James Holmes: Reaching the Third Stage

Whenever we have a mass shooting, and it’s a great pity we have to say “whenever,” there are three inevitable stages in characterizing the criminal:

1. Friends and neighbors say, “he seemed perfectly normal; nice guy, just kept to himself.”

2. One or more acquaintances or relations says, “there was just something a little off about him. He made me nervous and I can’t say why.”

3. It turns out he was a loon who popped Prozac like Pez and had left detailed plans for his killing spree.

We have now reached Stage 3 with Aurora, Colo., mass murderer James Holmes. It turns out that he was under the care of a university psychiatrist whose specialty is schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder. As of this writing, nothing has emerged about psychotropic drugs he might have been prescribed, but no one who’s been around the gun community for long will be surprised to hear that he may have been medicated for mental problems.

SGN columnist Clayton E. Cramer is intimately familiar with severe psychological problems, as you can surmise from the title of his latest book:

My Brother Ron: A Personal and Social History of the Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill. When not doing yeoman work in support of Second Amendment rights, he’s been involved for many years in the debate over deinstitutionalization, which is pretty much a 10-cent word for dumping crazy people on the streets, where they freeze to death, poop in the San Francisco subway until the escalators won’t work and occasionally murder people by the job lot.

As you can imagine, he has some very useful insights about the Aurora crime, noting, for example:

“There is usually advance warning, as there was with the rampage at Virginia Tech, at Cafe Racer, and most of the other mass murders done by mentally ill people. But our society chooses to make it impossible to take any preventative action about an individual with serious mental illness problems until blood is dripping out of bodies. Unless, of course, that preventative action is something very broad, like gun control laws, which apply to everyone. This unwillingness to look at individuals and their problems is absurd.”

If you like his columns in SGN, you owe it to yourself to check out his blog: http://claytonecramer.blogspot.com/ where you can enjoy his insights on guns and a variety of other subjects, from astronomy to writing software code.

Heretic

I knew he was on pharma dope, they always are.
- Clayton E. Cramer
  
  Not always. Those that are, should not be a surprise. People who are insane often take antipsychotic medications, and often don't stay on them.
lfb

So by law, he did break the law to get these items of destruction illegaly?
- Clayton E. Cramer
  
  Probably not. The provision of GCA68 that prohibits possession of firearms by those who have been adjudicated mentally ill was written when the current laws on the definition of mental illness commitment were in flux. In 1968, in nearly the whole country, a person who was exhibiting signs of schizophrenia would likely have been hospitalized briefly, then likely committed–which would have made purchase of firearms at a later time impossible. But today, it is rare for someone with serious mental illness problems to be committed until they have become at least a local headline, and often a national or world headline.
  
  As you might expect, I care about this issue strongly for multiple reasons.
Jonathan Huckabay

There are five reasons for gun ownership: 1. Target shooting 2. Competition 3. Self defense 4. Hunting 5. Protection from Tyrants

The writers of the Bill of Rights had just rebeled and over thrown their government; they insisted on a free and armed population and feared standing armies.

I am sure the sociogist knows about the 80:20 rule whereby 80% of people cause 20% of societies problems and 20% of people cause 80% of problems. 20% of bicyclists cause 80% of the trouble for everyone else on the roads just like 20% of people drink and drive. You can't castigate law abiding citizens because of a few nuts.

I have taken an oath to defend the constitution and it sickens me that the 4th, 5th, 2nd and 1st amendments are being eroded away. It is a bill of rights, not a bill of priveledges that can be taken away on a whim by a "feel good law" after a tragedy. 9/11 gave us the aweful "Patriot" Act and now after this tragedy some want something just as draconian for our guns?

The truth is, is that more law abiding citizens should carry a concealed handgun. If someone or a few had a gun in that movie theater the outcome would have been similar to the other incidents lately of armed citizens thwarting criminals.

A bad guy with a gun is a bad thing, but a decent person with a gun is only a threat to bad people. I have a shotgun next to my bed because the police are a phone call and five minutes away (at best). I'm not looking for trouble but when it comes my way this law abiding citizen, husband and father will take care of the trouble.
- Clayton E. Cramer
  
  This would have been a very hard shot in the dark, with tear gas, against someone who was wearing at least in places some armor. Yes, better than hoping that a meteor came through the roof and hit the shooter, but far better is to solve the core problem underling the dramatic expansion of homelessness and violent crimes that deinstitutionalization caused in the 1970s.
  - Jared
    
    No doubt there is underlying societal problems, there always are, and they can't always be fixed by adding new laws.
    
    Furthermore, to analogize a meteor event to the ability of an armed citizen to stop a shooter is about as whack job loony as the shooter himself. Not to mention the risk of regular people falling victim to any new "no crazies with guns" laws that will pop up out of a suggestion like yours. We already have an epidemic of bad doctors practicing bad medicine, and now some would gladly hand over more power to those individuals to decide who can and can not own a firearm.
Heretic

I'm hearing his father works for DARPA on the super soldier program.
Stan in CA

I still say that, a loaded gun never wounded or killed anybody until it was in the hands of a person, good or bad. The gun laws we have today, do nothing to help or protect the good honest people of this country, they only leave them to be victims of those people who fallow no law and care for no one but themselves.
deane

All of these recent, successful shootings have one thing in common-high capacity magazines. There are constitutional limits on 1st Amendment for "safety" so too should there be limits on 2nd Amendment for safety of the community.
- 44×39
  
  the citizens were Denide Any Capacity Magazine…right?