Gun Violence Only Half the Problem

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright Dec.17, 2012
All Rights Reserved.                                         

           Going ballistic Dec. 14 killing 20 children and eight adults, 20-year-old misanthrope Adam Lanza was just one more mentally deranged lunatic with accesses to semiautomatic handguns and assault weapons.  Turns out, his 54-year-old mother Nancy was a gun “enthusiast” leaving her mentally ill son with access to her weapons cache.  While Second Amendment advocates like the National Rifle Assn. argue that the “finger pulls the trigger” certainly with Lanza, copious access to weapons morphs lethal instincts into homicidal killings.  With funerals starting for the elementary-school-aged victims, the country debates current gun laws, currently giving lunatics the equipment to cause mayhem.  When Lanza began mowing down children on Friday morning around 10:00 a.m., he primarily used a .223-caliber, Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle with a 30-bullet extended-size magazine.

             Examining the bloody remains at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. December 15, coroner Walter Hofman admitted he’d never seen anything so gruesome in his 33 years.  Fighting back post-traumatic stress disorder won’t be easy for the first responders and emergency personnel exposed firsthand to the horrors of Lanza’s rampage.  Alleged to have Asperger’s disease—a mild form of autism—Lanza was reportedly burning himself with a lighter sometime he did before his ballistic episode.  While it’s tempting to blame availability of assault weapons for the rampage, Lanza was severely mentally ill without appropriate treatment.  Before Nancy took a bullet between the eyes, it was already too late for her to seek treatment for her deranged 24-year-old son.  Speaking at a memorial service for the victims Dec. 16, President Barack Obama pledged to do everything possible to prevent a repeat.

             Admitting this was the seventh senseless assault in 2012, Barack vowed to work tirelessly to reduce the chances of another incident.  “I don’t have a specific timeline for you for what the president will do moving forward,” White House spokesman Jay Carney couldn’t say exactly what the president would do.  Dealing with the gun control issues is only one small part of the problem.  As Adam’s mother found out, the current mental health care system leaves gaping coverage holes, allowing lunatics like Lanza to slip through the cracks.  “I would simply refer you to his remarks last night when he talked about the action he hoped to take to engage the American people . . . in the coming weeks,” said Carney, offering no specifics.  If the president is really ready to tackle the problem, he needs address not only gun control but a broken mental health system leaving too many sick people on the streets.

             Without reducing the problems of only control, ballistic killers are frequently loners with warped perceptions of reality.  Retreating into a private world, ballistic killers spend too much time away from normal social interaction into a detached fantasy world.  While some like to blame solitary activities like violent video games, it’s difficult to say  the precise extent violent video games blur thee reality of ballistic killers.  Without knowing exactly how Lanza spent his time, detectives combing through his computers and personnel effects should find a life centered on fantasy activities.  It’s not enough for elected officials to single out the Second Amendment and ignore the failed mental health of ballistic killers.  With Obamacare scheduled for 2014, there’s still time to make sure that mental health is treated no differently than medical coverage.  Too often now, there are not enough benefits for mental health problems.

             Tackling the menace of ballistic killers, the President and Congress must take the testimony of mental health experts, law enforcement and gun control advocates and opponents.  Instead of focusing on extraneous variables like “demonic possession,” the focus should be on keeping weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill and finding better ways to identify and treat potential perpetrators.  More cursory inspections after ballistic episodes reveal warning signs but friends, family and associates just don’t what to do.  When Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduces new gun control legislation, it needs to have severe penalties for gun owners that don’t secure their weapons, whether they’re family or not.  Regardless of her son’s mental illness, had Nancy Lanza locked up her weapons, she’d be alive today together with the 20 innocent children and school personnel wiped out by Lanza.

             Calling the problem of ballistic killers complex doesn’t address the key variables needed to get a better handle on the problem.  New gun control laws that ban assault rifles or extended-size clips won’t stop ballistic killers from acting out.  Whatever type of mental illness triggers violent episodes, health insurers must be required to cover mental health issues the same way they do medical problems.  At the very least, mental health background checks should be routine along with Department of Justice checks.  While there’s no way of controlling all illegal firearms, the White House and Congress still need reach consensus on new gun control legislation banning assault weapons, restricting extended-size magazines and identifying mentally ill guy buyers.  Elected officials must look carefully at Obamacare and assure that there’s no distinction between mental health and standard medical coverage.

 John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news.  He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com.and author of Dodging the Bullet and Operation Charisma.