a circumstance where the police will not detain a clearly hallucinating schizophrenic unless he is hurting himself or harming or threatening to harm others. So the streets are full of some very strange people, most of whom are harmless, but some of whom go into theaters or schools and let loose.
The assumption that spree killers much be mentally ill is simply wrong. Being socially isolated and having a low self-image does not mean you are mentally-ill. Spree killers are quite rational—although generally and fortunately inexpert—in their planning. They start shooting people because they want to and not because “voices” or a bad upbringing made them do it.
Please read all info here u won’t find this in the Main Stream! Its 100% Fact like it or not.
Can we admit there are just mean,evil people straight out of hell?? Maybe they were good people @ 1 point but, were abused or taught to be mean people and that is not a mental disease no more than there is gun violence…guns don’t jump up and kill….like never!
IN this new fudged up world people ALWAYS want to blame something they DON’T UNDERSTAND OR HAVE NOT FIGURED OUT OR are TOO STUPID to figure out!
Does it sound like ur fav leftist party needing to assign blame and punishing 330 million people for what 1 person did and taking ur god given rights away??
NOBODY UNDERSTANDS MEDICINE,SCIENCE,MENTAL HEALTH except GOD!
Let me clue u good folks in on a secret!
Big Pharma and the Entire Medical Industry does not want cures it wants trillions of dollars of endless treatment!
Lost? Well if everybody was cured with a 1cent pill they would all go out of business! They don’t want Cures they want more Problems new Diseases they can treat!
We would not need Doctors or Pharmacies u could fill out a form online and be shipped to ur door all the meds u would need no doctor,hospital,pharmacy and the 99999999999% mark up on everything!
I have seen what hospitals and Pharmacies pay for drugs!
Of course needed operations and such might require a visit to a surgeon in his house!
Does ur Doctor send u 4 tests/blood work give u script ever-time u go see them for something? HAHA I know the answer! They have to pay the man!
They love Cancer,Diabetes,Heart Disease add a million more! Years of Cancer Treatment making 20 million per person that’s huge cash and they are laughing all the way to the bank!
Mental Disorders: The Facts Behind the Marketing Campaign.
“There are no objective tests in psychiatry-no X-ray, laboratory, or exam finding that says definitively that someone does or does not have a mental disorder.” “It’s bull—. I mean, you just can’t define it.” — Allen Frances, Psychiatrist and former DSM-IV Task Force Chairman
“Virtually anyone at any given time can meet the criteria for bipolar disorder or ADHD. Anyone. And the problem is everyone diagnosed with even one of these ‘illnesses’ triggers the pill dispenser.” — Dr. Stefan Kruszewski, Psychiatrist
The fact is, The American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association and the National Institute of Mental Health admit that there are no medical tests to confirm mental disorders as a disease but do nothing to counter the false idea that these are biological/medical conditions when in fact, diagnosis is simply done by a checklist of behaviors. Even the Executive Director of the nation’s leading mental health agency, the National Institute of Mental Health admits, “Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure.”
https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-disorders/
https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-disorders/psychiatristsphysicians-on-lack-of-any-medicalscientific-tests/
Peace and it was free.
Agree, there is real, tangible evil in the world.
Agree, the pharmaceutical industry is exceedingly corrupt.
Agree, medical institutions place dollars above people.
Exception: I know doctors and nurses and therapists who are epitomize compassion, honesty, and a patient-first mentality.
But this is a gun blog. I’ve learned a lot from it. Lots of smart people here (and a few trolls).
“Can we admit there are just mean,evil people straight out of hell??”
No. For the multitude of reasons I’ve covered before.
Not the least of which is that this is a attack on the very philosophical foundation of Western Civ. The civilization which we’re trying to prevent from being destroyed by the Left. Destroying it ourselves just gives them what they want.
I’m not going to help them by arguing against the entire system by attacking it’s philosophical underpinnings.
STRYCH9, I do not understand. How does admitting there are truely evil people in the world undermine the philosophical foundation of western civilization?
Open carry.
What are you waiting for?
maybe for it to be legal in my state so that I do not lose my professional license when I get hit with a felony bust.
Reminds me of a cartoon: “Adult Children of Normal Parents, Annual Convention” ,by Jennifer Berman. Only 2 people sitting in the audience. Even happiness/optimism will be categorized as a mental illness.
Humans certainly do seem to perpetuate their own set of problems.
“Humans certainly do seem to perpetuate their own set of problems.”
Hey, Possum’s back!
We were worried about you, and asked Dan Z. to contact you to see if you were OK or had been clipped by an F-150 while you were gnawing on a flattened toad on some county road…
#MarsupialLivesMatter 😉
Thanx for the concern, however I never check my email, . What happened was I was diggin in the dumpster and heard ,”Mon back, Mon back” next I knew I was upside down in a world of food. Ate my way out and had to sleep it off before I waddled home.
“…next I knew I was upside down in a world of food. Ate my way out and had to sleep it off before I waddled home.”
*snicker*… 😉
Yup. If I didn’t leave trash in the cans for that stupid truck to pick up I wouldn’t have to have an army of giant spiders to chase away the knife wielding possums.
I saw a ginormous spider yesterday and thought to myself. ‘Self, somewhere out there right now is a possum shitting himself’.
Self did not reply to my witty comment so I assume I’m not in need of any mental health care.
Well played.
I would love to see “Relationship Dispute” used more frequently. I think it is a perfect phrase to identify a type of “mass shooting”. Americans now fear that they are at constant risk of being shot while just shopping. If we accurately described mass shootings, most people would realize the 250 mass shooting this year, mostly occurred to people who had some kind of relationship, therefore, not random.
Relationship dispute should be used when it happens to a group known to the gunman. Unfortunately, it is an incident between family, friends, co-workers. It can also encompass other criminal associations, like gang on gang, drug dealers, etc.
The left sees gun bans as the cure for crazy people shooting up places. That’s their default position and they are not going to budge.
The left sees gun bans as the cure for
crazy people shooting up places a population that won’t roll over and simply submit to the Left’s ideology.FTFY.
Dammit. Fucked up the strike.
The left sees gun bans as the cure for
crazy people shooting up placesa population that won’t roll over and simply submit to the Left’s ideology.FTFY.
This is an important article from TTAG, I am pleased to see it. There has been an enormous amount of work on preventing targeted attacks. But we never hear about this work from either pro-gun or anti-gun talking heads.
Here, tip of the iceberg on the amount of information that is out there:
National Threat Assessment Center
https://www.secretservice.gov/protection/ntac/
USSS Report on Mass Attacks in Public Spaces
https://www.secretservice.gov/data/press/reports/USSS_FY2019_MAPS.pdf
Enhancing School Safety Using a Threat Assessment Model
https://www.secretservice.gov/data/protection/ntac/USSS_NTAC_Enhancing_School_Safety_Guide_7.11.18.pdf
Enhancing School Safety Using a Threat Assessment Model Brief
https://www.secretservice.gov/data/protection/ntac/USSS_NTAC_Enhancing_School_Safety_Brief_7.11.18.pdf
Making Schools Safer Quick Reference Guide
https://www.secretservice.gov/data/protection/ntac/Making_Schools_Safer_Quick_Reference_Guide_2018_Update.pdf
Cure Violence
http://cureviolence.org/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cure_Violence
Violence Prevention
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/index.html
All the tools that we know how to use to do some good are already in place. They don’t solve everything, screw up sometimes, and aren’t free. Kinda like more directly gun-specific tools. We have the ones that’ll do some good, and none of them magically brings instant Utopia for free.
I believe the attackers are suffering from illness and government has to consider some good budget for helping them
کابل شبکه
All the tools as long as you don’t expect adequate financing to make a healthy, responsive mental health system. When an “Urgent” refferal waits months for care, then the system is sick.
Have been pointing this out on several discussion forums regarding the fact that the El Paso shooter’s mother called law enforcement, and the so called “information officer” (lower case), didn’t even bother asking the person’s name, or apparently checking the phone number for name and address information.
Using this information to go out and perform a welfare check, with some basic Q and A might well have identified this kid as a nut job, and a threat – which he definitely turned out to be.
Quite a few LEOs responded to the effect that they did all they could do under the circumstances. I suggested that if they really thought that were the case, they should seek another line of work, where they were less likely to do more harm than good.
QUOTE FROM THE ARTICLE:—————Neither category of murderers would be the least bit impeded by universal background checks, the panacea offered by fools and anti-gun politicos.—————————–QUOTE
The Author is either a member of the out house gang or flunked Gun Control 101 as well as History in school.
Most Industrialized Nations require extensive background checks for all gun purchases which include interviews with a psychiatrist, the police, and the purchasers friends and or neighbors,
Most nations require safe storage laws for obvious reasons Only the uneducated and the ignorant out house crowd in the U.S. refuses to acknowledge that guns are easy to steal if left lying around and 1,300 kids get killed each year with them not to mention the mass killings that take place at our schools with guns that the kids brought from home that were just laying there ready to be picked up and used for mass murder at the school.
Without universal background checks any lunatic or criminal can get a weapon with no question asked. Because of all this Amnesty International has now warned all foreign nations the U,S. has now become one of the most dangerous industrialize countries on earth to vacation in and warns people to be aware of what can happen to them in this totally lawless country where the lunatics rule and ordinary citizens get gunned down weekly in mass murder rampages. When it can happen in Texas which is one of the most gun crazy states in the U,S, it simply proved that even with lax gun laws that allowed both open and concealed carry a lunatic can kill with impunity.
The Chicago study proved that most guns used in crime were at least 11 years old and had been sold second hand many times without any paperwork. This is irrefutable proof that Universal Background checks should have been passed decades ago.
Most nations have red flag laws which quickly disarm people acting strangely. The U.S. has yet to enact a Federal Red Flag Law.
Most other Nations spend much more money on monitoring the most dangerous segment of the population and that is Right Wing Racist and Religious Maniacs. They break up Right Wing Neo Nazi Groups and often arrest their demented , xenophobic and racist leaders. David Duke and nut cases like him would have been put in prison decades ago in many civilized nations.
Most Nations have very severe restrictions and or out right bans on high capacity assault rifles.
Most Civilize Nations have affordable mental health care. In the U.S. the Corrupt Republican Congressmen have always blocked spending any money on health care and thereby making it not affordable and not available to people who need it.
Only a comprehensive approach can ever get the mass murder in the U.S. under control and to do that the Dems need to take possession of both houses of Congress.
I think the tools that were used to lock up dangerous people have been removed from the books. That began in 1988. The Joyce Brown case was easy. She acted out in public. Mayor Ed Koch was right to force her into a city mental health facility. But the Libertarians Liberals and the Left said the mayor was wrong. They won in court. So now Miss Brown can walk in her own feces on the sidewalks and urinate in public. Fast forward to 2019 and defecating and urinating in public in San Francisco is very normal for thousands of people now. Technically it’s not legal. But the law is never enforced.
Since you can’t force into treatment the obviously mentally ill. Then your never going to be able to force the less obvious into jail or treatment. Elliot Rodgers and Adam Lanza combined murdered over 40 people. Their parents who knew them best couldn’t convince the “smartest people in the room”‘ that their child was a dangerous person to themselves and others.
Those tools are gone and are never coming back. But they still want our guns. And known crazy dangerous people will still be allowed to run free.
“Woman wins the right to be homeless”
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/joyce_patricia_brown_billie_boggs_1988