# Is mental health the real problem when it comes to mass shootings? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 16, 2018, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mental-health-the-real-problem-when-it-comes-to-mass-shootings/808933 "2018-02-16T16:16:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 88
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2018, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mental-health-the-real-problem-when-it-comes-to-mass-shootings/808933/88 "2018-02-18T16:37:15Z")
> [@Skypist](#): > > Not sure what the FBI could have done even if they had pursued before he could commit the shooting. Would/could they have remanded him to psychiatric treatment _before_ he had shot anyone and was just talking about it? Would he have been held long enough for doctors to realize he shouldn’t be out in the community? Could he be thrown into long term residential care without having committed a crime? > [@SamuelA](#): > > Right. It isn’t a crime to \*seem \*like a crazy school shooter. You need very specific statements of intent. Some kid who brags about all his rifles and remarks on how glorious it would be if someone “shot this place up”? Not a crime. > > Only very specific statements, like “next Monday you better watch out”, or if the kid had collected _illegal_ weapons, or if the kid had actually written down his plans in a diary would be a crime. > > Of course, the school can \*expel \*someone for making people uncomfortable, even if the police can’t send him to prison. Which ironically, seems to have cost 17 people their lives. (it’s quite possible that the expulsion set the kid off, provided the casus belli to actually act) > > As for being crazy, most state mental hospitals were closed. Now it’s basically just prisons. And you can’t imprison someone who hasn’t been convicted of a crime. Indeed. Rick Scott and Trump can go get crammed on this. What exactly are the FBI supposed to do? Put EVERYONE who is a violence-celebrating ass online, or associates with supremacist militia groups, or is known around their social circle being an obnoxious asshat under direct constant surveillance? (OK, I could see association with supremacist militia groups being a reason to take you downtown and let you know we’re watching, _but that would just encourage the putzes_) People seem to expect the authorities to go full on Minority Report on Bad People, and that’s not how reality works, they have to triage the tips they get. I wonder what’s the ratio of people reported to the FBI for being Internet F\*ckwads vs. those who do take concrete steps to act criminally. Or do we make expulsion from school for disciplinary causes a reason to place a marker on you background check against owning firearms for 5, 10 years, permanently? This is an incredibly complicated issue and it makes the population very nervous in that it seems the violent loon element in America has taken a disturbing turn in how they regard the “soft target” scenario. The serial killer of the 20th century, clandestinely picking off one or two at a time over a few months or years, has been replaced with the binge killer slaying by the dozens at once as the looming menace out there. And they are not even doing conventional Domestic Terrorism with an identifiable policy goal like the old KKK or Macheteros. There is a certain nihilism to it, like they just want to prove society can’t protect you and \*“sure, I’m a loser; but those concertgoers/worshippers/schoolkids are now all dead, ha ha, fat lotta good did living right do them!!”. \* I strongly suspect many of these fellows \*\*\*want \*\*\*society to degenerate into the Hobbesian war of all upon all, with “at all times the fear of violent death” hanging over everyone’s head – if they have no peace, let no one have it. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mental-health-the-real-problem-when-it-comes-to-mass-shootings/808933)._