With the recent, horrible events in Santa Barbara, there have come outcries for what we, as a society, are going to do about guns.
Unfortunately, the psycho that killed all those people didn't do it all by firearm. He gleefully killed (or attempted to kill) people via knife and motor vehicle.
Given his actions, is there any cogent argument that, if all guns were banned, he still wouldn't have found a way to pile up a massive body count? Oh, one may argue that guns made it easier to kill. That may or may not be true.
But what is most definitely true is that guns certainly were not necessary for this psychopath to commit mass murder.
Given that, what do we as a society REALLY want to do to prevent the next incident like this?
All of these highly publicized mass murders point to a single cause: the failing of our social mental health system. From Columbine to Santa Barbara, all of the perpetrators of these crimes were young men with mental illnesses that indicated that they were a threat to society and themselves long before they committed their infamous crimes.
ReplyDeleteThe Santa Barbara incident, and others, shows that we need to be more forceful in the identification and restraining of these violent young men.
In this case I advocate the following changes. First, when a young person under the age of 25 exhibits mental illness such that they represent a danger to themselves and society, a guardian should be appointed that has full power of attorney over that individual.
Second, when such guardianship is established, when the police are called to do a welfare check, as in the Santa Barbara case, this should be a prima facia reason for a search warrant allowing the police to search for guns and other incriminating evidence of any planned crimes.
Third, and simultaneously, once a guardianship has been established the individual needs to be put on the lists so firearm background checks will deny them if and when they try to purchase firearms.
Good comment, House. Not sure how anyone could disagree with those points. Well done
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