On Jan 11, 7:52*am, Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article ,

*"DGDevin" wrote:
*Which is largely BS because for the most part these records are sealed
by Federal and state law.

Laws which can be changed, that surely is the point. *Requiring *schools
that expel someone for violent or threatening behavior to have to report
that and a judge would rule on adding that person to the no-guns list also
seems worth exploring--again, they could challenge that later. *Over and
over we see these cases where someone offered plenty of signs they were
heading for a serious crackup, and nobody did anything.

* *Until the laws are changed this is still a BS argument. *Doubt this
would work even with your quite reasonable additions. While there are
great indicators that these things are going to happen (in hindsight),
they don't work because they are not either specific or sensitive
enough. For every person who has these things and actually does
something there are literally millions that don't. I don't know that we
are ready as a society to do this.
* * I have been a Psych RN for about 25 years now. Violence prediction
has pretty much always been an area of intense research. Yet, we still
can't predict which individual will get violent. Heck, we can't even do
that with any precision on the in-patient until where a person is under
24 hour watch by trained professionals.

--
"Even I realized that money was to politicians what the ecalyptus tree is to koala bears: food, water, shelter and something to crap on."
*---PJ O'Rourke

Unfortunately, I think you are correct, at least in the general
case. We
don't know all the specifics on what the indicators there were in this
particular
case. But with the clear bias in favor or personal freedom, I don't
know who is supposed to be the enforcer if you will, or the canary in
the coal mine, as to who is to be locked up or monitored because
they might be a threat. IMO, in most cases it would have to be
someone very close to the person in question, eg parents or spouse.
They would have to see enough indicators that the person was deranged
to the point of being a danger.
And they would have to take action and probably convince a court that
the person is a danger. And clearly, in many cases, that isn't going
to happen.

You could say that because this guy made
some death threats, the police should have pursued it, got him
committed to a psych hospital, etc. But how realistic is that? We
don't know all the data. I could see police making a judgement call
that they could waste a lot of time on hundreds of guys like this,
only
to lose all of them in court because the guy gets a lawyer and
convinces
a judge that he really isn't a serious threat. Haven't we seen
enough
guys with far more red flags than this guy released by judges,
including those that had already committed serious crimes? Even
if the loon is acting out in front of police, AFAIK, the basic
procedure
is to take them involuntarily to a hospital for an evaluation. A Dr.
will then do a simple, basic evaluation and if there is no indication
the person is a threat to himself or others, they have to let him go.
That's what they did with Charlie Sheen, when he went nuts at
the Plaza Hotel in NYC.