The Invisible Trigger: Mental Health and Gun Violence. By Walter Russell Mead. Via Meadia, January 17, 2013.
Mead:
This
nation is awash in guns, and there is no sign that that is about to change. The
cultural heritage and the social conditions that make violence so prominent a
part of American life will also change slowly if at all. Those are facts. And
enough Americans believe in the importance of the Second Amendment that it
cannot be repealed; the belief that the right to bear arms is the citizen’s
last defense against government tyranny (or insurance against the breakdown of
civil order) is deeply rooted in American life. Serious thought about gun
violence needs to begin with these truths, unpleasant though many of them are.
Policy must stand on solid ground rather than on a tissue of hopes and
illusions and the reality is that we are not going to solve America’s massacre
problem by passing gun control laws. Nothing we do will solve this problem
completely; some of the most violent cities in America have the toughest gun
control laws and in some of our least homicidal cities and states have very
loose laws.
But if
as a practical matter we can’t do much to keep dangerous weapons out of the
country, we can do something about keeping dangerous people away from them.
This is not just a question of background checks; it is also a question of
rebuilding our ability to protect society from people whose mental state makes
them a threat to society at large. In dealing with the potentially violent
mentally ill, we need to balance the potential danger to society more
effectively against the loss of individual freedom. Building better facilities
for the mentally ill and being more proactive about putting dangerous people in
them is a necessary precaution given the abundance of weapons in these United
States. In any case, making treatment more readily available and providing
better services and more support for the families and friends of the mentally
ill is a good thing in and of itself.
This
problem is going to be with us for a long time. There is no clean and quick
solution. There won’t be one magic law or one golden policy that frees us from
the specter of these tragedies. But making it harder for the deranged to get
weapons, and making it easier for society to protect and treat people showing
serious signs of dangerous mental disturbance is a step that we can and should
take, regardless of what happens on the gun control front.
