This one 100% boils down to mental health issues. He was evaluated by Police psychiatrists, but they cleared him. Maybe they missed something, maybe he hid it well.
English
-
Mental health is a pretty hard thing to diagnose even with the most trained professionals overseeing the whole evaluation. It could be that he was really good at acting, or took something beforehand before getting evaluated. Mental health is an issue in the US that needs to be addressed, but we need to put some semblance of caring about it at the federal level ever since Reagan pretty much gutted what Carter put into place to help out mental health facilities and patients. I agree that mental health is an issue that needs to be addressed. I just hope that both sides of the political spectrum will set aside their differences seeing as they seem to be placing more and more blame on mental health rather than committing to action to help those who do need that assistance.
-
No. Predicting whether someone will be violent or not is extremely difficult....
-
Apologies, but my sarcasm detector seems to be on the fritz. Did you actually mean that? [spoiler]This is an embarassing situation for a Brit.[/spoiler]
-
Yes. Science looks at populations. Take a thousand mentally ill people and you can pretty accurately predict how many of them will commit some sort of violent act based on their condition. But trying to predict whether one particular person will turn violent is [i]very[/i] difficult. Think of it this way. It’s easy to know which way a herd of cattle is heading. Really difficult to predict what any single cow is going to do from one moment to the next.
-
The main thing is using the statistical data to assess risk. So, while a person with, say, agoraphobia might be a low, LOW risk (agoraphobia doesn't tend to result in violence), something like paranoid schizophrenia would be a much higher threat.
-
True. But even that is difficult and inexact.
-
Yes, but it might be better to be safe (mandatory psych evaluations for gun ownership, with conditions listed as automatic NOs
-
No argument here. But you KNOW what kind of pushback that's going to get from the gun lobby...and gun nuts.
-
Obviously. But here's the thing. It would be clearly defined (X condtions = Automatic no, Y conditions= followups and regular checkups, etc), and, as long as the gun nuts were of sound mental heath, nothing would happen Also would help get rid of insanity pleas
-
Yeah, I hear that.
-
Sadly, yes.