Posted on 04/07/2013 8:11:10 AM PDT by yoe
Gun Control: The left has been selling the idea the only way to stop deranged gunmen is to destroy the Second Amendment. Now we learn that in Colorado, a massacre was avoidable — and it had nothing to do with guns.
Documents unsealed Thursday in last summer's theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., reveal that University of Colorado psychiatrist Lynne Fenton warned campus police the accused shooter, James Holmes, was "a danger to the public due to homicidal statements" and had begun to send her threatening text messages.
Obviously, the warning went unheeded. The next month Holmes massacred 12 and injured dozens of others in his attack on the Colorado movie theater.
It seems clear at first glance that the psychiatrist did fulfill her professional duty, breaking client confidentiality in the interest of an overriding duty to defend public safety. Had the system worked as intended, her warning would have prevented the massacre.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
But the system worked perfectly! She notified the campus cops, and there were no massacres on campus.
I have to quibble. The danger was, in her words, “to the public”, which is more than the university. That said, the article doesn’t offer any details on whether the University police did anything — maybe he was always a danger to “the public” that was outside of the university.
In such a serious matter, I’d call the real police not the Kampus Kops! The Kampus Kops exist to prevent college students from getting criminal records that they might get if the real police intervene.
Do campus police have any authority beyond the campus? I would think not. That being said, I really don’t know how any of the arguments really help. Do we really want people hauled in based solely on the words of someone? That too is a slippery slope almost as bad as weakening our 2nd amendment rights.
This treads on dangerous subjective ground. Only an expert can really tell if a threat is a threat, a threat is serious, if there are other indications of menace, etc.
For instance, imagine if “Mr. Leg Tingle”, himself, Chris Matthews, at MSNBC, was in charge of defining what is “threatening”. “Simple,” he would say, “When Republicans say anything contrary to president Obama, it is a racist threat of violence against him. And conservatives only say things that are threatening, nothing else.”
Currently, the system the police use, or should have used, is a good one. If they detain or arrest someone who appears to be of potential harm to themselves or others, they can ask a judge to confine them in a county psychiatric facility for up to two week for examination.
The logic goes, if they can maintain their rationality for two weeks, they are not insane. Chemically, they should normalize within 3-5 days from most drugs, including nicotine, which some psychotics use to self medicate.
However, if they *do* go off, there is a psychiatrist right there to evaluate them at the peak of their episode.
Importantly, none of this was done for Holmes, and Lanza’s mother was *about* to have him checked out for mental illness, but she waited too long, to her detriment.
Theoretically, they are supposed to coordinate with local police departments, but their main purpose is to make sure that when frat parties get out of hand, the situation is taken care of without students getting a criminal record.
Pass a law that claims to protect the people but don’t enforce it. Demand that more restrictive laws be passed. Don’t enforce them either on criminals. Focus on minor infractions of the common citizen. Gradually as more and more laws are passed, the people lose the ability to protect themselves. More laws are demanded because there is little a common person could do to protect themselves. This time the laws evolve from restrictive to oppressive. Still nothing seems to work. Then the only remaining solution is complete confiscation.
Common sense would dictate that that only the bad guy would get punished for that the bad guy did. In today’s bizarre world a lunatic shoot up a crowd and I get my rights infringed.
I think the campus police made sure the campus was safe, and considered the matter finished. Outside the campus is outside their jurisdiction. Why would the campus cops think any differently than campus profs?
If she really thought he was a danger to “the public,” she should have gone to the city cops, not the campus cops. I always wondered about that (this story has been around since right after the theater shootings).
I am troubled by the reported time lines of the Sandy Hook shooting. According to reports some 154 shots were fired in about 5 minutes..roughly one shot every two seconds. Is this even possible for a semi-automatic gun like the AR-15? Would this have given the shooter enough time to aim and change magazines? Perhaps this might be possible for highly trained commandos, but could a mentally ill kid have accomplished this? Reports are that Lanza shot his way into the school taking out a locked front door. Could this have been done in mere seconds and not allowed time for someone to call 911? The whole report strains credibility.
This is just like Lanza’s idiot mother. It was the height of irresponsibility to have those kinds of weapons available to her disturbed son.
She paid for her stupidity with her life.
Now the rest of us have to be punished for it.
There isn’t a single law they just passed that would have stopped that. The responsibility rested solely on his mother.
Spot on. See tagline.
Pretty good summary of the state of affairs we find ourselves in.
I like your long-form version.
So they fried Paterno for going to the campus police and punished the University. What will happen here, maybe they should sue for wrongful death.
Yes. No maybe about it.
At best it is criminal negligence, at worst, accessory to murder.
There's a reason for that. You are far less likely to shoot back at the cops when they kill your dog.
I agree re the limited jurisdiction of the campus police. This article does not make it clear that “the system failed” at the police level. I agree that the psychologist possibly did not make enough calls.
Where are ye Aura Colorado democrats accepting responsibly for your nonworking policy. Had anyone in that theater been armed they might have been able to save a few lives, and quite possibly deny the shooter the infamy he so desired.
If anyone ever wonders why so many Americans want to be armed and able to defend themselves its because we know the Government will never catch them all, nor most of them it seems.
Instead it ask we surrender our every liberty for one more ineffective layer of apparently ineffective security.
Insolently this latest layer of liberty, our freedom of speech in the confidentiality of geeing counselling will have negative consequences in detecting and treating similar disorders before they explode.
No longer will folks who have theses thoughts feel safe enough to admit to them and get the help they need before it gets out of control.
As we are disarmed as a people we are further compromised in our ability to deal with the situation when it does get out of control. Colorado is a recipe for disaster.
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