Posted on 02/22/2008 10:19:10 PM PST by neverdem
Following a spate of campus attacks and threats, including the fatal shootings at Northern Illinois University and a chilling message scrawled in a boys' bathroom at a Levittown high school, federal lawmakers are renewing a push to beef up gun-control laws, fund safety procedures and study the link between college shootings and mental illness.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), at a news conference yesterday in Manhattan, said he and congressional colleagues plan to step up efforts to close loopholes in gun-control measures and create a federal task force to come up with national school safety guidelines. They also plan to push for congressional hearings on links between mental illness and school violence.
The effort comes a little more than a month after President George W. Bush signed a gun-control bill in response to a horrific shooting at Virginia Tech University, where a student with a history of mental troubles killed 32 people in April. The law seeks to expand the federal database used to screen gun buyers to include more than 2 million people who are not eligible to buy firearms, including those with mental problems.
That measure includes only "adjudicated" mentally ill patients, Schumer said. While it would have applied to Seung-Hui Cho, the gunman at Virginia Tech, it would not have revealed Illinois campus shooter Steven Kazmierczak, because he never was ruled mentally ill.
Among the efforts Schumer outlined are a bill introduced by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) last February, which is stalled in Congress, to provide funding for security at colleges and high schools.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
Schumer might broaden college shootings to include all school shootings. Schumer's reaction to the information on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors should be interesting, to say the least.
I’d love to kick this guy out of my state.
I’d rather you would get the voters of your state to kick him out of the Senate.
I shudder to think what Jan 20th, 2009 will bring.
Thanks so much Dubya, you stinking CINO/RINO, for making all this possible.
This gets real problematic for those who would prohibit guns to the mentally ill.
Most people who are treated for mentally illness do not have the kind of mental illness that would prohibit gun ownership under current laws. Furthermore, most people who do have "that kind of mental illness" (don't ask me, I'm not a lawyer) are not reported to anyone, for any reason. Thirdly, mental hospitals are fast disappearing altogether, so that confining people who are mentally ill and dangerous is limited to only those who have gotten themselves arrested and are currently incarcerated. Those people who are dangerous and mentally ill and not incarcerated have the choice of seeing their doctors and taking their medicine, or not. There is no law that requires MH professionals to report someone who is deemed potentially dangerous. There is a law (Tarsoff vs California, ?'72) concerning a "duty to warn" that prohibits MH professionals from reporting such patients unless that patient has made a specific threat of harm to a specific, named, individual.
All of this mess will be opened further as lawmakers work to "solve" the public shootings problem.
I question Chuck’s mental health!
I'd fund a study. Just to prove what we already know.
We have several regions within this nation who should just go away, and do their own thing.
Not true. IIRC, a provision of NCLB (Illinois Children’s Mental Health Act of 2003) allows schools to asses the mental health of studenrs...and that of course would carry over into adulthood. IIRC, a BUSH mental health intiative was to get shrinks to asses kids into preschool (Head Start)...
http://www.mentalhealthcommission.gov/
http://www.edaction.org/2004/080204.htm
New Yorkers are stubborn, and kinda stupid. If the reasons were put in their face, they still wouldn’t vote him out of office.
That's what will save the GOP in 2008. In 2006, they didn't make a peep about gun grabbing. Heck, most of the newbies that they ran in 2006 boasted of their RKBA credentials.
I sincerely hope you're right about that.
I'm racking my brain to try to concieve of any national school safety guidelines that could have stopped the NIU shooting and others. Just can't come up with one. Maybe it's time to try something else....... like allowing people to carry on campus.
I read on one of my threads that the NIU shooter was taking Prozac. The story from Chicago said he stopped taking his meds for anxiety about two weeks before he killed. Cho at VA Tech had a clean toxicology report. Maybe both of these killers were experiencing SSRI discontinuation syndrome?
I don’t like thinking about it either, FRiend.
Yeah, true and not true, depends on the actual, on-the-street use of the law and other things.
I've retired and not keeping up all the new laws, and some you mentioned did not become law. And, there is new front in the MH-legal area where the state wants to raise children while they remain in the physical custody of their parents.
So far, there is nothing in any of these laws regarding the reporting to law enforcement of an adult who may or may not shoot nameless people. And the Tarasoff law prevails upon the practioner---who is required as part of licensure to read, know, pass a test on and honor the laws governing conduct of a practioner---to do the utmost to NOT reveal unless there was a specific threat of harm to a specific, named individual.
Who’s surprised? Spitzer wants to ban .50 muzzle loaders because they are anti-aircraft guns.
I thought they could shoot down the moon.
At least that’s what Sen. Boxer told me...
You know I am loathe to use that argument re: SSRI--just sticking it to me, huh? (LOL!)
Abrupt termination of anti-depressant meds is so ill-advised that shrinks avoid it without a second thought. Sort of like, 'don't drive off the roadway.' So, I admit there is a discontinuation syndrome. But, from time well before SSRI, it was has been an enduring syndrome. In my own experience, in those instances where the patient has DCd their owns meds, I truly fear discontinuance of a non SSRI more than I do SSRI. (disclaimer: I don't prefer SSRI, and generally steer away from them)
A courier arrives at the headquarters of General Schumer during a battle:
“General,our men are suffering heavy loses!”
“Tell them to dump their armor and heavy weapons!”
Later:
“General,we are losing even MORE men!”
“Well,tell them to get rid of their small arms and knives then!”
Later:
“General,we have hardly any men left!”
“Gee,we must have we done something really bad to make them hate us that much.”
We’ve got the same problem in Arizona with McCain, over, and over.
Can’t use a sling shot in the People’s Republic of Zoo Jersey! Illegal weapon .
While they’re at it just outlaw crime. Simplest way to solve every thing, see?
Well, the new law could prohibit any type of airgun, firearm, folding stocks on slingshots, or anything that even looks like one within 2500 feet of an educational institution.
That should solve the problem, right?
How about implementing a 90 day waiting period? Dang, that would stop it.
Better yet, require gun locks on everything. That would slow things down a lot.
Man, I just don’t get it. How many years have we been doing this and how many gun restriction laws have been passed.. and I’ve yet to see one that made any difference outside of political gain or feel-good agenda. How many lives have been LOST to gun control? What would have been the death toll at VA Tech if only 5% of their students were carrying concealed?
I just don’t get it anymore.
http://www.mentalhealthcommission.gov/
Taking the guns out of the hands of citizens one generation at a time.
Schumer is just NOT an American. PERIOD.
Sen. Charles Schumer (Putzhead Schmuck-N.Y.) blah, blah, blah... They also plan to push for congressional hearings on links between mental illness, school violence and Voter Registration and/or voting patterns. The prevailing view of mental health professionals is they are all Democrats.
There, fixed it.
Why doesn’t Schumer outlaw mental illness?
Ah, that was just one of three he was taking prior to the shooting. He had been prescribed Xanax, Ambien and Prozac. According to his exgirlfriend, he abruptly stopped taking them sometime prior to the shooting.
Sure, there is a hidden agenda here. As a gun-grabber once told me, any one who wants to own a gun should pass a mental health test administered by a pyscologist. And, then he added, and any one who wants to own a gun is, by definition, mentally ill. Therefore, no one would pass the evaluation.
I suppose if there was some separation of responsibility in those evaluating mental fitness and those giving weapons permits, I might consider it a possible solution. That’s impossible to guarantee though, so dangerous in the long run. Wasnt the last insane shooter so obviously looney, though, that he belonged in a mental ward instead of a university? And just how really crazy was the last one? If only it was as easy to commit them as it was Brittney Spears.
Would love to see that on a bumper sticker.
Can you find that link? This looks real ugly. Schumer might have a field day with prescription drug makers.
Will McCain Oppose $845 Billion Earmark? (unrecorded votes for UN funding - cloakroom deal alert)
Obama takes funds from lobby partners
The Anti-Lobbyist, Advised by Lobbyists (McCain)
From time to time, I’ll ping on noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs. FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.
The perp's GF was a psych grad student. She said he was normal, even after he came home with this tat in July '07 + more:
That's unlikely. Cho was a parnoid schizophrenic. The NIU perp got those tats in July '07 and put on a big smile about them. He had already been known to have cut himself and was facinated by the same in prisoners. Note the tattoo artist's description of the guy contrasted sharply from the description by his GF and NI grad advisor/prof. The GF rarely made I contact during her interviews and the prof refused to appear on camera. All they showed of him was an ear and neck hair. This had been developing for some time and none of the "experts" noticed.
links between mental illness and school violencehow about hearings on links between mental illness and Democrats in office? :') Thanks neverdem.
I think it was Paxil, but close enough.
Did you punch that dolt in the face?
“Catch 22”
God,the left is incorporating cynical (graveyard) humor into their ideology!
Stalin.Mao,and Hitler were masters of the genre.
I’m impressed.
Actually, that gun grabber was quite proud of his idea. But it did illustrate the fact that most gun grabbers do believe that there is no reason for a rational person to own a gun. Therefore, any one who wants to own one is mentally ill.
Now, how many MDs would you think would take on the liability of certifying somebody as OK to carry, and how much do you think they would charge for the examination?
I checked a number of other sources. All refer to the original CNN story. Thanks again, suijuris!
Remember that to a liberal all non liberals are mentally ill. Who defines mentally ill? Such broad definitions opens a Pandora’s box and I am sorry to see the Bush administration fall into these feel good measures that restrict our rights. But the elites can’t help themselves, anything that guarantees their status is what they are for. Another issue besides immigration in which they are on the wrong side.
Just another ‘reasonable’ gun control measure designed to severely limit gun ownership.
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