President Bush designated the 1990s as the Decade of the Brain: “to enhance public awareness of the benefits to be derived from brain research” through “appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.” Thirteen years after the decade of the brain, the public is now aware that brain function is impaired in mental illness (including psychopathy) and addiction. Research has uncovered the brain regions involved in mental illnesses (including psychopathy) and addiction and the mechanism of action of many helpful medications.
[youtube_sc url=http://youtu.be/zqqsxoFsFtw]Now this may still be difficult for some people to comprehend but, I say categorically that, “a 20 year old male who kills his mother, several other women and 20 five year old children does not have a normal brain.” I also ask, “when are our laws regarding mental illness going to catch up with our scientific knowledge of same?”
In the wake of the Newtown elementary school shootings, news commentators are talking about gun control and I claim no specific expertise in that matter. However it would be terrible if we didn’t take this time to also think about the problem of “civil rights” and mental illness. We need to institute “people control” in addition to gun control.
Many mental illnesses start in early adulthood, a time when young people are still financially and emotionally dependent on their families. Parents have no real power to compel a teenager into treatment much less a dependent young adult. The most parents can do is to expel the mentally ill teen or adult child from the home. What good does that do? Parents are rendered powerless by the government to help society and their children.
Doesn’t it seem logical that a dependent young person who has a brain problem severe enough to prevent self-care should be required to adhere to the decision making of parents who provide care? As current law stands, family members are not even allowed information about the dependent’s condition if they are in treatment. Does that make sense?
Empowering families also means accountability and education. If you have a mentally ill family member and you own weapons it is your responsibility to keep those weapons away from the mentally ill person.
Clearly the realities of family life no longer dictate that an individual member’s rights be considered in a vacuum. Sure “the right to refuse treatment” sounds good in theory but in practice it leads to suicide, murder and homelessness. Speaking of the homeless, many receive SSI or Social Security Disability. They are dependents of the state. Shouldn’t we all then have an interest in their treatment and possible return to productivity? Does it make sense for us to pay them to remain mentally ill, addicted and homeless?
Psychopathy is a mental illness that may manifest at any point from childhood through emergent adulthood. Furthermore, the individual symptoms of psychopathy as described by the psychopathy checklist contribute to crime and all forms of aggression. It is time we tackle psychopathy at all levels of severity as a mental health issue. Tackling it means treatment, public education and the empowerment of families to intervene. There is emerging evidence that treatment can lessen the severity of the condition. Supervision does reduce aggression and crime.
I have repeatedly said that psychopathic individuals could not do what they do without the help of their families. The Newtown school shooting is no exception to this because although the perpetrator killed his mother, the guns he used to kill legally belonged to her. He clearly should not have had access to weapons. We have yet to know the full extent of the mother’s lack of judgement when it came to her son’s disorder. But our laws and attitudes toward mentally ill individuals including those with psychopathy do not facilitate family education or responsibility.
In summary, since mental illness including psychopathy impairs judgement, creates dependency and predisposes to violence, mentally ill individuals should not have a blanket right to refuse treatment. The current criteria for compelled treatment are too restrictive. Families should be empowered to take both control and responsibility for the problems caused by mental illnesses including psychopathy.
See also Civil Commitment of Sociopaths, an article I wrote in 2010.
http://life-lessons-halfway-through.blogspot.com/2012/12/newtown-gun-violence-mental-illness-and.html?spref=fb
Dupey, happy Sunday, and great link – thank you.
Yes, the information about Adam Lanza and his issues has made it to the UK, which seems to have an even better graps on the journalism than the U.S. does.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9747682/Connecticut-school-shooting-troubled-life-of-Adam-Lanza-a-fiercely-intelligent-killer.html
U.S. news reports this morning confirmed that Adam Lanza was a very troubled youth, and that his mother had apparently been at loggerheads with the local School Board, though “what” the contentions were haven’t yet been disclosed.
The news reports this morning also painted Adam’s mother as a “gun enthusiast,” which is going to spark a HUGE debate about gun control. I have no view on this with regard to this site. But, what I DO know is that any parent that has a “troubled” child is playing Russian Roulette by having firearms in their home, unless they are kept in a locked gun safe.
It is not my intention to engage in victim-blame, here, but it very well may be inerpreted that way with “virtual communications” lacking in vocal inflection and body language cues. I’m simply dumbfounded that any parent would keep weapons and ammunition in a home with a clearly troubled youth living under the same roof.
My son suggested that this young man would have used butcher knives from the counter if guns had not been available. My response was, “Yeah, but the murder would have been confined to THAT house, because stabbing makes a killing very, very personal and requires an expenditure of energy that would likely not have gone beyond the walls of that home.”
As the information begins to trickle out about this young man, his issues, and family dynamics, I can’t imagine how his surviving family members must be feeling – I really can’t. For the poor victims of Adam’s rampage, there are “answers,” even if they aren’t good ones, and there is a perpetrator that committed the massacre to blame. What does a parent or sibling of the perpetrator feel? Whom can they turn to for comfort and reassurance that they didn’t cause their loved one to go on a murderous rampage?
We are trying to apply MOTIVES of normal people to somebody that is patently NOT Normal. His motive could have been as simple as JEALOUSY & POWER. i.e., He was miserable, and was determined to use any power he had (i.e., guns) make as many other people also miserable. And he did just that. Regarding why women and 6 years olds? They are the easiest targets!
BRAVO! Despite the dreadful tragedy that prompted it, the instant I saw that headline I just had to APPLAUD! “PEOPLE control,” that’s what we need!
Whenever a tragedy of this kind strikes, there’s an immediate (and too depressingly predictable) knne-jerk reaction from certain people who instantly start screeching that what we need is “gun control.” But at the cost of parroting once again a familiar cliché—which is none the less true for all that—“GUNS don’t kill people. PEOPLE kill people!” Based on that fact, what we need beyond all doubt is not “gun control,” but “PEOPLE control”!
Control of the WRONG KINDS of “people,” that is. This Connecticut tragedy is particularly devastating because nearly all the victims—twenty of them—were small children six and seven years old. Yet the real impact of such a tragedy on public perception derives from the fact that these twenty children (along with the other victims) were all killed together at one time and in one place. Numbers like that are disturbing.
And yet, to put such events into perspective, numbers like that are actually INSIGNIFICANT compared with the total number of children killed by other means. As terrible as this mass murder of children may be, fortunately such events are comparatively rare, a school massacre on this scale occurring only every few years. By comparison, some authorities estimate that at least fifteen hundred children in the U.S. are killed by abuse and neglect every single year. Around a thousand of these are officially classed as homicides, but researchers suspect the true number of child deaths from abuse and neglect may be closer to three thousand every year. Twenty is a drop in the bucket compared with slaughter on such a scale. And it goes without saying that for small children especially, the chief perpetrators of these deaths are parents and other so-called “care”-givers, who are of course not fit to be looking after children.
How many of these perpetrators are themeeelves mentally ill or in some way personality disordered? Your guess is as good as mine, but it’s bound to be a huge proportion. Only a microscopic number of such incompetents and evildoers ever take a gun in hand and set out to murder children en masse, but in the aggregate the number of children they kill is colossal, certainly compared with the event in Connecticut. We do need better detection and control over a certain minority of defective and disordered people who are not fit to be running loose in our society, let alone “caring” for children.
Watch this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOTp5s-REjk
and this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_fI0hm1dqY
Sandy Hook Elem: 3 Shooters (A CLOSE LOOK)
How many autistic children from happily divorced families do you know could have killed his MOM and then gone on a shooting spree at the school in a small town where everyone knew each other? and no one saw any concerns?
Look at who is responsible for the FAST and FURIOUS scandle regarding guns being given to drug cartels in Mexico (Answer: Eric Holder)
This kid is dead and his father was going to testify on the Libor case.
Please remove this article. This poor father has been through enough with loosing his child and his ex wife who was the mother of both of his children.
You are being played like a fiddle.
Sending my prayers to the victims of the Newtown massacre. G*d grant them strength.
Redwald wrote:
“And yet, to put such events into perspective, numbers like that are actually INSIGNIFICANT compared with the total number of children killed by other means. As terrible as this mass murder of children may be, fortunately such events are comparatively rare, a school massacre on this scale occurring only every few years. By comparison, some authorities estimate that at least fifteen hundred children in the U.S. are killed by abuse and neglect every single year. Around a thousand of these are officially classed as homicides, but researchers suspect the true number of child deaths from abuse and neglect may be closer to three thousand every year. Twenty is a drop in the bucket compared with slaughter on such a scale. And it goes without saying that for small children especially, the chief perpetrators of these deaths are parents and other so-called “care”-givers, who are of course not fit to be looking after children.”
Indeed! Let’s Use this to remind everyone of a need to increase awareness of the bigger picture. What has official (government) policy or corporate approaches done to contribute to or cause the deaths of thousands of innocents? How many more children are in poverty and malnourished? I bet that the biggest ‘hit’ has been taken by the middle class. How many bright, patriotic, decent young men and women have been ground-up in Iraq and Afghanistan? They will be missed by the communities back home.
Every time taxes go up (Usually to fuel questionable if not, wasteful government spending and salary increases that noone else is getting.), it affects the ability of people to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. So often we hear: “It’s for the children.” But, often it seems that those that are benefitting are greedy adults. This could be making more people dependent on the kind of people that we don’t want making decisions for us.
Sociopathic dynamics are everywhere on the interpersonal level – but it would seem that sociopaths bring their approach, ‘values’ and modus operandi into the places where they work. People need to be more involved by asking questions and demanding accountability. And BTW, The mass media’s approach has been detrimental to this effort.
The batman killer’s father in Aurora was also going to testify on the $43 trillion dollar case. Do you know just how much money we are talking about? Break it down to about 3 million dollars per American.
Fact Sheet: Guns Save Lives
by Gun Owners of America on Monday, October 6, 2008 at 11:43pm ·
A. Guns save more lives than they take; prevent more injuries than they inflict
* Guns used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense. Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year — or about 6,850 times a day.1 This means that each year, firearms are used more than 80 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.2
* Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8% of the time, a citizen will kill or wound his/her attacker.3
* As many as 200,000 women use a gun every year to defend themselves against sexual abuse.4
* Even anti-gun Clinton researchers concede that guns are used 1.5 million times annually for self-defense. According to the Clinton Justice Department, there are as many as 1.5 million cases of self-defense every year. The National Institute of Justice published this figure in 1997 as part of “Guns in America” — a study which was authored by noted anti-gun criminologists Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig.5
* Armed citizens kill more crooks than do the police. Citizens shoot and kill at least twice as many criminals as police do every year (1,527 to 606).6 And readers of Newsweek learned that “only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The ‘error rate’ for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high.”7
* Handguns are the weapon of choice for self-defense. Citizens use handguns to protect themselves over 1.9 million times a year.8 Many of these self-defense handguns could be labeled as “Saturday Night Specials.”
B. Concealed carry laws help reduce crime
* Nationwide: one-half million self-defense uses. Every year, as many as one-half million citizens defend themselves with a firearm away from home.9
* Concealed carry laws are dropping crime rates across the country. A comprehensive national study determined in 1996 that violent crime fell after states made it legal to carry concealed firearms. The results of the study showed:
* States which passed concealed carry laws reduced their murder rate by 8.5%, rapes by 5%, aggravated assaults by 7% and robbery by 3%;10 and
* If those states not having concealed carry laws had adopted such laws in 1992, then approximately 1,570 murders, 4,177 rapes, 60,000 aggravated assaults and over 11,000 robberies would have been avoided yearly.11
* Vermont: one of the safest five states in the country. In Vermont, citizens can carry a firearm without getting permission… without paying a fee… or without going through any kind of government-imposed waiting period. And yet for ten years in a row, Vermont has remained one of the top-five, safest states in the union — having three times received the “Safest State Award.”12
* Florida: concealed carry helps slash the murder rates in the state. In the fifteen years following the passage of Florida’s concealed carry law in 1987, over 800,000 permits to carry firearms were issued to people in the state.13 FBI reports show that the homicide rate in Florida, which in 1987 was much higher than the national average, fell 52% during that 15-year period — thus putting the Florida rate below the national average. 14
* Do firearms carry laws result in chaos? No. Consider the case of Florida. A citizen in the Sunshine State is far more likely to be attacked by an alligator than to be assaulted by a concealed carry holder.
1. During the first fifteen years that the Florida law was in effect, alligator attacks outpaced the number of crimes committed by carry holders by a 229 to 155 margin.
2. And even the 155 “crimes” committed by concealed carry permit holders are somewhat misleading as most of these infractions resulted from Floridians who accidentally carried their firearms into restricted areas, such as an airport.15
C. Criminals avoid armed citizens
* Kennesaw, GA. In 1982, this suburb of Atlanta passed a law requiring heads of households to keep at least one firearm in the house. The residential burglary rate subsequently dropped 89% in Kennesaw, compared to the modest 10.4% drop in Georgia as a whole.16
* Ten years later (1991), the residential burglary rate in Kennesaw was still 72% lower than it had been in 1981, before the law was passed.17
* Nationwide. Statistical comparisons with other countries show that burglars in the United States are far less apt to enter an occupied home than their foreign counterparts who live in countries where fewer civilians own firearms. Consider the following rates showing how often a homeowner is present when a burglar strikes:
* Homeowner occupancy rate in the gun control countries of Great Britain, Canada and Netherlands: 45% (average of the three countries); and,
* Homeowner occupancy rate in the United States: 12.7%.18
Rapes averted when women carry or use firearms for protection
* Orlando, FL. In 1966-67, the media highly publicized a safety course which taught Orlando women how to use guns. The result: Orlando’s rape rate dropped 88% in 1967, whereas the rape rate remained constant in the rest of Florida and the nation.19
* Nationwide. In 1979, the Carter Justice Department found that of more than 32,000 attempted rapes, 32% were actually committed. But when a woman was armed with a gun or knife, only 3% of the attempted rapes were actually successful.20
Justice Department study:
* 3/5 of felons polled agreed that “a criminal is not going to mess around with a victim he knows is armed with a gun.”21
* 74% of felons polled agreed that “one reason burglars avoid houses when people are at home is that they fear being shot during the crime.”22
* 57% of felons polled agreed that “criminals are more worried about meeting an armed victim than they are about running into the police.”23
1 Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, “Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense With a Gun,” 86 The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Northwestern University School of Law, 1 (Fall 1995):164.
Dr. Kleck is a professor in the school of criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He has researched extensively and published several essays on the gun control issue. His book, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, has become a widely cited source in the gun control debate. In fact, this book earned Dr. Kleck the prestigious American Society of Criminology Michael J. Hindelang award for 1993. This award is given for the book published in the past two to three years that makes the most outstanding contribution to criminology.
Even those who don’t like the conclusions Dr. Kleck reaches, cannot argue with his impeccable research and methodology. In “A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed,” Marvin E. Wolfgang writes that, “What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator…. I have to admit my admiration for the care and caution expressed in this article and this research. Can it be true that about two million instances occur each year in which a gun was used as a defensive measure against crime? It is hard to believe. Yet, it is hard to challenge the data collected. We do not have contrary evidence.” Wolfgang, “A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed,” The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, at 188.
Wolfgang says there is no “contrary evidence.” Indeed, there are more than a dozen national polls — one of which was conducted by The Los Angeles Times — that have found figures comparable to the Kleck-Gertz study. Even the Clinton Justice Department (through the National Institute of Justice) found there were as many as 1.5 million defensive users of firearms every year. See National Institute of Justice, “Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms,” Research in Brief (May 1997).
As for Dr. Kleck, readers of his materials may be interested to know that he is a member of the ACLU, Amnesty International USA, and Common Cause. He is not and has never been a member of or contributor to any advocacy group on either side of the gun control debate.
2 According to the National Safety Council, the total number of gun deaths (by accidents, suicides and homicides) account for less than 30,000 deaths per year. See Injury Facts, published yearly by the National Safety Council, Itasca, Illinois.
3Kleck and Gertz, “Armed Resistance to Crime,” at 173, 185.
4Kleck and Gertz, “Armed Resistance to Crime,” at 185.
5 Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig, “Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms,” NIJ Research in Brief (May 1997); available at http://www.ncjrs.org/txtfiles/165476.txt on the internet. The finding of 1.5 million yearly self-defense cases did not sit well with the anti-gun bias of the study’s authors, who attempted to explain why there could not possibly be one and a half million cases of self-defense every year. Nevertheless, the 1.5 million figure is consistent with a mountain of independent surveys showing similar figures. The sponsors of these studies — nearly a dozen — are quite varied, and include anti-gun organizations, news media organizations, governments and commercial polling firms. See also Kleck and Gertz, supra note 1, pp. 182-183.
6Kleck, Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, (1991):111-116, 148.
7George F. Will, “Are We ‘a Nation of Cowards’?,” Newsweek (15 November 1993):93.
8Id. at 164, 185.
9Dr. Gary Kleck, interview with J. Neil Schulman, “Q and A: Guns, crime and self-defense,” The Orange County Register (19 September 1993). In the interview with Schulman, Dr. Kleck reports on findings from a national survey which he and Dr. Marc Gertz conducted in Spring, 1993 — a survey which findings were reported in Kleck and Gertz, “Armed Resistance to Crime.” br>10 One of the authors of the University of Chicago study reported on the study’s findings in John R. Lott, Jr., “More Guns, Less Violent Crime,” The Wall Street Journal (28 August 1996). See also John R. Lott, Jr. and David B. Mustard, “Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns,” University of Chicago (15 August 1996); and Lott, More Guns, Less Crime (1998, 2000).
11Lott and Mustard, “Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns.”
12Kathleen O’Leary Morgan, Scott Morgan and Neal Quitno, “Rankings of States in Most Dangerous/Safest State Awards 1994 to 2003,” Morgan Quitno Press (2004) at http://www.statestats.com/dang9403.htm. Morgan Quitno Press is an independent private research and publishing company which was founded in 1989. The company specializes in reference books and monthly reports that compare states and cities in several different subject areas. In the first 10 years in which they published their Safest State Award, Vermont has consistently remained one of the top five safest states.
13Memo by Jim Smith, Secretary of State, Florida Department of State, Division of Licensing, Concealed Weapons/Firearms License Statistical Report (October 1, 2002).
14Florida’s murder rate was 11.4 per 100,000 in 1987, but only 5.5 in 2002. Compare Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Crime in the United States,” Uniform Crime Reports, (1988): 7, 53; and FBI, (2003):19, 79.
15 John R. Lott, Jr., “Right to carry would disprove horror stories,” Kansas City Star, (July 12, 2003).
16Gary Kleck, “Crime Control Through the Private Use of Armed Force,” Social Problems 35 (February 1988):15.
17Compare Kleck, “Crime Control,” at 15, and Chief Dwaine L. Wilson, City of Kennesaw Police Department, “Month to Month Statistics: 1991.” (Residential burglary rates from 1981-1991 are based on statistics for the months of March – October.)
18Kleck, Point Blank, at 140.
19Kleck, “Crime Control,” at 13.
20U.S. Department of Justice, Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, Rape Victimization in 26 American Cities (1979), p. 31.
21U.S., Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, “The Armed Criminal in America: A Survey of Incarcerated Felons,” Research Report (July 1985): 27.
22Id.
23Id.
I think I understand where you are coming from with this article, but I am very uneasy with the term “people control.” Forced medication is not something I can agree with. There is too much evidence now out there which suggests a link between psychiatric meds and increasing violence, suicidal thoughts, unpredictable behavior. I know that not everyone will agree with me. And I know that many people believe they have been helped by antidepressants.
I used to think they were helpful or at least not harmful. But I no longer think so. I believe they cause permanent changes (damage) to brains. Perhaps they initially seem (in some cases) to help. But I think we are like monkeys doing brain surgery — we really DO NOT KNOW how these things work, or even if they DO work, and there are too many greedy pharmaceutical and other interests pushing them. Is that primarily an American problem? Do other countries also push pharmaceuticals like we do?
So the idea of forced medication to me is horrific. It is like forced sterilization, or forced lobotomy. There are many much less harmful and very effective herbal and nutritional remedies for most health conditions, but the pharmaceutical and medical community would rather keep that fact suppressed, as they are not patentable. Our healthcare system is more about greed and profit, “managing” illness, than about actually healing people.
I understand that some people who are psychotic (not psychopathic) are out of touch with reality.
I also believe that it is worthwhile looking into nutritional therapies (for instance, GAPS diet has helped many people with all sorts of “brain disorders” as well as anxiety).
I am not sure what “the answer” is and I understand the impulse to want to try to fix something like this, to prevent any more rampages. “gun control,” “people control” — well you know, you may WANT to “control” it, but you can’t. That is a lesson that is very hard to learn. It is not a fatalistic viewpoint, though it will seem so, to people still stuck in the “control” paradigm. It is more about understanding the true cause of things. It is not always easy to see this.
Absolutely the link between violent behavior and psychiatric meds must be looked into, as well as violent behavior and mental illness (unmedicated). I am appalled by the knee-jerk reaction to ban guns, without discussing all of the many contributing factors.
To jump to solutions without fully understanding the cause is but a well-meaning bandaid that could end up distracting us from the real underlying causes of rampages like this, and do real harm to individuals.
I do agree that parents for the most part should be the ones to raise the child (apart from a ‘state interest in’ the child). There are too many instances of the State stepping in and taking control away from the parents.
I also disagree with one-size-fits all policies which remove our ability and permission to make decisions which make sense, given the particular situation — for example, an Autistic child who is not fully independent — certainly, they need a parent or guardian to help support them. They are not independent adults because they have reached the magical age of 18. But “control?” No — I cannot agree with “people control.” That is abhorrent to me. MORE control is not going to help us as a society. It is a slippery slope.
There are several things about this horrific event which still do not make sense to me. Until facts are revealed, I’m waiting. But very uncomfortable with any demonizing of the parents in this case, Autistic young adults, or even of the apparent shooter himself. We really do not know, at this point, what happened, let alone why.
20 years
I haven’t read everything but, I don’t think the mother has been demonized for including her son in her hobby of target practicing with different firearms. I do however think it was incredibly irresponsible of her and in very poor judgement if in fact, that is what she did. Her son was obviously very, very “troubled” for a very long time. I realize she was killed and I hesitate to speak negatively about her but…