Colorado Springs Killing -- and "background check" solutions

Locally, a State institution for the insane was closed in the 1980's, and turned over to a tribal authority. Today, the tribe wants to divest itself of the site, and it's being looked at for a few public uses.

A mental institution is not one of them. No one cares enough about the issue to do anything towards getting the mentally ill off the streets.
 
Locally, a State institution for the insane was closed in the 1980's, and turned over to a tribal authority. Today, the tribe wants to divest itself of the site, and it's being looked at for a few public uses.

A mental institution is not one of them. No one cares enough about the issue to do anything towards getting the mentally ill off the streets.
Click to expand...

I can understand why they are not.
Today even when it is shown that a perp has mental health issues.
The news media, politicians ect. Gloss right over it like they did not hear it. Then move on to what ever the cause they wanted it to be.

They dont want to look into any aspect of a problem that cant be made to disappear at least for the short term by passing a LAW.
Its going to take a serious amount of work to solve the problems.
They want nothing to do with that.

It wont get fixed until WE hold their feet to the fire and make them explain how they are going to fix the underlying reasons for this violence.

They just pop out. " Gun Gun Gun Gun Gun. We need to stop the Gun!"

Then when that fails. They use that as an excuse for nothing getting fixed.
Its just a shell game so they dont have to actually do any thing.

I mean I get it. The Federal and state mental institutions were a mess and were also not serving us well.
Closing them and just kicking out the mentally Ill was probably the worst solution.
But non the less its what they did. And washed their hands of the whole thing.
 
Last edited:
so we traded horrific conditions for the institutionalized for horrific conditions for happy healthy sane people who are in the wrong public place at the wrong time...


then to put a cherry on top we make these public places gun free zones.
Click to expand...

+1.

Let's destabilize society by letting all the mental patients out onto the streets so long as they promise to take their meds and behave themselves ..... and then when those people cause mayhem, punish all the people that DID NOT DO IT....... similar to the way they destabilize society by letting out thousands of violent felons because they don't want to build any more prisons, and then when those same felons cause mayhem, they insist we must pass yet more laws ...... that they will not enforce ..... because the prisons are full ......

....the whole deal is designed to control the population: You can't rule an honest man, so they will make criminals of everyone.
 
While I agree that our asylums of old were bad, and that the closings were probably not the best solution in the long run, there are a few points still to consider before fastening on mental health care as the solution.

Federal money supporting the institutions went away, when??? I recall hearing (a lot) that Reagan was responsible for closing the asylums and forcing the mentally ill out on to the street.

So, lets look at that for a moment. The Reagan years were how long ago?? Shall we round off and say 30? or 25? even going with 25, it should be CLEAR that the people committing the mass shootings in recent years were NOT people who were "dumped on the streets" when the government "shut down the mental health hospitals".

Look at the most recent batch, 30s or younger, many in their 20s, not from the lowest income groups. These are not people who were in the system and got kicked out. Some of them "brushed the edges of the system", but were never IN the system. (at which point the hindsighters start pointing fingers, about how we KNEW and did nothing, etc).

The current background check push isn't aimed at STOPPING anything criminal, its about making second hand gun sales a crime without official sanction. And some of the laws are so poorly worded as to be unenforceable burdens on every one involved.

Sure, it SOUNDS simple and easy, but it isn't.

They will not (possibly cannot) allow ordinary citizens access to the background check system. SO, since we are not allowed to make a phone call, we have to go through someone who IS allowed. And that is mandated in the laws, some versions even giving limits to what may we may be charged for the service.

On a philosophical level FFL dealers might complain with the rest of us about the infringement of our rights, or about all the "extra work" they are being forced to do, but financially, they have to be smiling all the way to the bank.

After all, when he LAW creates your customer base, you probably aren't going to lack for business, ever.

We've pointed out already that no background check can have any effect on the actions of someone who has no background to be checked.

Also there is a level of insult to we, the private seller, as the background check laws do NOT allow us to use our own judgment. THE STATE will not accept what I know as valid, except as allowed in the statutes. They may generously allow me to sell or transfer a gun to a specific listed family member without a background check (done by an FFL in the presence of the person AND THE GUN) but that same law does not allow me to do that with a non family member who's background I have known FOR DECADES!!!

oh, and how about the insult of presumption of guilt when you "transfer" a gun to a gunsmith to have some work done, or have it stored?? They have to run a background check on you (the owner), before you can get it back!!!

Now we are told, over and over how this is to stop the "bad guys" from "getting guns". What a crock. IT doesn't, and it won't. As others have pointed out its a feel good do nothing solution that makes the politicians appear to care.
 
I recall hearing (a lot) that Reagan was responsible for closing the asylums and forcing the mentally ill out on to the street.
Click to expand...

That happened when Reagan was Governor of California 40+ years ago. The people released are at least in their 60s and 70s now. I don't think it had much to do with any of the recent shootings.
 
So, lets look at that for a moment. The Reagan years were how long ago?? Shall we round off and say 30? or 25? even going with 25, it should be CLEAR that the people committing the mass shootings in recent years were NOT people who were "dumped on the streets" when the government "shut down the mental health hospitals".
Click to expand...

That happened when Reagan was Governor of California 40+ years ago. The people released are at least in their 60s and 70s now. I don't think it had much to do with any of the recent shootings.
Click to expand...
The trend to "deinstitutionalization" hit its stride in the mid- to late 1970s. Certainly, the people committing the mass shootings today are not the same people who were dumped onto the streets (mostly into halfway houses that were ill-equipped to really deal with them) 40 years ago, but the factor remaining today is that the institutions are still closed and people who should be institutionalized are not.
 
but the factor remaining today is that the institutions are still closed and people who should be institutionalized are not.
Click to expand...


Agreed. My point is the discussion should not be about when and why institutions were closed, but about the fact that we have done little or nothing about that problem SINCE, other than medicate those who are inclined to actually take the prescribed medicines.

For various reasons in combination, we have what appears to be a bumper crop of people who cannot or will not accept reality as it is. And a fraction of a percent of them turn violent when their fantasies don't happen the way they think they ought.

The only way to change this is to change what ever it is that produces these people. The only thing I know for certain is that guns don't cause this. They may be what those people use when they go on their rampage, but they are not the source. Doing anything about guns, or doing nothing will have the same effect on what ever it is that creates these individuals, which is, none.
 
IIRC, we shot ourselves in the foot "for the good of the patient and his civil rights..." (that's when I began
seeing throngs of obvious mental inapacitants start hitting the streets, sleeping on grates, roaming
the grocery cart forest. Wherein the authorities could previously detain & commit them, now they could not.)

St. Elizabeth's came to mind... so Googled both it and then a second follow-on link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Elizabeths_Hospital
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Mental_Health_Act

Where have I seen this before in centralized "....it's-for-the-good-of-the-xxxx" actions ?
 
The driving force in closing the mental institutions and putting the inmates back into the mainstream society for the sake of kindness and parity was Senator Ted Kennedy. He spent two or three years pushing the agenda as I recall so many years ago. I believe it was sometime in the seventies.
 
I tell people all the time who bring up these shootings: "back in paw paw's day, you could buy a fully-auto tommy gun for what would be about $2G in todays money. But there were nobody shooting anyone up like today. So what changed?"
Click to expand...

24/7 news happened where every gun incident is blown out of proportion and immediately spread throughout the world. "Back in paw paw's day", when something happened, it remained a local issue ad it was dealt with without a lot of theatrics. Now, the publicity encourages copycats and causes people with problems to do things they would not otherwise do. Gun crimes are down dramatically from 20 years ago but the 24/7 newscasters never tell us that.
 
the institutions are still closed and people who should be institutionalized are not.
Click to expand...

Good point. It makes more sense when the emphasis is on "closing the asylums" rather than "forcing the mentally ill onto the streets".
 
Gun crimes are down dramatically from 20 years ago but the 24/7 newscasters never tell us that.
Click to expand...

gun crime in general, but not the gun kind that matters most to todays politics.... mass shootings, are on the rise.

--

whats interesting about asylums is befor his mass shooting, Charles Whitman spent hours trying to convince his doctor that his pshycoactive meds were making him violent with "overwhelming violent impulses". His doctor just kept prescribing him more meds and sent him on his way.
This was 1966, when we were "deinstituionalizing" these people into everyday society....


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman#Investigation_of_medical_history
 
I have poor opinions of the mental health field.

I believe that they can diagnose a few problems but do not know how to treat them.
 
Does anyone have any constructive ideas how this could have been prevented short of the State using invasive web crawler worms to collect/file away behavioral information -- both real and rumint/accusation -- on every individual ?
Click to expand...
No we don't. Neither do the people who claim gun ownership has to be restricted in some way.

It's not a conciliatory or pleasant answer, but these things happen. Our society produces a monster every now and then. With time and research, perhaps we could isolate some of the factors that might lead to this sort of behavior.

Even then, how do we factor that into prevention? I can't think of a means under which harmless people would be caught in the net.
 
Does anyone have any constructive ideas how this could have been prevented
Click to expand...
Society could posthumously humiliate those who do this instead of glamorizing and excusing it.

Most of these people plan these attacks for months if not years. They obsess over them, abandon all other activities, invest all their finances, etc., etc. They kill a dozen unarmed unsuspecting and often random people. After YEARS of preparation? Really think about how unsuccessful these people are in their last ditch deranged pathetic attempt to show how society has underestimated or undervalued them.

Sit for ten minutes and think what the result would be if you personally sat and planned something like these acts for months or years. Would you even use a gun? The selection of firearms in these plans amazes me. These people are failures right up until the end.

Of course, pointing that out might just push some to try and "get it right"

And then the whole PC thing on to of that. I guess we just have to put up with national media telling us sob stories about their childhoods and how it is teachers and medical professionals fault for not seeing or acting on the warning signs and stopping the actors.

That post probably won't go over well with the admins.
 
Last edited:
Here's how this plays out in my mind. The current situation is that people buy firearms legally and pass all required background checks.
Suddenly (this word is often used), the legal gun owner in question decides that they need to do something violent to a random cross section of society. They choose to use their legally purchased firearm/s.

Group A thinks that the solution is to ban guns, or increase the number of background checks.
This seems to be a logical failure as the gun owner in question passed all the required checks.
Group B cries that this is a mental health issue and points out (sometimes smugly) that background checks don't work, at least in the above-described case.

Eventually, Group A will buy into Group B's thinking. They're going to propose the gov't tighten down firearm background checks to filter out anyhow who's taken any drug with a potentially violent side effect, anyone who has had counseling involving suicidal thoughts or just anyone who has ever visited the school counselor to discuss being bullied. Like a domestic violence record, this cadre of "at risk" citizens will be given a permanent ban from owning firearms. This will probably be passed on a state by state basis, b/c after all who doesn't want to be safe?

Group B will have in fact found the root cause but not a solution, and Group A will drop napalm all over the demographic map to eliminate any legal access to firearms to anyone in society that they think could be a potential problem. Hence they will have a "solution."

Not liking it or agreeing with it; just giving my opinion on how this is probably going to play out over the next decade or two.
 
I'll go the other way. Background checks are so uselessly flawed they need to be eliminated entirely. Many of the mass shooters passed the check, and it can only be a snapshot analysis that is quite useless. Guns are also stolen and passed through the black market and obtained through straw purchases and gifts... so it's a really flawed system which does nothing to curb violence.

It really only slows down the gun purchase and adds a "tax" to lawful buyers.

The anti-gun party believes IDs for voting are oppressive so it stands to reason that showing an ID is also oppressive to exercising the 2A to buy a gun.
 
The anti-gun party believes IDs for voting are oppressive so it stands to reason that showing an ID is also oppressive to exercising the 2A to buy a gun.
Click to expand...
It actually runs deeper than that. Between the RKBA and voting, only one of those rights is enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

They hate it when I bring that up :rolleyes:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top