Posted on 06/14/2007 2:48:33 PM PDT by neverdem
U.S. Panel Reports on Va. Tech; House Passes Gun-Control Bill
Authorities' abilities to identify potentially dangerous mentally ill people are crippled across the nation by the same kinds of conflicts in privacy laws that prevented state officials from being able to intervene before Seung Hui Cho went on his rampage at Virginia Tech, according to a federal report commissioned after the Blacksburg shootings that was presented to President Bush yesterday.
Because school administrators, doctors and police officials rarely share information about students and others who have mental illnesses, troubled people don't get the counseling they need, and authorities are often unable to prevent them from buying handguns, the report says.
The report was released on the day that the House of Representatives passed a bill designed to make it more difficult for people with mental health problems, such as Cho, to buy firearms.
Lawmakers said the measure, the first major gun-control legislation since 1994, would improve the national gun background check system by requiring states to report their list of mentally ill people who are prohibited from buying firearms to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
Cho, who killed 32 students and faculty members April 16 before turning a gun on himself, had been deemed mentally ill and a danger to himself in December 2005, but that information was not available in the computer systems used by the outlets that sold him guns.
The Democrat-backed legislation was crafted in coordination with the National Rifle Association, increasing its chances of becoming law, lawmakers said yesterday.
The federal report released yesterday was commissioned by Bush, who ordered Education...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Assume you have a series of tests or findings that result in 95% of those dangerous to be discovered and their weapons confiscated. Then assume that this 95%, confidence interval, works in determining 5% of people who are not dangerous as dangerous. Then look at the possibility of a 1% homicide rate. For ease of calculation assume the general population to be 100,000. Apply the tests and you, indeed, do get 950 of the possible one thousand. On the other hand, you also find 5000 people dangerous who are not and you incarcerate or remove their weapons as well.
Actually, psychiatrists and psychologists do poorly at predicting dangerousness. They do a little better than chance but not by much. Essentially, the problem is mathematical based on the inability of known criteria to adequately predict dangerousness.
There is no way to do this, but one cannot deny the ignorance of law makers and breakers in this matter.
You hit this right on the head, and that’s one of the problems with our increasingly poorly educated* populace (including representatives)...they don’t understand such phenomena.
*(And I am not talking about numbers of academic degrees, but amount of actual understanding relative to the governmental clout possessed).
To be declared a threat to yourself or others the person usually has to admit that he or she wants to commit suicide or murder. Who wants lunatics running around with firearms?
My problem would only be in deciding when that person is no longer a threat to remove a NICS disability or returning any weapons confiscated.
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The lifetime stalker
Boulder Daily Camera | 6/12/07 | Clint Talbott
Posted on 06/12/2007 10:20:50 AM EDT by Millee
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1848896/posts
Always thought it would be interesting to hold the
court expert, judge, lawyer, and/or jury accountable
in some way for the crimes committed by someone who they deemed
as not being a threat to commit a crime.
I wonder how seriously they would consider their
deliberations if their future was on the line also.
I’m sure the solution above has it’s problems, but it
might be worth a try.
I don't follow your scenario. Juries are tasked to determine guilt or innocence. If someone was already determined to be a threat to him/herself or others, if they didn't actually hurt anyone yet, they usually are committed to a psychiatric facility involuntarily. Psychiatrists make the call on releasing such patients.
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