“A California man killed his mother and lit her house on fire before he climbed atop a tractor and cruised tranquil suburban streets, firing randomly until he was gunned down by cops,” nydailynews.com reports. Another day in the gun-control paradise known as California. I bring this to your attention for a simple reason. “Cops were still at the house when 911 callers began reporting a tractor-driving gunman on a rampage in the Bridle Path neighborhood, a horse park in southwest Simi Valley. Police readied a SWAT team, but other officers arrived first and killed Carnan during a deadly confrontation . . . Police had responded to the home once before in 2008 for a mental health call.” OK, two reasons. For one thing . . .
Citizens are the first responders to any violent crime. Police are [usually] the second. And SWAT teams—who are better funded and equipped and just as bored as a military unit—are the third. Just as they were with the Tsarnaev shoot-out. Not that they participated in that melee, either.
For another, a “mental health call” eh? I wonder when society is going to learn that the reconsidering our antipathy to institutionalization is the best way to pre-emptively tackle spree killing is by. Unless we’re talking about gang bangers doing what gang bangers are wont to do. Which is, statistically, the real problem.
Where’s the fun in institutionalization, when the cops can go and kill the perp after the fact? De-institutionalization suits the police state to a T, when a melee by a madman destabilizes society further, and makes people cry for a perfectly workable “solution”, when a perfectly workable solution that already rejected as an option?
So THAT’s why Ronnie Reagan closed the nuthouses here when he was governor! It was an evil plot to implement the Rise of Big Brother! Never woulda thought a “small government” republican would have been behind such a nefarious scheme.
Reagan was no “small government” Republican.
Bonzo was never ‘small government’ anything, except for “rhetoric”, aka, outright lies.
He grew the gov and debt of Cal as GOV, and he did the same when Pres. Not to mention taking away my right to buy autoguns. He was a pathetic, evil, senile POS and that’s the nicest I could ever say about him.
100% true. And ratted out his fellow actors to the HUAC.
Reagan wasn’t a politician. He was an ACTOR. All his life, an actor. You know, the guy who did “live” baseball radio broadcasts, when he was just reading off a teletype ticker?
<nitpick>
But, they were broadcasting his reading of the tickertape live over the air in real-time, right? i.e., it wasn’t a recording of his voice? That’s all “live” means. If he’d been at the stadium, they’d have said, “On Location.”
</nitpick>
Well, except someone had to type the result into the teletype, send it, and he had to rip it off the ticker. So we’re talking a minute, maybe more.
Point is, it was represented as being live, with him pretended to be excited by a play that was not happening before his eyes.
It wasn’t honest, not in any way.
OK, I guess one good nitpick deserves another. 😀
But I still maintain that since it wasn’t his voice that was recorded, it was a “live” broadcast – he was just putting out old information; he wasn’t “broadcasting the game [itself] live.” He was broadcasting somebody’s transcription if it which couldn’t possibly have been in real-time (which they didn’t say), “live.” Fair enough?
I guess all I’m saying is that they were allowed to say, “Live” because he was talking into a mic whose signal was getting shot out the transmitter. But you’re right about about it not being the game live..
I think i was picking a nit between
“broadcasting the game live” and
“broadcasting the game, live”. 🙂
Oh, the perils of being an inflexible syntactician!
“I am a panda. I eat, shoots, and leaves.”
Take it from the man on the street, we would much rather not deal with the same mental health patients time after time after time. They do something dangerous, we send them to the hospital for evaluation. The hospital sends them home to their terrified family to avoid violating the patient’s rights, and a few days or weeks later, the cycle begins again.
Seriously, I would rather see them go somewhere they can get real, effective help.
Yes, but that would require an actual Nation Health Care / Mental Health Care system. And when that subject is broached here in the US, we hear cries of “Socialism, Marxism, Communism, Death Panels, my taxes, etc, etc”.
Well, don’t those people have parents or guardians?
I say, just deal with their observable actions and let them take their own consequences. For example, I know I’m a nutcase – I may be the craziest of the lot! But I know I’m crazy and so I behave in a way that doesn’t get me rousted or shot. Or even punched.
So what if he’s insane? A criminal is a criminal. If he’s incompetent or unwilling to learn to behave in a civilized fashion, well, that’s what the Darwin effect is for.
And yes, socialized medicine is bad. Socialism is bad because it’s based on theft.
actually it requires county level will. mental courts like san fran. great money savings great recidivism improvement…and acceptance that the “right” for clueless psychotics to just say “No” to treatment can not trump every other person’s rights. things life rights to life, safety… {{b.t.w. that clueless part has a word: “anosognosia” meaning brain damaged that makes one clueless of being ill. its common to schizophrenics and brain stroke victims who cant understand why they cant use their paralyzed arm. they make excuses. they believe then..brain damage us funny that way.}}
“word: “anosognosia” meaning brain damaged that makes one clueless of being ill. its common to schizophrenics and brain stroke victims who cant understand why they cant use their paralyzed arm. they make excuses. they believe then..brain damage us funny that way.}}”
Plain old ordinary run-of-the mill denial does exactly the same thing. And the person doesn’t know they’re in denial because, well, it’s denial. It works like a blind spot in the mind.
hasdrubal. how i would have that in a letter signed by say 1000 l.e.o. ! i could insert it where the eyes and brains of certain usual suspects might benefit from it. you see, since the ACLU carried water for the “rights wing” liberals (the ones who thought mental institutions were nothing more than repression by the man) since then a system of mental “care” has grown up that does not want to deal with the dangerous ones..the zombie slayers ( like one in seattle) etc. but this system loves the money as flows from california’s millionare tax. so police, emergency rooms, families and the public get to deal…sans budget and facilities. perhaps you have known some officer who went on a call and had to say there was nothing he could do? no laws were broke? perhaps he remembered that when he saw the end of it on the news…with a body count. such is just one consequences of de-institutionalization and the system that accomodated to the “rights wing liberals.”
how i would love 1000 signatures to change that all. waltinseattle gmail thanks for reading
Poor mark, actually the ACLU closed most of them, you should read about actual facts!
SWAT “Just as bored as a military unit”. Pull out my bag, place a 4×4 block of wood on the table, grab a spike & hammer…you nailed it.
You both forgot “…with itchy trigger fingers.”
A large number of the unjustifiable deaths (both officially and unofficially) come from SWAT teams. Militarized police are nothing if they aren’t akin to the founders’ most feared pimple on society: the standing army. …and for the very reasons you mention: they are BORED and they have ITCHY trigger fingers.
The next time SWAT kills someone they shouldn’t, the entire team needs jailed with no protections. Let that happen a few times and the SWAT team BS will stop.
There is a reason there is little police brutality and SWAT team deaths in Indiana: WE CAN SHOOT THE UNLAWFUL BASTARDS. We had a legislature that represents the people and not the establishment. SWAT checks their addresses 3 and 4 times before they go in gunning people down because they know there is a high percentage of weapons carry and we’re covered by the law.
There is certainly a justification for SWAT but, as with anything government, they over do it to get more money and as they have done that, the proliferation of SWAT has expanded, and as they have expanded did you think they WOULDN’T use them? Ha! SWAT – Society’s Wanton Application of Tyranny. Spell it out. Know its meaning. They are the face and muscle of your tax money.
But, the mentally ill aren’t supposed to have guns! We have all these laws and he still got one? WE NEED MORE LAWS!
For f!cks sake keep your voice down! Don’t give my retards in office any more ideas, I’ve got a whole printout of aforementioned ‘ideas’ in front of me!
They already had that idea.
Wonder if it was anything like this rampage http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlZh9-NQEyI
Chris! The problem with your jesting is that the zombies that pass for citizens these days won’t realize your sarcasm!!! I can hear the chanting in the background:
…need more laws!
…guns are bad!
…need more laws!
…guns are bad!
…do something now!
…its for the children!
…think of the children!
The only part of society that is more “mentally challenged” than this tractor driving nutcase shooter (that needed help sooner than he got a bullet) is the people that have been coerced into the irrational fear of firearms ownership. They have been coerced because government expands at the expense of the individual. Firearms ownership is a hallmark of individual liberty that must suffer for the state to continue to expand. The state cannot reveal this and must keep the “program” running. If the general population were to realize this, it would be bad for (government) business.
In summary: Its all planned. They WANT guys like the tractor nutcase shooter to happen. It justifies the fear, the SWAT teams, the laws. They WANT it to happen. Stop thinking they don’t. THEY WANT IT TO HAPPEN or they would try to stop it before it happens.
But of course, how will they be able to turn our police forces into the modern day Gestapo if we’re still armed and there’s Three Percenters everywhere? It’s a slow process that’s been happening since 1934.
Mad logic. It’s designed to breed ever more mad logic. Hide Option A from public discourse, and they’ll inevitably clamor for Option B.
The SWAT boys (and girls) obviously need more giddyup-and-go so they get there in time for the shootin. Replace that broken down old POS Commando with a nice shiny new Bradley or some such. The kiddies are counting on it.
They should have gone all Footloose on his butt and challenged him to a game of Tractor Chicken.
I got three issues with this story- 1. The house had a spider in it and had to be burned down. 2. The man was looking for suicide by cop. 3. At the end of the day the cops got to shoot their guns too so they are happy.
You want murderous cops to be “happy”. How utterly charming.
The cops were murderous? You missed the part about the fella shooting and burning? This wasn’t a no knock warrent at the wrong house with fido in the line of fire.
This was what and why we pay the cops for.
Spot on. As much as I hesitate to give cops props, in this case they deserve it.
You missed the entire context of what I was responding to. It’s OK, you get more tries. There’s always tomorrow. Until the day comes when there isn’t.
Fine. I take it back; cops aren’t “murderous” in the least.
William, I forgot for a moment that you have that head full of convoluted conspiracy theories and you see all cops as the gun grabbers see all legitimate gun owners. I’ll try to remember not to respond to your comments in the future, unless you go past Full Retard and all the way to the Full William Burke.
Thank you so much for not responding in the future!
Ouch.
William, you did notice I said unless you go the Full William Burke? Which means I will be responding in the future. You can’t avoid it, the crazy is strong in you.
Everything I’ve said is factually accurate. You could do your own research, but you won’t, because changing your mind would be too painful.
I fully support your right to low-informationhood.
William, valid research consists of more than just listening to Alex Jones. I once asked a fellow who claimed to have inside knowledge of fema death camps where one was. Give me an address, map coordinate, something to go on and I would go to that spot and see it for myself. Subject dropped. Same about foreign troops on US soil. Never any info that you can pin down or verify with your own two eyes.
That’s the ongoing problem with the conspiracy community. Proof. A conspiracy is like the loch ness monster, lots of believers, but no monster.
So one bad tip on a supposed FEMA camp negates the possibility of there being any? There are plenty of videos of them on YouTube.
Wait! Don’t throw out that bath water without checking for baby…
Oh, boy! A real live Pissfest!
You tube videos? that’s your proof? Since you have such accurate knowledge give me the address or location.
I predicted right here you wouldn’t look for yourself. And I explained why.
So you don’t know any more than the last nutter. Why waste my time wading thru a bunch of tin foil hat vids when we have an expert such as yourself. An address, a co-ordinate. Simple enough to provide proof and win a convert.
A spider…? Seems a bit drastic, even for a colony of twenty thousand or so anelosimus eximii..
It’s bad luck to kill a spider.
Ahhh.
Oh lordy…that explains my life…
Me and spiders have an understanding, we do. I see’um…they die!!!
Yeah! They eat flies and mosquitoes. 🙂 Unfortunately, since cockroaches fly so seldom, they’re not in much danger of getting caught in a spiderweb.
<meaningless rambling about creepy crawlers>
But a little Karo syrup and borax mix can wipe out a whole colony. Some nicotine and water sprayed on the underside of plant leaves gets rid of aphids, but so do ladybugs. Sadly, a spider will also eat ladybugs if they get snagged, but I guess that’s the circle of life. I was once at a buddy’s house (about half a century ago) and they had a praying mantis that had come in with some shipment from “Down South” (this was in Minnesota), and one of the kids went out to the wood pile and captured a “woodroach.” They put it in the mantis’s “cage” (a shoebox with a piece of window screen on top) and the mantis watched the roach circle ’round and ’round and ’round, and suddenly SNATCH! The mantis grabbed the roach, and at it like a hero sandwich, tail-end first.
</meaningless rambling about creepy crawlers>
hut hut hut hut hut
That’s 5 small shelter structures.
As someone who has been in a mental hospital a few times in my life. Even after the age of 18. Does that mean I an not qualified to own firearms? Truth be told buying my first pistol did more to help cure my personal depression issues then anything else. The whole one institutionalized you loose your rights to own firearms movement sets me off. I am proof that one does not lead to the other. However, I do realize I am the exception to the “rule”. And the point of commiefornia and not being able to legally get firearms easily is a big issue as well. When seconds matter the police are always minutes away.
This is why the whole mental health issue is not a simple solution of locking everyone up in a hospital and tossing the key.
What sixpack said. It’s the furthest thing from a one-size-fits-all issue.
Theres a none too subtle distinction to be made between depression and taking ones marching orders from a bowl of Rice Krispies.
This is a stigma against mentally ill people that should not exist. Have you ever seen something that wasn’t really there? A flash in the corner of your eye? You might be hallucinating and in need of a visit to a behavioral hospital, where, you will lose most of your rights. People that need treatment: A) Don’t know where to look for help; B) Don’t want to be cast out as mentally deficient.
The mind is a tricky thing and it can bend into all sorts of shapes; how we treat the ill among us reflects on ourselves as a society. We, this country of immense wealth, fighting cancer and diabetes for every inch, can do nothing for these mental health problems.
I never an answer to the mental health problem that I like. How do you avoid ostrasizing people and still give them the care that they need?
“How do you avoid ostrasizing[SIC] people and still give them the care that they need?”
Let their families or attendants arrange for their care.
As for ostracism, so what? Maybe if they don’t like the ostracism, that will motivate them to seek care. Kind of like the argument to legalize blackmail. Before it became socially de rigeur for unmarried teenage girls to make illegitimate babies, it was the potential ostracism that induced them to “keep it in their pants.”
Legally, if they’re an adult and commit a crime, treat them exactly like any other criminal. Get rid of the insanity defense. Frankly, their sanity shouldn’t even enter into it because bottom line, anyone who commits a crime must have been more or less insane to do so.
Wonder what the outcome would have been like if he was dressed as a dog…
They usually don’t mobilize the swat teams unless it’s a really heinous crime like a couple of kids smoking pot in the privacy of their own home. /sarc
Well… When they use the house to light the bowl, maybe.
More often, it’s adults.
Yeah, I keep forgetting I’m one of those dour old anhedonic sourpuss grownups. I’ve always just felt like a large boy. (for 64½ years and counting!) 😉
Same here, Rich. I guess I just can’t find any advantage in realizing I’m actually old. Though facts prove I’m wrong every time I look in the mirror and think, “what the hell HAPPENED to me?”
I’ve worn a beard most of my life. About a year or so ago, for some reason I shaved, and holy yikes! I’ve got jowls! I’ve got TWO dewlaps, side-by side. When I trim my beard, I have to trim my ears. So I just let my beard grow back, and shoved all those unpleasant facts back under the denial rug. (I still have to trim my ears.) 🙂 And I do still love my hair. 🙂 But there’s stuff like, I can’t put one foot on the bike pedal, push off, and swing my leg over the bike like I did as a kid. I’ve got a girl’s style bike, and I step over the low spot and start, one foot at a time. like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq-ErojhrsE 😉
LOL. Yeah, growing back the beard will help with the denial thing. I’ve got long chin-hair, but my beard grows unevenly; something doc gave me by mistake when I was a kid, I guess.
For all my life, I’ve looked a great deal younger than my actual age. I occasionally got carded for hooch when I was 35 or so; now it seems, I’m making up for lost time.
It was great while it lasted. I was helping coach youth lacrosse in the summer of 2010. But I got hit by a car crossing at a green light in 2003, broke my left knee in three places. Now both knees are rapidly becoming total wrecks. No more biking for me.
Rich, the worst part of the bike as we age is the wrecks. I went over the handlebars and banged myself up and bloodied myself a little. had my helmet and gloves on. By the next day I felt like Mike Tyson and Muhammed Ali had been using me for a practice bag. i hurt for at least a week. And nothing was broken.
Getting old ain’t for sissies.
Where’d he find a tractor…?
A horse park in Simi Valley would qualify as farm type area. And tractors can be found in farm type areas.
In WI a guy riding a tractor down the road shooting at people would have the lifespan of maybe a minute or two tops. I imagine in CA this went one for some time being most are not armed and police response time is 10 at least.
My wife’s cousin is part of the Simi Valley SWAT team. Wonder if he was in on this one. I’ll find out tomorrow.
They must have been really bummed there weren’t any dogs to shoot.
It would appear the cop haters are out in full force. I once penned an incitement of federal law enforcement that while polite and professional was apparently so cutting it wasn’t even aired here and even I can’t find fault with the cops shooting a guy who’s last hour of life includes matricide, arson and a self made shooting gallery using a tractor. With the current information this sounds like a text book use of force.
Once is forced to wonder whether it’s all that wise or productive to debate mental health with a neurotic demagogue and a delusional paranoiac.
It’s the mental health question that we keep coming back to though. As far as the 2a goes I think it’s a red herring at best. Given that the mentally ill (that is the demonstrably, identifiably mentally ill) don’t really kill very many people focusing on them by way of reducing violence is akin to banning MSRs. Both are involved in too few violent crimes to be statistically insignificant.
I say a red herring at best because allowing the mental health question to impact on the 2A is an invitation to shenanigans by the civilian disarmament crowd while distracting from the gorilla in the room; drug prohibition and the gangs and culture of violence that have been its unintended consequences.
If one frames the question of mental illness properly it has two distinct sides: A health care side in which there is clearly more that needs to be done by way of assisting those with mental illness in getting the medical care and non-medical support they need and a criminality issue that is the portion of mental illness than affects all the rest of us. Attempting to discuss mental illness without this distinction makes finding solutions nearly impossible.
From a health care point of view the single biggest obstacle to appropriate treatment is the nature of mental illness itself. Imagine cancer patients who won’t show up for chemo, lie about their symptoms and sometimes insist there is nothing wrong with them at all. There is a very delicate balance between compassionate care and violation of civil rights in treating severe mental illness. Personally I error on the side of patient safety over individual liberty in this way; definitively diagnosed but non compliant patients should be subject to a fairly short and sure committal pending adjudication as incompetent.
Clearly I’m not talking about someone with mild depression or an anxiety issues here. Though those are mental health issues they are also not generally life threatening to either those who suffer or the community. I’m not even talking about schizophrenics or psychotics, who are well managed with medication, take their medication as directed and who routinely report for their appointments. I’m talking about that group which either already falls under the next heading or can predictably be included based on observation to soon be included.
Criminality exists in the absence of diagnosable mental illness. Lots of pop-psych has been interjected about personality disorders and all sorts of other things that lead to or facilitate criminal behavior and some of it is compelling. However there is a large gulf between an enabling condition such as narcissism and a compelling condition such as paranoid delusions that include elements of violence.
It’s not that I’m unaware of slippery slope arguments or insensitive to individual liberty, quite the opposite in fact. However, it is not as if there aren’t reliable indicators of serious criminal behaviors that are obvious in some portion of the severely mentally ill. Generally there have been not only clinical indications of impending criminal behavior but also long strings of actual crimes that have either been ignored all together or dismissed as criminal cases in lieu of getting treatment for the underlying disorder. The argument here is that these should be taken very seriously. Plainly put, if a person has difficulty respecting the law due to an underlying mental illness, even minor property laws such as trespass or petty theft, this is the red flag we’re looking for. What I suggest is monitoring such as is done with those convicted of certain drug crimes: Regular reporting to an officer of the court, drug testing to demonstrate compliance with prescribed pharmacological treatment, and the ability to demonstrate lawful and rational behavior. Failure to comply ought to result in immediate incarceration in an appropriate setting until such time as the above can be reliably met.
What I suggest is nothing more than utilizing the existing and well established system of probation with community control sanctions and something like parole only applied to a hospital setting. The primary difference here is criminalizing the behaviors that lead to additional criminality. If it is reasonable to expect a drug addict (arguably a person with a behavioral health problem) to avoid drugs in order to avoid criminal behavior then it ought to be reasonable to expect that those with the sorts of mental illness that land them in legal trouble would take the drugs that enable them to avoid further criminal behavior.
At root I don’t see how one is any more a quandary of individual rights that the other. Both have demonstrated an inability to control behavior due to an underling problem (mental illness on one hand, drug abuse on the other). Just as probation for drug offences is meant to be rehabilitory rather than punitive ‘probation’ Re mental illness is a reasonable step to ensure the person gets the help they need (it’s very hard to fall through the cracks if you have an arrest warrant due to probation violation) while protecting the public from that persons potential continued criminality.
I must make it clear I’m not for jailing the mentally ill. Such a system have sentencing guidelines much like criminal charges have, only these would all include extended mental illness specific probation or confinement to an appropriate medical facility followed by eventual release if appropriate conditions are met much like the parole system used in prisons.
If all this sounds overly punitive consider the very select group in impacts: One would first have to be appearing in court on a criminal count (though it might be quite minor) there would have to be either a history of mental illness or a claim of it by the defendant, and this would only lead to a reasonable monitoring for a short period of time with the person free in the community. In order to lead to committal that person would then either have to fail to take their meds, abuse illegal drugs, commit another crime, or fail to appear before the appointed court officer in a timely manner.
Frankly if one doesn’t have it to gather well enough to swallow a few pills per day, show up at a predetermined time and place every 2 weeks or once per month and not break any laws along the way I don’t think that person ought to be loose in society until such time as they do have sufficient organization to perform these few and reasonable acts.
It’s not a panacea, but it’s a far cry better than what we’re doing now (little).
Ardent, thanks for contributing a thoughtful comment, as opposed to the usual remarks made whenever something like this is posted. Good stuff and good food for thought.
+1
I say, legally it should be irrelevant. Nobody can possibly know what’s going on inside another person’s head. If a person commits a crime, they should be tried and if guilty, convicted. Because what matters in the real world is overt, observable actions with consequences. There should be no insanity plea.
Let’s face it – anybody who commits any crime at all is clearly not entirely sane. (well, except for the victimless crimes that shouldn’t even be crimes in the first place.)
All that “Ooh, he had a mental problem” stuff is just a bunch of liberal excuse-making: “Oh, it’s not his fault, it’s society’s fault!” Feh. I say, it’s time to call them on their bullsh!t.
Don’t blame SWAT for not showing up on time. They were working on their dog shooting skills at the local ASPCA.
“I wonder when society is going to learn that the reconsidering our antipathy to institutionalization is the best way to pre-emptively tackle spree killing is by.”
Either Bob had a stroke in the midst of typing that sentence, or he’s been moonlighting as a Chinese DVD player user manual author, and it’s slipping into his TTAG writing.
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