Category Archives: Gun love

The “Mental Health System” is NOT Responsible for Stopping Mass Shootings

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JC Schildbach, LMHC

If your power was out, would you call up your dentist and cuss her/him out for not fixing your wiring? If your car wouldn’t start, would you say it was a problem for your plumber? If your spouse filed for divorce, would you seek the help of your dog-walker?

I’ll assume your answer is, “No.”

Yet, it has become a routine part of the American dialog that when mass shootings are committed, not only are we all immediately told by politicians not to ‘politicize’ such situations–politicians being those people in our society who are tasked with establishing law. But we are also told that such killings are a problem of the ‘mental health system’–which has no power to enforce law or even to make anybody get mental health care. All while law enforcement—which is, well, the means by which laws are enforced—is left out of the picture, except to say that if current laws were enforced, then we wouldn’t have such situations, and that no new laws are necessary.

In other words, pro-gun/pro-gun-lobby forces tell us that an issue properly dealt with by the legal system and law enforcement is actually a problem of the mental health system.

Think of all—or even a few–of the forms of human tragedy that involve human actions inflicting harm—or even death–on human victims.

How many of those types of violence are attributed to flaws in the ‘Mental Health System’?

We could eliminate terrorism if only we could fix the mental health system!

Drunk driving could be eradicated if only the mental health system would address the problem!

Embezzlement could be ended if only white-collar criminals had access to appropriate mental health services!

Child molestation is, at base, a mental health issue, not an issue of…what? Access to children?

Granted, it’s possible that terrorism, drunk driving, child molestation and white collar crime could potentially be reduced if those people who engage (or potentially engage) in such actions had mental health supports or other forms of guidance that led them away from those behaviors and toward more positive actions. But exactly when does anybody expect those supports to intervene, and in what form?

Gee, ma’am, we see you’ve been looking up ‘jihadist’ websites, would you maybe like some counseling to help you get those bad ideas out of your head?

Son, I notice you’ve had quite a few drinks, and your car is just outside. Perhaps if I could help you clarify your goals around driving right now, you might see that Lyft would be the better option.

Ma’am, it appears you might be toying with the idea of skimming funds from your clients. Would you mind talking with me for an hour or so, so we can map out some better life goals for you, that you then might be able to share with your friends and co-workers?

Sir, we’ve noticed you frequently hanging out just outside the Claire’s, and it seems you might be taking an unhealthy interest in young girls. Would you, perhaps, like some counseling to prevent you from ever molesting a tween?

Just so we’re all clear, mental healthcare is not predictive, except in the very narrow aspect of identifying factors that might make someone more pre-disposed to one behavior or another. But mental health interventions are rarely brought to bear, unless a person who is at risk for committing a particular act has had the foresight to seek out help her/himself, or the legal system has gotten involved because of harms already inflicted.

How many of the people who blame the shortcomings of the ‘mental health system’ for gun violence and mass shootings could give even a rudimentary explanation of what that ‘mental health system’ consists of, or offer any kind of reasonable, fact-based, evidence-based ideas that might offer even minimal improvements in the ‘mental health system’s’ ability to stop gun violence? How many of the ‘mental health system’ blamers can even explain how anybody would access mental health services…or be pushed into those services if they were a potential risk for mass shooting?

Lucy bullet

I’d guess that number is hovering somewhere between the number of arms on a rattlesnake, and the number of good sequels to ‘The Godfather’.

One major problem with the argument that the ‘mental health system’ can stop gun violence is that there is no way for the ‘mental health system’ to know who has guns and who does not, aside from the owners of guns (and perhaps their friends and family, where privacy laws don’t get in the way) telling providers in the ‘mental health system’ that they own guns—and that they intend to use them.

That is to say, unless the client of a mental health provider makes a fairly specific threat to use a gun or guns to kill somebody, or multiple somebodies, and the mental health provider knows that the client has access to those weapons, the mental health provider has very few options to stop such violence.

Hell, even in the presence of a specific threat, the mental health provider has few options other than to inform police, and hope the police can act to stop the person making the threats.

And, in case you’re wondering, the police have very limited powers to intervene where potential ‘mass shooters’ have a legal right to own guns, or when those potential shooters have not done or said anything that is actionable by police—like having made a specific threat to use firearms against specific people, and/or in specific places.

So the option to inform law enforcement is often little more than a mental health provider covering her/his own ass.   ‘I made the call to 911 at exactly 8:19 p.m. on September 29, 2017, and spoke to operator #224.’ It goes in the client record, just in case it becomes relevant in a court case.

But the cops, like mental health providers, are not some pre-cog, future-crimes superstars, able to cull out dangers just by looking at people. And even those police and mental health providers who might be extraordinarily perceptive are often hobbled by the actual law. It’s rare that somebody can be arrested or put into mental health treatment for something they might do. You see, law enforcement works on principles of catching people who have already broken laws, not on the idea that people could or might break laws. I’m not sure changing those principles would be good for any of us—getting locked up or thrown into mandatory treatment based on what our personal profiles suggest we might do.

The ‘mental health system’ and the people working in that system, are there to help people overcome problems across the broad spectrum of all human problems that people can address with some psychoeducation and guidance aimed at improving self-awareness and promoting behavioral changes. The providers in that system rely solely on the communication of the people they are treating (verbal and otherwise) to convey information that might help to understand those problems and find solutions.

It’s rare for 1) a person intending to commit a mass shooting to relay that information to a mental health provider, or 2) for such a person to even be in treatment at the time s/he (okay, it’s essentially always a he) entertaining such thoughts.

On top of all that, it’s ludicrous that the gun-loving citizens of the U.S.A. somehow see the ‘mental health system’ as the solution to this problem, given their penchant for stereotyping mental health providers as a bunch of uptight women and effeminate men, and mental healthcare itself as being for the weak and obviously insane.

But then, the idea is that the people who would commit mass shootings are the type of people who would obviously be identified and locked up by professionals—because, well, that’s just how things work—right?

It’s as if the pro-gun/anti-gun-control forces simultaneously see mental health providers as the prime movers in the ‘wussification of America’, and, at the same time, super-badass profilers, who can somehow identify, and then take out, the trash that preys on innocent Americans who only want to enjoy a movie, or a day at school, or a concert, or a church service, or any other kind of public gathering, without having to fear being shot.

So what is it, all you opponents of gun control? Is ‘the mental health system’ the only thing standing between you and a bunch of violent psychopaths, hell-bent on shooting up all that is American? Or is the mental health system run by a bunch of anti-American, ivory-tower, namby-pamby know-it-alls who want to take your guns away?

You can’t have it both ways.

The real failure isn’t in the mental health system—or in law enforcement–it’s in the foolish idea that arming everyone leads to greater safety by ensuring the ability of everyone to stop everyone else who shouldn’t be allowed access to arms, and a legal system propped up by people that allow such foolishness to continue.

 

 

My One-Tweet War with Tyrannosaurus Rump

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J.C. Schildbach, LMHC

It was a glorious day in early October, 2015. It seems a lifetime ago. Or perhaps an alternate universe ago? Definitely a different reality.

Anyway, a Twitter notification popped up on my phone, letting me know that @realDonaldTrump was following me.

Really? The “real” Donald Trump was following me on Twitter?

Assuming it was a parody account, I hopped over to check it out. And Hoe-Lee Ess-Aitch-Eye-Tee—it was really the for-real real Donald Trump following me.

Okay, maybe he let his youngest kid play with his phone. Or maybe his handlers were busy following everybody that fell into his “target demographic” of middle-aged white males. Or maybe it was all a game to get a follow-back and then dump me.  Who knows?

Current events at the time were mostly swirling around the recent Umpqua Community College shooting. Tyrannosaurus Rump was tweet-defending Dr. Ben Carson’s suggestions that people hit active shooters with chairs.

Out on the campaign trail, the T. rump was getting massive amounts of free media coverage for talking about how there is no gun problem in the good ol’ U.S. of A., only a mental health problem. Here’s just one, tweet-based piece of that coverage from a Washington Post reporter:

philip-bump-on-trump

So, mere minutes after realizing I had a titan of industry as one of my Twitter followers, I sent this tweet out to my newest fan:

my-trump-tweet

I sat and waited a bit for a response from Trump or any of my fewer-than-400 followers. If only I’d known the trick of putting a period before his address. Okay, I still probably wouldn’t have gotten all that much of a reaction, but I can dream, can’t I?

The minutes turned to more minutes, and soon I went off and did something else…like took a nap, or maybe put away some laundry. The TV was on. I know this because that’s where I heard the Tyrannosaurus Rump going off about the mental health vs. guns stuff—the stuff that prompted me to send my not-all-that-clever Tweet.

I saw no further notifications. I hadn’t provoked some backlash from the T. rump’s followers, leading to a ‘blowing up’ of my phone.

I popped onto Twitter an hour or two later, and quickly realized I was down a follower from the last time I had logged on.

Could it be?

No!

Not only had the T. rump given up on following me, the man who would become the leader of the free world (barring any religious-conversion-inspiring results from election recounts) had done this:

blocked-trump

Blocked.

I was blocked.

The tweet that I had thought was a total throw-away, a barely-conceived idea that I’d bounced out into the world, because of some audio of T. rump I’d heard over the local news–had upset the Tyrannosaur (or had alarmed his handlers) to such an extent that I was no longer allowed to even view the stream-of-garbageness that flows from his fingers, into his phone, and out to the worldwide web.

To this day, I cannot even see the wit and wisdom the T. rump shares with the world…I mean, except by looking at any other media outlet anywhere, all of which seem to be obsessed with reporting on tweets from the Tyrannosaurus Rump, or by logging into my dummy Twitter account that I set up mostly for the purpose of playing along with @Midnight’s hashtag wars.

Still, it hurts to know that I caused so much strife to someone who was just reaching out, looking for a friend. How could I have been so careless as to cause so much hurt? Why did I let my mean spirit provoke an instant blockage?

Yes, the man who would unthinkably become the leader of the free world had been so traumatized by my nasty comments that he would cut himself off from me for good. Citizens be damned.

Remember–your President Elect will not tolerate disrespectful tweets.

No, really, remember it.

And if I go missing, well, I regret nothing…well, at least not where that tweet is concerned.

But, really?

That’s what got me blocked?

My friends say worse sh*t to me on a daily basis.
Daily.
I kid you not.
And he’s going to have access to nuclear weapons?
Oh, good god, I probably shouldn’t have made those Tyrannosaurus Rump comments.

Yes, Breitbart, 33,000 People ARE Killed with Guns Each Year

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J.C. Schildbach, LMHC

There is absolutely nothing controversial about Hillary Clinton’s claim that, in the United States, “We have 33,000 people a year who die from guns”–except maybe to those who don’t understand how words and numbers work.

Yet, AWR Hawkins, breitbart.com’s “Second Amendment Columnist,” posted a “Fact-Check” column, titled “No, 33,000 Not Killed with Guns Each Year” following the third presidential debate, claiming that Clinton deliberately inflated the CDC numbers of firearm deaths by adding in suicides. This is not the first time Hawkins has posted similar complaints.

What Hawkins fails to do is explain how suicides by firearm somehow fall outside of the “33,000 people a year who die from guns.” Certainly, Hawkins must understand that somebody who uses a gun to kill him/herself is dead, and did use a gun in order to die—making that person someone who ‘died from a gun.’

Using Hawkins’ preferred language of people “killed with guns each year” still doesn’t change anything. A person who commits suicide with a firearm still was, in fact, killed with a gun.

suicide-gun-mouth

Hawkins also strikes out by putting the phrase “gun violence” in quotation marks, saying that the use of that phrase (which Clinton did not use in the quote he complains about) somehow plays into Clinton’s strategy of fooling the public. But, again, killing oneself with a firearm does qualify as “gun violence”–first of all, because it involves an act of violence; and secondly, because it involves a gun. Or you can reverse that so the gun is first and the violence is second—still doesn’t change anything.

I don’t want to get into speculation about things that Clinton didn’t say, but perhaps if she had used the phrase “gun crimes” or had referred to murders using guns, then Hawkins would have a better argument. But Clinton didn’t. So Hawkins doesn’t.

And, in case you’re wondering, the 33,000 figure is dead-on. Here’s a chart, showing the CDC numbers of gun deaths for the years 2010 to 2014 (2014 being the most recent year statistics are available) clearly showing that gun deaths have reached well above 33,000 per year for 2012, 2013, and 2014, and averaged 32,964 per year for the five-year period.

avg-gun-deaths-2010-to-2014

A handy chart of CDC statistics on gun deaths, lifted from Everytown for Gun Safety at  https://everytownresearch.org/gun-violence-by-the-numbers/

Now, I get that gun-loving Americans, including the Breitbart crowd, don’t like to believe anything negative about guns. They also don’t like to believe that they may, at some point, end up so distraught, or so deep in the throes of mental illness, that they might use their guns on themselves, and/or their family members or other loved ones—or perhaps even neighbors or random strangers.

By pushing the suicide statistics aside, or pretending they ‘don’t count’, Hawkins ignores a harsh reality here: that people who own guns tend to kill themselves with those guns far more than they kill an intruder in their home, or otherwise defend themselves from the big, bad, scary world out there. People who own guns kill themselves with those guns more often than criminals use guns to kill innocent citizens; and more frequently than ‘gang violence’ leads to gun deaths.

There is also considerable overlap in the “murder/suicide” category—where gun owners kill their significant others, family members, co-workers, or random strangers, prior to turning their guns on themselves. And because guns are such a quick and effective killing tool, the decision to use them in an act of violence on loved ones or oneself is often impulsive—a few too many bad days in a row, a bad argument following a few too many beers, or even a partner deciding they want out of a relationship, and the gun comes out as the ultimate way to put a stop to whatever is so aggravating.

As for mental illness, Hawkins’ argument becomes even less convincing in the face of all the clamoring about how we don’t have a gun problem in the U.S., but we have a mental health problem. Of course, people who make such an argument are usually talking about the mental health issues of mass shooters. Yet, if we (properly) view suicide as a mental health issue, then the numbers of firearm suicides become that much more disturbing. Gun owners kill themselves at a rate roughly twice as high as the rate of gun murders. That’s a vast mental health issue that’s not being addressed, and that is being exacerbated by guns.

Yes, I know that many of the people who want to argue in favor of guns like to point out that people who commit suicide will find the means to do so, even if you take their guns away–an argument which is demonstrably false in terms of overall lethality. There are many ways to map out the evidence showing this falsehood, including the high rate of suicide by firearm–roughly 50% of all suicides in the U.S. are completed using guns. Another way to conceptualize the difference in suicide methods is to compare suicide completion rates using firearms relative to suicide completion rates using other methods. For instance, plenty more people survive suicide attempts by overdosing on pills than survive suicide attempts using guns.

Those who are willing to brush off the connection between firearms and suicide also sometimes argue that suicide is a matter of personal freedom—of being allowed to end one’s life when one chooses. I will say that I’m not completely opposed to people being able to end their own lives on terms they choose. However, I’ve learned enough to know that people are least equipped to make that decision quickly, impulsively, or while in a deep depression (among many other factors). Very few people attempt suicide while they are thinking in the clearest of terms, or making a rational decision based on a comprehensive review of the facts.

Depression and many other forms of mental illness are notorious for their association with cognitive distortions, aka, “thinking errors”—misinterpreting the world around one, the impact one’s actions have on others, and the view other people have of one (again, among many other factors). As I’ve pointed out before, the idea that a gun keeps one safe is, itself, a cognitive distortion. The suicide-by-firearm statistics make that clear.

There is also, perhaps, a great irony here, in that Hawkins believes he is advocating for gun ownership, when the “mental health” approach to suicide prevention involves removing the means for suicide. That is, safety planning for suicide prevention involves taking away those means most likely to be used in a suicide attempt, while the person at risk for suicide gets treatment.

So, how do we address the mental health problems associated with guns and suicide? Take the guns away, at least until the person moves beyond risk for suicide. Of course, mental health treatment is not predictive. Risk factors can be weighed, and support systems assessed, but given the ease with which a person can use a gun to end her/his own life, a dip back into depression, a few more bad days, a drift away from regular engagement with one’s (positive) coping skills, and the risk can escalate once again.

Hawkins thinks he is supporting gun rights by poo-pooing the statistics on firearm deaths in the United States. But what he is actually doing is pointing out that suicide is twice as big a problem, where guns are concerned, as murder is. His solution is to pretend the people who commit suicide with guns aren’t really people who “die from guns.”

At base, he is arguing that people who commit suicide with guns aren’t really people…or perhaps aren’t really people who deserve the support to go on living.

 

Another Round: American Roulette

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JC Schildbach, LMHC

Pour another round.

Put another round in the chamber.

And let’s play another round of American Roulette.

Dizzy? Go ahead and get off.

Dizzy? Go ahead and get off.

I’m not talking about felt and chips and all that. I’m talking about American Roulette—where we add more and more rounds, to more and more chambers, in more and more guns, point them all at our own collective head, squeeze the collective trigger, then act all surprised when anybody dies.

Then as the bodies are cooling, we start in on a round of all our favorite follow-up games.

Of course it starts with a round of “America’s Next Top Mass Murderer.” This is where media outlets decide what becomes a national story. It’s a complex formula, involving body count, victim age/status, and location. We have so many shots fired so often, in so many places, that we just can’t let any old killings grab hold of the public imagination.

Hell, the public doesn’t have enough imagination to keep up.

Adult males getting gunned down in the “bad part” of town—doesn’t rate unless there’s an insanely high body count. Okay, that’s pretty much true of any killings in the “bad part” of town.

Nightclubs—the same.

Men wiping out their families? Pffbbt! We’ve grown surprisingly numb to the idea of an “estranged husband” gunning down his wife, kids, and maybe a few additional members of his extended family. But moms gunning down their families? That just might work.

Schools—you can maybe get some traction there, although college shootings are getting pretty passé, as are high schools. Elementary schools—still pretty damn shocking.

Churches—those rate pretty high.

Movie theaters—those practically ARE churches.

So, how about grocery stores? public parks? malls? restaurants? Maybe a library or a museum? How about a nursing home? But, really, I have to defer to the experts for how to rank all of those.

Then, once we’ve determined that a mass-shooting is heinous enough to warrant a spot in the public imagination, we move to a round of “Wheel of Blame,” sponsored by the good, pro-murder folks at the National Rifle Association.

Really, it’s just another form of rigged roulette—38 spaces on the spinning wheel, at least 30 marked “mental health” or “mental illness.” When we get lucky, the wheel stops on one of the random spots marked with something we can really get mad at—like racism, or pop culture, or some “foreign” religion.

Because when the wheel lands on something we can get mad at, then we can do something symbolic in lieu of doing something that might actually lower the body count—like take down a flag that hasn’t had any business being associated with any part of ‘the government’ in the 150 years since that cluster of slavery-supporting traitors failed in their effort to destroy the Union. Or we can blame some movie, or some TV show, or some rock star for inspiring a murder spree. Or we can yell at the President to bomb ISIS, or to stop talking to Iran—because that will fix problems right here at home, where we like to kill our own.

Of course, the Wheel mostly lands on “mental health” or “mental illness” and we don’t have to do anything except say “fix the mental health system”—as if there is some magical way to grant psychotherapists the ability to pluck out those who are going to commit mass murder, plop them into a treatment program, and prevent them from ever getting their hands on all the readily-available guns and ammo out there.

But remember that when you spin that Wheel of Blame, you absolutely must avoid the spaces marked “guns”—those spots just go to the house—instant bankruptcy. Go ahead and say guns and lax laws that allow easy access to guns had a role in gun violence. You’ll get nowhere. Our gracious NRA sponsors, the politicians and media they own, and the screaming devotees of the Cult of the Shiny Metal Bang Bang will all see to that.

And even though it’s gotten pretty tired and unnecessary, we’ll run another round of “Not the Time”—wherein such insightful luminaries as draft-dodging, teen-loving, rock-n-roll has-been Ted Nugent, along with other NRA pets, can tell us that now is not the time to talk about gun control—not in the wake of such a tragedy—as they question the patriotism of anyone who would politicize the deaths of people killed by guns—oops, I mean killed by people with guns—oops, I mean killed by bad people with guns.

What’s so great about “Not the Time”—even though it’s getting really tired—is that we’re almost never more than a few days away from a mass murder, even if we are more than a few days away from a mass murder that really caught the public’s attention.

Oh, hey!  Now give it up for a round of our newest game show: “Open Carry Chucklehead Brigade”—y’know, that trending ritual where gun enthusiasts decide to go stand outside recruitment centers, or in malls, or near schools, or wherever the latest killing took place, brandishing their big, long weapons out of some bizarre sense that such behavior is supportive of those who are suffering the aftermath of gun violence. Hey…uh…guys…we’ve all been talking, and…uh…nobody feels safer because of your presence. For most people, a group of sweaty guys standing around with big guns does not look like safety. It looks like a meeting of the local chapter of the Future Mass Murderers of America.

I know there are plenty of rounds of plenty of other games I’ve left out—like the obligatory round of “False Equivalencies” (people die from using cars, and knives, and dental floss, and ice cream, and…), and the round of “Enforce The Laws That Already Exist” (as if the NRA hasn’t already made sure that most of those laws have no teeth), and the round of “There Are Already Too Many Guns Out There to Fix the Problem” (got it–too tough, don’t try!). But, damn! Those games are getting so dreadfully boring.

So, where were we?

Oh, yeah—pour another round.

Somebody else is picking up the tab.

Or maybe you are.