Looking for a factual answer here.
Today’s article talks about how the sheriff’s department got calls warning about the shooter. (CITE: Florida school shooting: Sheriff got 18 calls about Nikolas Cruz’s violence, threats, guns )
It made me wonder if even if there were a hundred, could that have done anything.
Was there anything that would have legally stopped him from buying the guns?
Moved to Great Debates.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Ironically, (from stpauler’s link)
Peterson is the officer who resigned from his position amid accusations of cowardice from his superior.
You know, guys, I’m all for threads. And we have a lot of gun threads at the moment. Understandably, I admit.
Let’s just preemptively say we keep this one civil, shall we? Consider yourselves all on notice.
In Florida, there is what’s known as the Baker Act. The Baker Act allows for involuntary evaluation for potential of harm to self and others. So presumably this could have been used on Cruz and if it was determined he was a danger, he could have been involuntarily committed and as a result would be prohibited from purchasing the arms that he used. That’s a possibility.
The caveat is that the mental health system in Florida is as I understand, not well funded, both in staffing and available facilities. While the number of people taken for involuntary evaluations has more than doubled in the last 15 years, the number of people who are deemed a threat and involuntarily committed remains low. The standard is clear and convincing evidence and typically the evaluation is for a point in time.
Mental health systems tend to be deficient and highly imperfect almost everywhere around the world, in part because it’s a highly imperfect science, and in part because when it comes to legal ramifications of mental health judgments, the bar necessarily has to be set very high.
So one problem with the “mental health” solution to problems like this is that it may not have worked, or if it did work, its effect may have been only temporary and short-term. That is, even if he had been subject to involuntary confinement, and even if he had been prohibited from gun ownership after release, it could not have prevented use of weapons he already had, or had access to, or obtained through the innumerable loopholes and methods that exist where guns are so outrageously plentiful and easy to get.
Furthermore, as I already cited elsewhere, the overwhelming correlation between gun violence and gun deaths was with the rate of gun ownership; mental health issues were of borderline significance:
In a linear regression model with firearm-related deaths as the dependent variable with gun ownership and mental illness as independent covariates, gun ownership was a significant predictor (P <.0001) of firearm-related deaths, whereas mental illness was of borderline significance (P = .05) only.*
So ISTM that mental health issues become the focus when one rejects the rate of gun ownership as a target of remedial action. Fine, but when you rely entirely on mental health assessments you’re dealing with a very nebulous and inexact science and the effectiveness of your policies is going to be poor. It’s good and necessary to prohibit the mentally ill from owning guns, but to assume that this is going to fix the problem is doomed to failure for at least three reasons: 1) the failures of such assessments, 2) the likelihood that the subjects will get guns anyway since guns are basically everywhere, and 3) the fact that people judged mentally healthy can and do snap under sufficiently stressful conditions. This I think is a reasonable intuitive explanation for the correlations above.
That’s interesting but not really relevant since the data includes all firearm deaths including suicide and groups them together. If isolating incidents of mass shootings or even school shootings, the correlation of mental illness would change. Do you think it would be more or less correlated?
As to other methods of acquisition of firearms - sure it was possible he would acquire firearms in a different manner. But he didn’t - he bought them (at least some of them used) legally with a background check. As did other perpetrators of other incidents. There’s no one solution. As an answer to the question in the OP though, this guy was nuts and the people and system designed to evaluate that didn’t work as it was supposed to. The potential was there to stop this person from buying at least some of the guns he possessed.
What would be your assessment of the mental health of people who kill themselves? I think if you removed suicides from the group, the poor correlation between gun violence and mental health for the overall group would be even poorer!
That said, I agree that many – but certainly not all – of the perpetrators of the worst and most publicized mass shootings had identifiable mental health issues. But the mental health approach would still be very problematic for the three reasons I indicated above: first, identification of dangerous mental health issues is not reliable (the Sandy Hook shooter had known issues but I don’t think was generally perceived as dangerous – certainly his mother, who gave him guns and took him out shooting didn’t think so); second, a mental health classification doesn’t effectively prevent access to guns when guns are so easy to get; third, literally anyone might become susceptible to violence when faced with sufficiently stressful life situations.
This is true. To me this is just evidence that even the most basic common-sense safeguards don’t exist. And they don’t exist because the NRA and like-minded gun buyers, makers, and sellers refuse to accept even the most minor inconvenience to the acquisition of guns, despite the obvious public safety mandate. These minimal common-sense restrictions based on mental health or criminal history are certainly worth doing, but it would be a mistake to think that they will solve the problem of gun violence by themselves.
I very much agree with this. That’s why all solutions have to be pursued, including ones that the NRA doesn’t like.
There might have been a legal method if the calls to police had pursued a legal route, meaning that the callers weren’t just hoping to have the police come in and mediate a dispute or confiscate a weapon or bully the kid (of 19) into better behavior, and then go away. NH has a charge of Criminal Threatening. Depending on the circumstances, like the use of a deadly weapon, Criminal Threatening can be a felony. This is a good tool to have in combating domestic violence, and I’m sure other states have it, it works well when people use it. But not everyone is prepared to go this route with their depressed son or friend. In that case some people will take the person to the hospital and wait around for an evaluation and an open bed somewhere, which takes time (like days) and requires cooperation.
Here, the shooter is 19 and emotionally distressed, not mature enough to handle himself in the eyes of his friends/caregivers, but still an adult in the eyes of the law. It’s a nationwide problem.
It sounds like Florida has very few restrictions on buying guns. From this article:
One thing that could have helped was if Florida had a Red Flag law, which is a type of law many states are considering now. It doesn’t require any mental health diagnoses, it’s based on if someone’s behavior shows that they might be a risk to themselves or others. Usually it’s regarding them hurting themselves or their family, but something like a school shooting would also apply. And once they aren’t seen as a danger anymore, they can get their guns back. It’s not perfect, partly because some people in states with Red Flag laws didn’t know about them, but it seems like something that could help future situations like this.
The Parkland assault is one of the very rare cases of the shooter not dying themselves at their own hands or the police’s. He’s still certain to get a lifetime of incarceration or death. Gun control will keep mentally ill shooters alive and out of prison long enough to get help.
Sure. In fact the governor of Florida, Rick Scott, is proposing it: it’s raising the minimum age for the purchase of guns to 21:
Would testing for a gun lisc. with a few mental health questions added do any good?
I am not convinced. But I don’t really trust many under the age of 25 to do anything with forethought. I think most young adults and teens think they are 10 feet tall and bullet proof. You get just one with an issue about bullying or feeling outcast and terrible things start to happen.
I think we have to start doing something, soon.
No crazy person ever killed anybody by waving around his extended thumb and index finger going, “BANG. BANG.” We need to find a way to a) keep guns out of the hands of crazy people and b) have a mechanism to remove guns from people who are sane when they buy them but later go crazy. Arming teachers, coaches, janitors, and lunch ladies will not solve this problem, only relocate it to the nearest McDonald’s, movie theater, concert, or mall, all of which have also had mass shootings.
It looks like this kid’s violent acts were simply not reported, possibly because the sheriff was working with the schools to reduce their violent crime statistics to qualify for funding under some program aimed at reducing school violence. In fact, Deputy Peterson himself was sitting on reports about the kid that should have been forwarded to authorities, but weren’t.
This is looking more and more to me like a story about corruption in the Sheriff’s department. Deputy Peterson was part of an ‘officer in residence’ program designed to reduce response times for school violence. He was given a trailer by the school to live in, rent free. I’ve read that this particular program is either incredibly poorly managed, or possibly corrupt. An audit of the program showed that when those officers were actually needed in the school they failed to show up 73% of the time.
The fact that this officer was put there specifically for fast response to violent incidents makes his behaviour even more despicable. The fact that four other deputies hid behind their cars and did nothing while shots were being fired inside the school was a sign of poor training, or corrupt police, or a policy that did not give them the leeway to act.
Since Columbine, police tactics were changed. During Columbine the police wasted valuable time doing things like setting up perimeters and waiting for SWAT while the students were being shot. Since then, standard procdure for police responding to school shootings is that they are supposed to run towards the sound of gunfire and engage the perp as fast as they can. None of the Sheriff’s deputies followed that protocol.
My understanding is that this kid would have failed a background check had Peterson filed the paperwork he was supposed to file. He also would have failed it (or even already been in custody) if the multiple warnings to the FBI had been followed up.
This looks to me like failure of government on multiple levels. This is a real problem for gun control advocates who think people should rely on the government to protect them. It’s also tough to advocate for more laws and more government control when it looks like in this case the government failed, big time.
On the other hand, I think there is room for consensus here for changes that might actually make a difference - improved controls over the current background check system, more oversight of police programs like Officers in Residence, etc. Before advocating for new laws, make sure the existing laws are working properly. Everyone can get behind that.
I agree with you SamStone. I am not ready to give the sheriff and his dept.a pass, on this.
Obviously there are inter-dept. communication issues.
Also the family he was living with are not as innocent as they want us to believe. When you live with people their habits and idiosyncrasies become apparent. They knew about the guns. I see redflags allover that.
I see they have lawyered up.
I don’t consider a semiautomatic-wielding shooter to be routine part of “school violence”, and it is plain ridiculous to think one deputy chasing after such a school shooter with his service weapon is a good plan. It’s a wing-and-a-prayer plan, a certain-death plan, a no-other-options plan. It doesn’t matter who recommends it, we have SWAT for a reason.
Rumor has it there wasn’t just one, but four deputies. Four deputies conveniently positioned just outside of a school where an active shooter was, listening to gunfire, which happened over six minutes. This is also a ridiculous idea. And beside the point, because it’s deflection from the real problem of another disgruntled manchild with an AR-15.
Organized, predictable deflection.
Regarding your “or even already been in custody” parenthetical, why would he have been taken into custody? Just curious…
He might have been involuntarily committed for being a danger to himself and others. But I admit that’s probably a longshot. It’s hard to commit someone until they have actually committed serious violent acts. But he could certainly have been kept from buying weapons.
If this “failure of government” is a real problem for gun control advocates, please explain why, in respect of gun control, government seems to work just fine where you and I live. I think the short answer is that preventative measures work on many different levels of protection, not just allowing guns to flood the population and then hoping you can somehow manage to keep them out of the hands of dangerous lunatics. Some obvious warning signs were ignored, yes, and that was a systemic failure. But next time the shooter might be an apparently normal person with much less obvious symptoms. Then what will your excuse be?