One thing I've noticed in all this push for more gun laws is no one from either side has bothered to take a look at history. If you go back to the 60's and before that school shootings were unheard of. So if you are looking for causation and a solution, it would seem a logical course of action would be to examine what was different between back then and now.
There were FAR less gun laws on the books, pre 1968 you could order guns through the mail.
I'm not sure about the 60's, but I know in the 50's kids brought guns to school because they had rifle clubs. No one used them to shoot at anyone else.
Back then giving kids phychotropic drugs was virtually unheard of. It's natural for kids to be active, there wasn't a mass diagnosis of "hyperactivity", like there is now. Overly active kids were made to work it off playing football and other sports. As a side benefit you didn't have much childhood obesity back then either.
Mental institutions were far more common, and back then insane people were placed in them, rather than be allowed to wander around homeless on the street like they are now. Many of the institutions that housed the mentally ill have been shut down, so now there is no place to put people who need help.
You would think with less gun laws and kids bringing rifles to schools there would have been MORE school shootings back then, instead of virtually none. But such is not the case. So we need to look at what else is different, and now it's time to come to a different table.
It seems to me the major difference between then and now is kids being dosed up on psych drugs and adult mentally ill people with nowhere to go on the streets.
So just why isn't there a "table" where people are coming to discuss the possibility of kids raised on psych drugs and mentally ill people not being confined being a major causation of school shootings?
According to this article many of the people involved in school shootings were on psych drugs.
As a medical expert, I also had access to medical records and can confirm from these unpublished documents that Eric Harris was taking Luvox regularly for one year leading up to the shootings. The dose was increased 200 mg per day on February 9, 2009, two and one-half months prior to the April 20th assaults. He saw his doctor and his prescription was renewed on March 13, 2009. At that time, the medical record described him as suffering from medication-induced tremors, indicating a degree of toxicity.He goes on to talk about the Aurora shooter
For example, James Holmes, the Aurora, Colorado shooter was in treatment with psychiatrist Lynne Fenton in the months before he assaulted people in a movie theater. He mailed a box of materials to her shortly before committing the violence. A court hearing recently revealed that four prescription bottles had been removed from his home. Yet to this day information has been withheld about what psychiatric medications he was almost surely taking.And so it goes...
Similarly, there are unconfirmed reports that Newtown mass murderer Adam Lanza was taking psychiatric drugs. According to the Washington Post, he was, "A really rambunctious kid, as one former neighbor in Newtown, Conn., recalled him, adding that he was on medication." Yet no information has been released concerning his medication use.And what about the closing of the mental institutions? Has that caused problems? You bet. The following article by DJ Jaffe is about New York, but the situation is pretty much the same in the rest of the country. Jaffe writes
The impact of this insane let-em-lose-to-fend-for-themselves policy is cruel to people with mental illness who desperately need and want treatment. But it's also dangerous to the public. According to the Daily News, late last month, "A 25-year-old mentally ill Brooklyn man stabbed his mother and kid brother and beat them with a hammer." Near where Buffalo Psychiatric Center reduced beds, 6,300 homes experienced a blackout when a recently released allegedly mentally ill man used a chain saw to cut down utility poles. Near where Rockland Psychiatric Center reduced beds, police rescued a suicidal mentally ill man who was off medications, barricaded in his home and brandishing a pellet gun. And earlier this month, between where Rockland County Psychiatric Center and Hudson River Psychiatric Center reduced beds police shot and killed allegedly mentally ill Tim Mulqeen who brought a loaded shotgun and 50 rounds of ammunition to a city court.He goes on to say
When will this madness end? New York went from 599 psychiatric beds per 100,000 citizens down to twenty eight.
In New York, hospital closures mean you are now more likely to be arrested for having a serious mental illness than hospitalized.Here is another article that discusses the national consequences of dwindling mental health facilities.
State psychiatric hospital beds continue to dwindle nationwide, putting an incalculable strain on jails, prisons, hospital emergency rooms and law enforcement, according to a new study by a nonprofit treatment advocacy group for the severely mentally ill.So with regards to not just school but other mass shootings; why is gun control the only issue being discussed as a solution? Where is the "table" where both the treatment of kids with psych drugs potentially causing violent behavior and the lack of mental health facilities causing potentially dangerous people to be walking the streets are being discussed?
"What we are seeing is people who are presenting more acutely ill," said Doris A. Fuller, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, which conducted the study of public psychiatric beds from 2005 to 2010. "We used to be able to take care of them faster."
During the five-year period, the number of public psychiatric beds nationally declined 14 percent, continuing a long trend that brings the per capita number of such beds to the lowest level since 1850, according to the study.
There isn't one. But there should be.
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