Finally, a gun violence bill that may receive widespread support

As the year comes to an end and the 1-year anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary has passed, one bill addressing gun violence is moving forward under the radar in the do-nothing Congress and may receive bipartisan approval – perhaps even support from gun-rights advocates -- in 2014.

The legislation, pushed hard by Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, would provide several improvements to the nation’s substandard mental health system.

On Capitol Hill, it appears the legacy of Sandy Hook will not be expanded background checks to prevent criminals from buying guns but rather an attempt to increase access to mental health treatment so that those with delusional, violent tendencies receive help.

Loughner

The motivation for this move is the pattern of deeply disturbed shooters responsible for the recent massacres at a Tucson shopping center, an Aurora, Colo., movie theater, the Navy Yard in Washington and the elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

The bill, passed by the Senate Finance Committee just before Christmas, was co-authored by Democrat Stabenow and Missouri Republican Sen. Roy Blunt. Its reach is modest but it also helps greatly that the measure is attached to legislation which will increase Medicare funding for doctors – a “doc fix” that most lawmakers consider a must.

Overall, the mentally ill are more likely to become victims of a violent crime than to commit one. However, studies have shown that if someone does not receive treatment after experiencing their first psychotic episode they are 15 times more likely to commit acts of violence than if they receive help.

According to research, those who suffer from schizophrenia, paranoia or other severe emotional disorders are far more likely to become violent if they also suffer from substance abuse problems. Still, fewer than one-third of Americans with a diagnosed illness receive treatment.

With final passage in the Senate expected in February or March, the Stabenow bill would: put reimbursement for mental health services at parity with primary care at community health facilities; establish 10 state pilot programs that would practice higher standards and offer a broad range of mental health services such as 24-hour crisis psychiatric services; require more coordination between mental health and substance abuse treatment, and more collaboration between mental health care providers and other health care facilities, such as VA clinics.

The legislation, with a price tag of just $160 million a year, takes one small step toward the fulfillment of a bill signed by President John F. Kennedy 50 years ago in October 1963 that was designed to create 1,500 community mental health centers across the nation. That law was short-circuited following JFK’s death as only half the centers were built, and none of those were fully funded.

Holmes

 Yet, if the new Senate bill passes it must be followed by a second incarnation in which Congress and the nation come to grips with a more compelling gun issue – the balancing act between the Second Amendment rights of the mentally ill and the public’s right to safety.

In many states, the legal ambiguities tilt heavily in favor of those who suffer from serious mental disorders. In some communities, a mentally ill person who acts out in a violent, threatening manner while armed often receives their guns back from the police within days, just by filling out some paperwork. No questions asked.

The legal process in these communities states simply that a gun is private property and, if no criminal charges are filed, the firearms must be quickly returned. Even in cases where charges are brought after an episode of psychotic behavior involving a gun, often the mentally ill perpetrator receives his (these are mostly men) weapons back within months.

After Newtown, state lawmakers across the country debated common-sense limits on gun rights for those with mental illness. But most of those measures were reportedly shot down amid resistance from the gun lobby and from mental health advocates concerned about unfairly stigmatizing those with mental health problems.

In this political quagmire, the states wait for Washington to act while the federal standards leave gaping loopholes.

Perhaps Congress should consider this: How can it be that the mentally ill can lose all their freedoms while locked up in a mental hospital, without committing a crime, but if they shun treatment they cannot be denied unfettered access to pistols, shotguns and high-powered weapons?

In Michigan, a permit to carry a gun is revoked if the permit-holder engages in domestic violence or repeated drunken driving or violates a Personal Protection Order. Yet, the mentally deranged person who acts out violently has his guns returned to his home after receiving a few days or weeks of emergency psychiatric care.

The New York Times last week published its findings after reviewing hundreds of cases that centered on the uncertain legal territory at the intersection of guns and mental illness.

In one case, police seized nine guns from a schizophrenic man in Indianapolis after responding to a 911 call that indicated he was “delusional and dangerous.” After a mental health evaluation, his firearms were returned.

Several months later, police received another call to the man’s home and when they arrived he was stalking his block with an SKS assault-style rifle and two handguns. The result? He fatally shot his mother and a police officer and wounded four other cops.

In another case, a Connecticut man suffering from paranoid schizophrenia who was off his medication threatened to kill his mother and later a nurse when police confiscated his 18 rifles and shotguns and seven high-capacity magazines. He was briefly hospitalized then allowed to return home.

The man told a Times reporter that he had received a message from God from a deflated basketball that he had stabbed. He also insisted that, among the paranormal activities he has experienced, a bird once flew out of his forehead.

Under Connecticut law, in the spring his 18 weapons and stash of ammo will be returned.

One frustrated police chief told the Times: “We don’t want to violate anybody’s rights. But if you’re in the apartment next door to this guy, what about your rights?”

Lanza

As for the many delusional teens who have engaged in school shootings, too often these cases originated with poor parenting.

How can it be that a parent faces child neglect charges if their kid has skin sores or untreated head lice, yet that same parent is not held accountable if their emotionally disturbed live-in teenager or young adult receives little or no mental health treatment? And, worse yet, what if the teen has easy access to firearms?

The clearest case of parental irresponsibility intertwining with a son’s violent behavior was the Dec. 14, 2012, Newtown massacre.

The killer, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, spent several hours per day locked in his bedroom, where he had covered the windows with black plastic sheets, playing violent video games in the darkness. Lanza, who was diagnosed with severe mental problems several years ago, had also compiled detailed information, including a flow chart, on the recent history of U.S. mass shootings.

One of Lanza’s former teachers told police that Lanza’s creative writing papers were so disturbing, with graphic references to violence and death, that he was not permitted to read them aloud in class.

A newly released stack of law enforcement documents shows that prior to the shootings his mother had not seen him for three months and communicated with him only by email.

Yet a Yale psychiatrist told investigators that, in his contacts with the killer, he observed nothing in Lanza’s behavior that predicted he would become a premeditated mass murderer.

The AR-15 assault-style rifle that Lanza used in Newtown

At one point, Lanza’s mother refused to give him prescribed antidepressant and antianxiety medication, citing paranoid perceptions of side effects. In the weeks leading up to the shootings, the mother knew her son was becoming increasingly despondent and agitated. Still, Nancy Lanza’s Christmas gift for her son was a check to purchase a semi-automatic pistol, which would have added to the family’s collection of unsecured firearms.

Nonetheless, some still hold the distorted view of the Second Amendment that says Adam Lanza’s rights were absolute. These zealots should consider that the Founding Fathers would likely consider it preposterous that anyone would argue that the Constitution prevents gun restrictions for the mentally ill, given that those with mental problems in 18th and 19th Century were cruelly ostracized, even demonized.

Given all the evidence and all the proposed laws that never made it onto the books, it seems clear that only those with the most perverted view of the Second Amendment can claim that the slaughter of those 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook could not have been prevented.