The difficult question

Every time a deranged individual shoots up the enemies of his imagination there is great hue and cry that guns are the problem and that guns must be banned. Of course there is always the counter argument that guns are necessary for defense against those who would do an otherwise defenseless group great and grievous harm.

Both arguments miss the point that in all recent cases of mass murder that the actor was an asocial, reclusive individual who was considered by his peers to be “strange” and who culminated his moment of fame by killing himself. The media should be ashamed of itself for the depth and scope of attention it pays to evil entities. Their moment of glory style of reporting encourages other sad souls to emulate the event so that they too can be known and feared. The media feasts on such events and seems to knowingly encourage alienated individuals to do the same since the media lives and dies on such events.

                

Nobody seems to be willing to point out that the root cause of horrific crimes by troubled individuals is that we have too few treatment centers for those who should be in treatment. Forty years ago a loose consortium of mental health practitioners and lawyers persuaded state legislators that it is wrong to institutionalize those who have difficulties coping with society. They proposed that mental hospitals be closed so that the inmates could be placed back in society so they could learn how to cope. This argument neatly sidesteps the issue that it was the individual’s inability to cope that is the cause of their problem.

Politicians loved the argument for closing mental health facilities since it empowered them to close expensive programs and threw the cost back on local communities who, in turn, were unable or unwilling to fund local outpatient treatment centers that are necessary if we no longer have mental health hospitals available. The end result is that we as a society have alienated people wandering the streets, sleeping on grates and doing embarrassing things in public. The police have become the de facto care givers for the mentally handicapped and in the county I live in the Sheriff estimates that more than a third of his jail population should be in active and controlled treatment regimes that he is unable to provide.

                                

Let me be clear on one point. There is no way we can identify the small number of potential violent individuals from the mass of people who have friends and neighbors that call them “strange”. As a society we need to recognize that society is a collection of opinions and personalities that together make the whole and that as individuals we must honor the truth that other opinions are as valid as our own. The problem occurs when we fail to recognize that the other opinion might also be injurious to society as a whole. Identification and treatment of potential offenders is a slippery slope and the libertarian in me sees great danger in identifying “potential” asocial behavior. That is a giant first step to totalitarian authority and I want no part of that. I’m trying to decide in my own mind how we as a society can deal with this problem and the only thing I know is that any decision has got to be made by the social group and not by politicians and vested interested parties.