That's a great first step, but I think more broadly we have to face our culture of violence. We keep driving home to kids be it by gang violence, video games, music, movies, tough guy rhetoric, or images of war, that if you have a problem, the biggest gun you can find will solve it.

I too am opposed to civilian possession of armor-piercing ammunition and semiautomatic versions of high-capacity military weapons, but most of the killing in this country is done with pistols and revolvers. And it doesn't appear that limiting the killer's pistol magazines to seven rounds would have made much of a difference.

What would you suggest? Requiring all gun purchasers to undergo a psychiatric evaluation?

Maybe the place to start would be recognizing that in the hands of inept and deluded education careerists, and under school boards more interested in property values than in human values, junior high and high schools have become social voids, places without any context for the development of peer relationships freely and according to each student's individual nature.

Welcome back Rep. Harman... 

I am probably not going to be highly rated for this comment (and really I don't care because I don't post for ratings or to echo the prevailing sentiments) but I will state, as I always do, that guns don't kill people...people kill people.  This isn't a 2nd amendment issue and shouldn't be made into one.

We live in a culture that if a person if "different" or "weak" they become the prey of society.  And tragically when the flight or fight instinct kicks in sometimes the hunted becomes the hunter.  It has nothing to do with guns or their availability...an individual like the VA Tech shooter would blow up people if he had to, to make his statement.  I am in NO WAY defending the shooter or saying persecution, real or perceived, legitimized his actions in the slightest.  But we do live in a cruel, mean spirited christian nation...

No corallein. But I would do better backround checks on gun purchasers including history of MAJOR psychiatric disorders(note word MAJOR)

Also please spare me the irrational responses of second amemendment "right to bear arms zealots"

Dr. Rick Lippin

Please give us some major disorders, that would disqualify, and some minor ones that would not.

Wigmar1

Thxs

What about the model we currently use for known sex offenders?

Let the community know that a known legitamtely diagnosed MAJOR psychopath is living among you?

(I know ACLU would not agree)

Dr. Rick Lippin

See DSMR- Latest edition to differentiate major from minor psychiatric disorders

Dr. Rick Lippin

(I am fully aware of the response from ACLU and related groups and I too cherish freedoms they espouse)

Luigi Vampa

The current Philadelphia Mayor's race is about crime -with recent record homicides in my beloved city.

It is not a trivial issue. But I DO agree the war,education reform and heath care reform trump it

Dr. Rick Lippin

And the relevance to this Tech student is what? His English teacher wisely thought he had major problems, and referred him to the school psychologist. If the kid didn't go, what recourse is there? An English teacher makes a "diagnosis" and his/her future is spent defending him/herself in court and every cent saved for retirement is gone because he/she just wanted to help the student... There is such a thing as a citizen's arrest. Maybe there should also be a citizen's diagnosis. I am often struck by how wise everyday people are when faced with the pathology of their neighbors.

What BETTER BACKGROUND CHECK would you do? What would that involve? Be specific (and also realistic) now. Interviewing a potential buyer's teacher? This kid was obviously (and in retrospect) sick, but it had not been diagnosed and now 32 people plus himself are dead. It is not because of diagnostic problems. It is because guns are everywhere; clips are everywhere. The NRA is nothing but a lobbying effort for gun manufacturers.

But you say the problem is not adequate background checks? Drricklippen, heal thyself.

Jan Knaus

I am skeptical that every DSM "major disorder" is a definitive basis for disallowing gun ownership. How about a link, or a list?

And how would that capture undiagnosed people? Or would we all pass thru your "mental detector"? This sounds like a full employment act for psychiatrists, except that there aren't enough of them to screen the whole population.

Your mention the ACLU, and the fact that "you cherish the freedoms they espouse," but how would you preserve them during your psychological dragnet?

Well of course it was a college, but he graduated from a high school, probably not as a well-adjusted kid with lots of different friends. It is more likely that his junior high and high school time contributed to this.

We could certainly devote more funding to research better ways to screen for mental illness early on and alternatives for delivering mental health care. Mental illness is often diagnosed in young adults and once they are adults it's difficult to require them to seek health care and their illness often makes them unable to consistently hold the kind of job that would provide them with health care if they seek it.

Wigmar1

There are 33 dead students and faculty at VT and their grieving families who deserve some answers and our prayers.

The faces of the dead are beginning to appear on the media.

Ask their families your question about what could have been done better?

Dr. Rick Lippin

(Board Certified in Preventive Medicine-Not Psychiatry)

not worthy of a response

Rick Lippin

Not a substantive reply.

Boston, too, has seen record murders this spring.

Ben Cronin

not everyone is as sentimental about the details as you are. katrina killed many, many more people. this event surely isn't that major.

the politicians are jumping on it out of political opportunity.

imagine if the house and senate had reacted as seriously when the war turned the wrong way and realized that it was based on fabrication and lies...

if I died at VT, I'd want people to know: "not in my name will you exchange liberty for security..."

Here is another perspective from CCHR

Cho Seung-Hui May Be 9th School Shooter Under Influence of Psychiatric Drugs --

Documented to Cause Homicidal Ideation, Suicide, Psychosis, Mania and Hostility

In the wake of yesterday's shooting rampage at Virginia Tech by gunman Cho Seung-Hui, state legislators, civic and human rights activists are asking why Congress has failed to investigate the link between psychiatric drugs and school violence, given the high rate of psychiatric drug use by the shooters. According to breaking news from investigators at Virginia Tech, Cho may have taken depression drugs—documented by the Food and Drug Administration to cause suicidal behavior, mania, psychosis, hallucinations, hostility and “homicidal ideation.” (link) If Cho Seung-Hui’s psychiatric drug use is confirmed, it would bring the total to 61 killed and 77 wounded by psychiatric drug-induced school shootings.

In September 2005, following confirmation that Red Lake Indian Reservation school shooter, Jeff Weise, was under the influence of the antidepressant Prozac, the National Foundation of Women Legislators, together with American Indian tribal leaders, called for a Congressional investigation (link) into the correlation between psychiatric drug use and school massacres. To date there has been no response to this request despite documentation that at least eight recent school shooters were under the influence of psychiatric drugs at the time of the shootings.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), a mental health watchdog that initially discovered the psychiatric drug connection in the Columbine shootings, warns that the psycho-pharmaceutical industry will once again try to obscure the violence-inducing nature of psychiatric drugs in order to protect the billions in profit from drug sales. CCHR says that Congress must demand a full investigation into the link between senseless acts of violence and psychiatric drug use in the wake of recent FDA warnings on the documented drug risks.

In eight recent school shootings, psychiatric drugs were the common factor, in other instances, the shooter’s medical records were never made public and their psychiatric drug use remains in question.

September 28, 2006: Bailey, Colorado: Duane Morrison, 53, entered Platte Canyon High School and shot and killed one girl, and sexually assaulted 6 others. Antidepressants were found in his vehicle.

March 21, 2005: Red Lake Indian Reservation, Minnesota: 16-year-old Native American Jeff Weise was under the influence of the antidepressant Prozac when he shot and killed nine people and wounding five before committing suicide.

April 10, 2001: Wahluke, Washington: 16-year-old Cory Baadsgaard took a rifle to his high school, and held 23 classmates and a teacher hostage while on a high dose of the antidepressant Effexor.

March 22, 2001: El Cajon, California: 18-year-old Jason Hoffman was on two antidepressants, Effexor and Celexa, when he opened fire at his California high school wounding five.

March 7, 2000: Williamsport, Pennsylvania: 14-year-old Elizabeth Bush was on the antidepressant Prozac when she blasted away at fellow students in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, wounding one.

May 20, 1999: Conyers, Georgia: 15-year-old T.J. Solomon was being treated with a mix of antidepressants when he opened fire on and wounded 6 of his classmates.

April 20, 1999: Columbine, Colorado: 18-year-old Eric Harris was on the antidepressant Luvox when he and his partner Dylan Klebold killed 12 classmates and a teacher and wounded 23 others before taking their own lives in the bloodiest school massacre to date. The coroner confirmed that the antidepressant was in his system through toxicology reports while Dylan Klebold’s autopsy was never made public.

April 16, 1999: Notus, Idaho: 15-year-old Shawn Cooper fired two shotgun rounds in his school narrowly missing students; he was taking a mix of antidepressants.

May 21, 1998: Springfield, Oregon: 15-year-old Kip Kinkel murdered his own parents and then proceeded to school where he opened fire on students in the cafeteria, killing two and wounding 22. Kinkel had been on Prozac.

Read this report by CCHR to find out more about the dangerous connection between violence and psychiatric drugs.

For more information, contact the Citizens Commission on Human Rights at 800-869-2247 or email humanrights@cchr.org.

You can help CCHR urge congress to demand an investigation into the link between psychiatric drugs and violence.

Contribute to this urgent campaign now!

Link to: https://www.cchr.org/store/index.php?cPath=

Dr. Rick Lippin

I would have done more than VT did to possibly avoid this tragedy...

Be specific. Be honest. Be aware that many students would call their parents and threaten to sue you for impinging on their rights, or for making a "drive-by diagnosis." But you, with the benefit of Monday morning knowledge, and looking back at this horrible mess would have done more...

What precisely would you have done to possibly avoid this tragedy?

Jan Knaus

now these things interest me much more than having the government snoop into my intentions...

I've always liked Dr. Breggin's assessments of the drug industry.

Mental illness, if the VT student was suffering from it, is a terrible thing since, here in the US, it's a financial death threat-- especially at his age!

Your previous posts seemed to make the student a criminal and even with "sexual preditors," I don't even think of them as criminals but, instead, as "struggling mentally."

In general, I think that society should reach out to them... not closet them.

And this seems likely to be mixing up cause and effect.

The kids are on antidepressants (effect) because they are disturbed (cause), but what is the actual cause of the shooting? Is it because of the antidepressants or simply because they're abnormally disturbed?

All too predictable...politicians have a distasteful habit of trying to capitalize on tragedies to further their agendas.

Sex offenders, by hypothesis, have committed a crime.

In some jurisdictions, laws prohibit persons against whom a domestic-violence restraining order has been issued from possessing firearms.

Expanding this to persons named in restraining orders issued for certain other reasons (not including, for example, restraint of trade) might be a better basis for what you seem to want (and because there are legal protections built into the issuance and maintenance of such orders, I might even go along with such a scheme), unless you really just want everyone examined by "experts."

Jane Harman excepted, of course.

PUT UP OR SHUT UP!

you seem a little fiesty lately....

Like Jack Thompson and video games

And how do you know that some one who writes blood drenched fiction is a psycho and not Brett Easton Ellis?

After Columbine, way too many people were singled out for antisocial attitudes and goth style. We shouldn't be singling out people for having dark thoughts, dark style or for loathing rich kids when they go to college in Virginia (everyone I know who went to college in that state has had harsh words for rich kids...)

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

well, what about this article which appeared in USA Today about a year ago:

As many as 98000 Americans still die each year because of medical errors (source)

thus, it looks like my chances of dying from a freak gun accident like the one at VT is almost negligible when compared to the issue of medical errors... and I'm assuming that they're always committed with absolute no bad intentions whatsoever.

in my opinion, both high school and college can be depressing places; while I was at the University of Minnesota, I gained 70 lbs because I felt like my creativity was suppressed. Once I left, I felt free again and the weight came off.

I know that some people thrive on institutional structure, but others, like me, die.

and that's a real problem when academia works as the gateway to employement and you have to go that route.

Of course a killer armed with a 33 round magazine is going to be a more efficient killing machine than one with five 7 round magazines, the more bullets fired faster the more targets hit. The time it takes to unlock, detach, retrieve another magazine and insert it could be the time it takes to run away or physically take down the shooter.

I watched NBC News tonight. The very next day after 35 of their fellow students and faculty were killed, a memorial service featuring Bush, was held. And, incomprehensible to me, the students were shown doing a VT cheer. This sounds more like a reaction to losing a football game than to losing dozens of lives.

Bush should have stayed away from the "memorial service", which shouldn't have been held for at least a couple more days, during which the college should have been shut down to allow everyone time to grieve and come to grips with what happened. After that, Bush's appearance would have been appropriate, even though he never bothers with attending such services for the ten times as many his war has cost, nor has he been willing to step up for New Orleans.

My impression is that everyone wants to rush thru this "thing" and get back to normalcy, for whatever reasons. I find that a lot more bothersome than the "fact" that the administration of VT might have predicted the classroom carnage after the first two shootings at the dorm.

As far as restricting guns is concerned - once someone shoots another person they are a criminal in most instances, thus should not have been allowed to have had a gun. My creative engineering mind is now at work devising a fool proof time machine to be used in cases just like this.

Hoppy in Sacramento

Forget schools.

15,000 murders by gunfire last year. Now, if everyone carried a loaded gun everywhere they went, would that number go up or down? Take a guess.

freak gun accident like the one at VT

Are you out of your mind?  A "freak gun accident" doesn't involve a gunman stalking around forcing doors open.  Dematerializing this murder is just more NRA propaganda. 

I have gone a whole week, I think, without posting a comment that brought heaps of scorn my way, so I'm overdue. The second amendment refers to "bearing arms". It has nothing at all to say about ammunition. So, let's take the amendment as it stands, let everyone have a gun, but as the amendment says, this is in the context of a militia. So, we limit possession of ammunition to armories set up for the state militia, which I believe is the National Guard today. We can all keep as many guns as it takes to satisfy us, if we can afford to buy them, but we can have no ammunition at all, unless it is issued by the local armory, which is state government controlled. Now, if the federal government gets out of hand, the states can secede from the union, issue ammunition to the local citizenry, and fight off the feds. This works for me.

Hoppy in Sacramento

So you're saying that by arming more of our violent, indifferent, and un-empathic citizens, our level of violence will go ......down?

Brilliant! The NRA is looking for admen with your outlook.

Jan Knaus

"... guns, I like them..."

I don't.

Tom

"...gun control isn't an important enough battle to blow efforts on. Let's focus on the important things first..."

I wonder if the families of the dead at Virginia Tech would agree with this.

Tom

Brilliant Wigmari, you just multiply by (2).

The more bullets in a magazine the more bullets fired, one gun or two. If you can count that means two guns with seven rounds allows 14 shots before reloading, two guns with 33 rounds means 66, the ratio for reloading stays the same knucklehead.

Er, just because they are both amendments does not mean they are equally important. The first amendment covers basic human rights that are incorporated into the constitutions of just about every other liberal democracy, and which are guaranteed by the United Nations Charter of Human Rights as well, I believe. The 2nd Amendment is a weird idiosyncratic American thing with pretty much no parallel anywhere else.

Freedom of expression and freedom of worship is a basic human right, whether or not it's expressed in the U.S. Constitution. The right to own guns is not a basic human right, whether or not that right is given in the U.S. Constitution. I don't care about the First Amendment because it's in the Constitution. I care about it because it's genuinely important, and would be, whether or not it was in the constitution. Likewise, I don't care about the Second Amendment at all, regardless of whether it's in the Constitution, because I think it's stupid bullshit, and doesn't even make any clear sense on its own terms.

Perhaps I don't know much about guns. Heavens knows I little understand or appreciate the US gun lobby and the extreme culture of violence in this country that shrugs off 30,000 gun killings each year (which, by the way, exceeds by many multiples the deaths attributed to the criminal negligence connected with Katrina.)

Nevertheless, I struggle mightily to comprehend why any individual, regardless of mental status or diagnosis, should be permitted to purchase a semi-automatic weapon with or without the type of ammunition that can fire off 19 or so rounds in a matter of seconds. What other possible use is there for such a weapon but mass killing, whether of humans or animals? What possible justification could there be for such legalized massacre? Should not the sanity and motivation of any person wishing to purchase such a weapon at a minimum be seriously scrutinized?

In this instance, and perhaps in other school shootings as well, the killer would have devised other ways to wreck his terrible destruction. Maybe, maybe not, or maybe not at the same level. But we'll never know, because, out of the fear of politically alienating members of the gun lobby, we refuse even to enter into a honest discussion of the issues much less experiment with possible solutions.

Given this, I remain totally mystified how anyone in this country could in good faith support the Bush administration's grotesque annihilation of so basic a protection as the writ of habeas corpus (among others), which dates from the 12th century, as one completely inconsequential weapon drug out to prosecute the much maligned and failing "Global War on Terror," while at the same time refusing even to consider reasonable limits on the sales of semi-automatic weapons. In these circumstances, the true nature of the slippery slope argument invariably waved like a magic talisman to quash any debate on gun control is revealed for what it truly is: The fearmongering and hypocrisy of an extremist and morally bankrupt agenda.

"But we must ask ourselves why this keeps happening. The answer, I believe, partially lies in the near ubiquity of hand guns and other assault weapons in this country."

While I agree that the easy availability of handguns helped enable Cho Seung-Hui to do what he did, I believe the real problem lies in a type of mental illness that has insinuated its way into our entire culture. There is no doubt about it--we are a violent society. We love violent films, violent games, violent sports. We just plain love violence. And as long as this culture continues to find some value in violence, we will continue to be subjected to its very real effects on those members of society who cannot tell the difference between a film or a video game and the real world. Truth be told, our enlightened society is really not so enlightened as we would prefer to believe it is.

Everyone keeps talking about whether or not this "will happen again". Of course it will. Striving for an incident rate of zero is admirable, but not necessarily realistic. The question should be, how often does it happen?

Specifically, what is the probability that my life would be shortened by something like this? Practically zero. Or by getting shot in general? That's a larger probability, but still, pretty close to zero. This event is not indicative of a larger policy problem requiring "solving" by giving every plane passenger a gun or giving every gun buyer a psychiatric evaluation.

(The real solution, of course, is to fix the doors. Makers of doors should stop making door handles and knobs with closed loops that can be chained shut by crazed gunmen. Technology exists for knobs without loops for chains to go through. How many more must die?)

Guns kill 40 people a day in this country. More people have died from guns today than died at Virginia Tech yesterday. It was a tragedy for all involved, but at the end of the day, still a human interest story. If it happened in Iraq it wouldn't even be that. If we need additional gun legislation, Virginia Tech may provide a nice political impetus to get started- but it should NOT be considered by lawmakers as THE reason for legislation, or we will get a law fixing door handles.

Not that I disagree with gun control in general, but we only have a limited amount of congressperson-hours available and we can save more lives by having politicians work on (say) fixing health care instead of writing legislation having to do with guns. There was a time when we could afford to waste time on such issues but those days are gone.

One could probably prevent more gun murders by legalizing drugs than banning guns.

This evening when I came home late from work, my 4-year-old woke up, cried and puked on me about half-way through my dinner. Sammy and Dada both got an unexpected shower.

But I am more comprehensively disgusted by the bodies-still-warmer-than-room-temperature timing of this politicization of a mass murder, beginning sadly with the comments of the Congresswoman whom I do indeed respect, than I was with my son's puke on my hands, sleeve and hair.

It is unfortunate that Josh did not have the foresight to add a "puke" rating in addition to the mere numerical ratings. If we were "all Hokies" to quote the Congresswoman - which we need not all be - this discussion would not be taking place now.

Crablaw Weekly

Legislating corporate responsibility in the form of specific liability for deaths from weapons they manufacture or sell might go a long way towards reducing death.  Cities can't do it, but states or the feds can.  Corporations would figure out who to sell to, or whether it is worth being in the business.

I am a zealot about protecting all of our constitutional rights.  Because if someone can come up with a "compelling" reason to limit our rights under the 2nd, for example, then it opens the door to limiting any of them...including, and most importantly, the 1st...

Personally I don't like guns but I understand what is at stake... 

Sometimes you just have to seize the momentum that a powerful news event offers irrespective of otherwise noble priorities.

Sheesh... on one hand, you're right that an assault weapons ban would have had no effect.

But to expect, as you do, for people to fight a gun wielding assailant with text books and pepper spray is ridiculous.

Never critize people in a life and death situation. None of us know how we'd respond, unless we've been there. And, hell, even if we have been there, we don't really know. All of the best fighters I've known in my time, including soldiers, boxers, wrestlers and martial artists have never either bragged about how they'd deal with a life and death encounter or have criticized the actions of those who have. The real tough men and women I know decline to speculate and simply act how they act should the worst happen.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Now, I know who to blame for that damn brake-shift interlock device.

I understand Rep. Harman's viewpoint and I understand the controversy about guns, however I believe the greater tragedy is that another and truer cause of these crimes is usually not mentioned or if brought up, ignored. Most, if not all, shooting sprees or violent sniper incidents are done by people on or coming off of psychiatric drugs. This was the case with Columbine and with the school shooting in Bailey, Colorado and other incidents and if an autopsy or proper investigation is done I'm sure that this shooter will be found to have been under the care of a psychiatrist and under the influence of powerful psychotropic drugs. I mention this not to excuse his behavior but to point out the high irony of such inhumane acts. First the murders are committed by a person influenced by psychiatry, then psychiatrists are called in to console the victims. This is a little pre-mature as a full investigation hasn't been done, but it's worth considering so I thought I would point out an underlying and hidden cause in the great majority of these cases.

It is pretty clear that the 14th amendment extended the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, & 8th.  These are the rights you want to preserve.  It would be bizarre for it to extend the 9th or 10th, since it seems, instead, to limit them.  So, the question is, is the 2nd more like these last two, or the other 7?

The proponents of the view that it is like the other 7 ignore the significance of the "well regulated militia."  The context involves the tension between the STATES and the FEDERAL government, not a comfortable one in the late 1700s.  The FEDERAL government is not allowed to deprive the STATES the power to hold it accountable through armed power. 

After the civil war, the states lost their relevance. After the states gave up the appointment of Senators in the early 1900s, they became provinces, not separate sovereigns.  BUT, the 2nd amendment did not, through this loss of state relevance, become mystically transported into some wholly different meaning.

That's fine, why don't you come back to the discussion when you are able to contain your disgust enough to participate?

If you could offer any compelling concrete explanations for what interest individuals could possibly have in acquiring such weapons that would outweigh the public interest in keeping them out of the hands of potential mass murders, I may be able to offer some preliminary thoughts in response to your question. My point, however, was not to suggest that I have specific answers but rather to express my frustration that the power and funding of the gun lobby prevents us even from entering into any problem-solving process that might lead to an acceptable and fair-minded outcome.

Gotta give you props. We don't know how we'll act until we face the crisis. I survived an attempted robbery in my teens by virtue of panicking and popping the clutch on a pickup when my feet decided to take off and run on their own. The gun-wielding mugger went down in a heap but survived and has about ten years to go on a hard forty sentence for being a habitual criminal.

I spent a lot of time recovering from the paranoia. Bought a bunch of guns, started a family and sold the guns then reconsidered when someone tried to break into the house late one night. But more importantly than re-arming myself (it took the police in Wichita, KS nearly 20 minutes to respond to a burglary in progress 911 call), I began teaching my young daughters crisis response and basic self-defense. My youngest has used simple hand-strikes twice to prevent assault, once on a date and once at a party. The older daughter won't talk but had me order a pepper spray recharge last semester. They're both in a small-town in Kansas where things like this shouldn't happen.

I saw a few photos of the classrooms similar to the crime scenes and could not tell whether the desks and chairs were bolted down. I work at UNLV here in Las Vegas and took a few moments to stop by a lecture hall after the first post and sure enough, the desks and chairs are unitized into rows and are bolted to the floor. I can't imagine a fire alarm not resulting in at least one injury due to tripping and "pile ups", so someone with a gun may well have caused so much chaos that the slaughter was fairly simple.

But I can not recall, nor can find any other case of mass shootings with anything other than a shotgun where the fatality rate was so high. Usually the amount of injuries far outweighs fatalities. Not so in this instance. And I'm now understanding the 9mm Glock was purchased just a month ago and the .22 pistol a week or so ago. It's a horrible thing to have happen for any number of reasons but the loss of anyone in their youth makes it an even bigger tragedy and that goes for the youth we're losing in greater numbers each day in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If you look at Japanese television, it's so much more violent than ours that it makes our biggest action flicks look like Teletubbies. (Watch "Hokuto No Ken"--Fist of the North Star sometime. And that's an oldie.) But the crime rate in Japan is minuscule compared to ours. I think there's three principle reasons: the first one is access to guns. The second is that we're an increasingly isolated society. We're still making the transition from a rural agrarian society to a dense urban one, and have destroyed our extended families in favor of mythical nuclear families, and are now destroying those. The third is that we're not really a violent society: sure, there's violent pockets, but huge swathes of this nation are absurdly peaceful. If we were really a violent society we wouldn't react with such horror at an eruption of violence. We like our violence fake and circumscribed. We like football--but let a player get injured? Everything stops dead as if we're in church. Our fantasies are violent, our everyday life extremely non--

--but we give people real guns. It's a bad combination.

I don't think that the statement "Previous generations were steeped in real violence" is necessarily true." There was violence, but can you really say that it was a routine or daily occurence? Many people may have known how to to butcher and skin a chicken, rabbit, or pig, but they did not routinely attend bear baiting. They certainly didn't witness thousands of murders. Theatrical performances were rare -- and what is more important, widely considered something to be avoided at all cost because sinful (like bearbaiting). Even Shakespeare wasn't considered respectable, except when presented in recitation, until the twentieth century

Do I think that imaginary violence is more harmful than real violence? Obviously, the answer is no.

The question, however, should be: if real violence is harmful, is imaginary violence completely inocuous? For my part, much as I enjoy a good samurai movie, or even "The Departed," I am ready to accept the possibility that it might in fact not be completely inocuous. I understand that there have been countless studies of the effects of violent media on traditional societies and all of them without exception have shown "imaginary violence" even in small amounts to have a deliterious effect on people's behavior, especially that of children. Unfortunately, right now most people are not willing to accept this data, much less deal with it, just as in the 1920s through the 70s people were not ready to accept the correlation between smoking and cancer.

I beg you pardon, Ms. Harmon. This may have been a terrible tragedy in suburban America, but it's just an average day in Baghdad, thanks to you voting to give this president the power to attack a country that had done nothing to us.

Tragic as the deaths of these students are, I'd rather you put your energy into ending the carnage in the middle east - something that it's possible to do - than make use of these deaths to frighten people into begging the government for protection that it cannot and will not provide.

I lost a dear friend when Charles Whitman went on his killing spree in Austin, in the mid 60s, so i'm not cold to the tragedy here. But other than making this country even more of a police state, what would you do? Pass a law against guns? While you're at it, why not pass a law against drugs? That should take care of it.

I'm sorry but this whole part of the argument is mixing up causality.

Psychiatric drugs are not causing public shootings. It's just that the type of person who would engage in this activity was probably in need of such drugs in the first place and they weren't enough to solve the problems.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Hope I didn't judge you too personally, friend. I just try not to speculate about life and death stuff. I've been there too. I did okay, but the experience left me feeling humble.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Excellent that you mentioned Homer. I mean, seriously... I haven't seen a Hollywood movie that can compare in terms of violence to the final chapters of the Odyssey in which the hero, with the full support of the author, locks a bunch of unarmed men in his castle and shoots them dead with a bow, one by one. But that's a classic and we can't play playstation?

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Sorry!

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

I am curious where you find your "facts"...

Even Shakespeare wasn't considered respectable, except when presented in recitation, until the twentieth century

Theater going is not a 20th century invention, you know. But, setting that aside...

I recently looked up the NAMED American-Native American Wars.  Wikipedia (not the best source, but usually reliable for simple stuff) NAMES 38 such wars between 1848 and 1917, a couple of which are labeled "massacre."  I am uncertain how many inconsequential wars the US conducted in the 20th century (those openly known about), but it likely rivals the number above, Granada, Panama, Iraq 1, Afghanistan 1 (you may have forgotten that overnight invasion), Nicaragua, and on and on.

So, are you sure our culture just lately picked up it's violence? 

Ditto.

Luigi Vampa said:

developing a sane foreign policy (Congressperson Harman is regrettably useless there)

Like teats on a boar hog...

~OGD~

one of the problems with society is that they create labels like loner and eccentric to isolate people.

Worse is when even professional medical peopple don't know what a psychopath is.

A psychopath is not insane (a legal rather than medical term) nor crazy.

A psychopath is actually quite charming.

The killer at Virginia Tech doesn't sound like he had as much charm as Dick Cheney.

Best, Terry

We should never allow ourselves to be so completely outclassed by the likely forces of reaction that they feel they can move with impunity.

I suspect that's too late, with respect to both the US Government should her citizens ever decide armed insurrection was necessary, and even with respect to Blackwater who can get heavy automatics, sniper weapons, and even small assault helicopters.

(OTOH, there are about 2000 F-16As sadly rotting outside Tucson, and I would love to see the Air Force demilitarize them and sell them to private citizens.)

-- my ratings policy
If I like your argument: 4 or 5
If I dislike or disbelieve your argument: no rating
Exceptions:
If you call someone a troll, you get a 1.
If you call someone a concern troll, you get a 0.

. . . the Republican culture of deep corruption and humiliation . . . . whit

Or is it the harshly competitive, winner-take-all status-striving consumerist culture which breeds Nietzschean ressentiment -- and on the heroic level breeds Miltonic Satans who will chose to be evil because they begrudge a good God and can't abide coming second?

I view the Patriot Act as sui generis.

You don't see it following upon the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, at all?

There have been numerous studies that have demonstrated the desensitizing effects of gratuitous violence in movies and subsequent violent acts by people that are predisposed towards violence.

Citing literature is a spurious analogy.

When a person reads about violence, they must use their imagination to recreate its contours. Viewing "Halloween" or "Friday the 13th" requires no imagination. It puts blood in guts on a big screen in a surrealistic way.

So with all due respect, the conclusions in your post are mistaken.

~

Ms. Harman:

Your reaction to the tragedy at VA Tech? Reinstitute the assault weapons law? What timing... Real genius. Way to grab the poker when it's good and hot ...

Oh and here's another update for you, Ms. Harman. There have been an additional 1378 American service members killed since your useless visit here to the cafe back on September 30, 2005 telling us how important the December 2005 Iraq elections would be in relationship to getting our troops out of that mess ... That's a long time to be "...patient..."!

With no respect due ... I think you should get up off your pampered butt and get us the hell out of Iraq... Until then, everything else is smoke and mirrors.

~OGD~

ps: Don't anyone here at the Cafe get your undies in a bunch... Rep. Harman, although she represents my district, by far she does not represent my positions on this ill conceived and ridiculous occupation, nor my feelings about her non-oversight during the recent NSA/FISA debacle...

~

Yeah, well art and expression shouldn't be subjugated to science.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Representative Harman: The Republican Party of Wisconsin appreciates your outstanding efforts to keep the State Assembly firmly under GOP control.

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Ben Masel, Democratic Candidate for US Senate, Wisconsin 2012

The lobbying would not have much effect without votes.

Wisconsin, real votes 76% in 1998 for a State Constitution Amendment

SECTION 25 Right to keep and bear arms.
The people have the right to keep and bear arms for security, defense, hunting, recreation or any other lawful purpose.

County By County vote totals, map Note the numbers in Dave Obey's District. Do you think he voted to repeal the ban for the money?
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Democratic Candidate for US Senate, Wisconsin 2012

Oh; I see. You meant the unusual nature of the event which preceded its enactment was sui generis, not its provisions.

Well, in that sense, you might consider the Murrah Building bombing as a "similar antecedent event."

"keeping in mind the inherent constitutional issues."

I take it your practice is not in Constitutional Law. "Content based prior restraint" ring any bells?
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Democratic Candidate for US Senate, Wisconsin 2012

There is a difference between imagination (Mr Ellis) and fantasy.

"Loathing rich kids" is NOT a license to kill any more than is being a Muslim.

In fact, "loathing rich kids" is a sign of a maladjusted personality. There is a big difference between disagreeing or disliking and loathing. I came from the "wrong side" of the tracks and, yes, I disliked many "rich kids" as an undergraduate. However, I did not kill them and, some of them turned out to be some of my best friends now going for 40+ years.

It's not a matter of either-or. Rather, it is a matter of some of both in order to reduce risk. Just because a singular action does not reduce risk to 0% does not mean it is not a prudent action. Rather, a rational person takes may actions, each reducing risk, such that the cumulative effect is a signficant reduction in risk.

Actually, I think violence has been pretty steadily on the decline since the dawn of the evolution of higher primates. Obviously technology can do great harm or good.

Compared with most of nature we higher primates are pretty peaceful. Compared with the brutality even after the enlightenment, modern society is pretty peaceful. Even the big wars aren't as bad as many would think by comparison to past wars, adjusting for population. And in this era big wars are on the decline.

Not to say Iraq for example is any less of a tragedy in real terms, but if you're asking about larger trends, there is cause for optimism.

I think the alarmist pandering over video games, action movies and such, is incredibly short sighted and the worst kind of populism and fear mongering. Unfortunately, some on the left want to close the "fear gap" with the Rt Wing, due to Satan and Orange Alerts being on their side and all.

Excellent points. Your understanding of the problems is quite accurate.

There is no such thing as "reasonable limits on the sales of semi-automatic weapons" except for an absolute ban.

There are not merely 30 families who are the victims; over 20,000 families are victimized by NRA nuts every year. NRA nuts are a distinct minority in the American electorate. Why should a minority of psychopaths dictate policy for the nation? That is the serious question.

In terms of the legality of these issues, I find it confusing that a person innocent of anything can be put on a "no-fly list" and denied the ability to travel simply because he writes an editorial critical of the President (or worse, because he shares the name of the editorial writer), but anybody can walk into a store in Va. and buy a guy, even if they are in the process of undergoing psychiatric treatment for severe emotional issues including profound rage.

I don't quite get the people who think it's OK to deny the right to travel to somebody simply because they work for PETA, but insist that anybody should be able to buy a weapon. I don't know how the technicalities should be worked out, but clearly the no-fly issue is already trampling individual rights and with very little requirement of due cause.

Rep. Harman, I'm glad for your input on this issue.

As for whether this post "politicizes" the tragedy, that barn door was opened two days ago, when President Bush made the support of the Second Amendment an immediate talking point.

I doubt that the black market in guns would be as robust as the one for drugs since people do not get addicted to guns as they do drugs. But, I can’t imagine that guns would not be easily available to those who really wanted to get them and could get the money to pay for them.

Stop lying to yourself. Societies with much lower gun ownership rates have much lower gun violence rates. It doesn't take a genius to see the link.

Your kind of reasoning is pretty amusing really (in a tragic way). What you're saying boils down to "we Americans are an extraordinarily violent society and therefore we must keep our guns".

Every sane person believes in some form of gun control. You wouldn't have wanted the VT nutcase to get his hands on a nuclear device or some other weapon of mass destruction (although he did enough damage with a pistol). It all comes down to where you draw the line.

Personally, I would freeze all the technical improvements in weaponry since the passage of the second amendment. I would allow only muzzle-loading black-powder firing muskets. A true sportsman would have no objection to that.

Me? I've never owned a gun in my life and I'm in my 50s. Guess I never had a reason to shoot anybody.

Although I support the bill, I am rather disappointed that Rep. Harman chose this particular time to express her sentiment. This ban would not have prevented this particular tragedy any more than banning liquids from flights would have prevented 9/11.

The problem is that sane measures aimed at sane people do not protect us against (metaphorically) insane people. So our politicians have a very reactive approach to tragedy--make it look like you are doing something even if the measure does not really address the problem. Spurious connections are far too common in congressional posturing.

How is tying the assault weapon ban to this tragedy different from claiming that had students been allowed to carry weapons on campus, the tragedy would have been prevented? It seems to be just another version of "mine is bigger than yours".

I respect Rep. Harman for the work that she does, but I see the emphasis she made here as being misplaced.

That, and you've never been sufficiently afraid of someone else.

Van Gogh apparently was mentally ill. It seems to come out in his paintings as well as his self-mutilation and ultimate suicide. What should have been done?

A college student is not yet a completely independent adult but when should the state or in loco parentis istitutions be able to act against the will of someone? On what basis? Who gets to make these decisions?

If manic depression is associated with creativity do we want to squelch or "guard" against such people. Any notion that there are easy answers to this seem far fetched. Staking out positions as if they are from Sinai makes for fun reading but no real answers.

Daniel A. Greenbaum

Jan, I just think your posts are much better without the name calling... and the name calling stuck out instead of your point.

Other than asking you to stick to your point, so I don't get sidetracked with the name calling (flaming), I have no agenda.

My age, I'm probably too young for you... ;-)

A Canadian man did go into a college and shoot 14 women (shouting "You're all feminists!") recently. But on the whole you are right.

The erosion of the safety net and disappearance of job security has undoubtedly contributed to the stresses young people are under.

I'd love to see the study where you got this tidbit:

Just as the prevalence of porno has a negative correlation with rapes...

I'm assuming you know that a negative correlation mean that watching porn actually REDUCES the occurence of rape. If that is the case, there is a wealth of preventive a-v material out there. Let's get it into the high-schools now. Pretty soon there will be NO rape!

Jan Knaus

Not guns, they are already in circulation.

1. Tax bullets, $100 per bullet.

2. Reinstate liability for manufacturers, dealers, and sellers for any down stream harms. Award triple damages as with RICO.

These will have an amazing effect. 

100% ban of selling of any ammunition, enacted many years ago as gun advocates have been trying WOULD have prevented this MURDER (not tragic event).  Let us not be confused.

They don't necessarily loathe rich people. They find the self congratulatory attitude of many of the rich repulsive.

That's silly. It would be much easier to establish a black market in ammunition, I would imagine.

Agreed. Many people here accuse Rush Limbaugh and Bill Oreilly, for example of spewing hate or engaging in “hate speech” when others would say they were engaging in “feisty” discussions.

Well, fear is a psychological state, and different people have different tolerances of fear triggers, and different triggers. I'm not sure the *fact* of fear should justify policy. People can be desensitized to fear, and I think a lot of gun owners who own firearms because of their fear of intruders could use that sort of desensitization. That's not to say that *none* of them have good reason to own guns, just that a lot of them don't.

As for me, I wouldn't insist on black powder muzzle loaders, but restricting guns to a single shot between reloads makes sense.

Why don't you tell us what these evaluations would entail, and how you would keep them from becoming ever-more-inclusive and -intrusive?

About one-third of households have guns.

That may be a minority, but it is still too many dozens of millions of people to be evaluated fairly and professionally to allow gun ownership. The suggestion remains a full-employment act for the psychiatric and psychological professions.

"By your logic, an undiagnosed cancer [']patient[' how so if undiagnosed?] does not have cancer, [and] society is benefitted by failure to diagnose illness."

If I may go along with your analogy between people having undiagnosed cancer and unevaluated nuts having guns, you're putting the following words in my mouth: "society is benefitted by nuts having guns."

This whole line of 'reasoning' is silly.

First, I am not saying that society benefits from nuts having guns (do psychologists typically left-handedly redefine what is being said by people they wish to disagree with?). I am saying that your suggested method of keeping guns out of the hands of nut cases is flawed.

Yesterday in this thread I posted the thought that the current law in many jurisdictions, under which subjects of domestic-violence restraining orders are forbidden to possess firearms, might be extended to subjects of other named restraining orders (or, today) persons convicted of certain misdemeanor crimes involving violence or making threats.

A control regime such as this has the advantages of openness and even community involvement, opportunity for appeal or other legal redress, and is fact-dependent in a way that your 'evaluations,' in most cases (because the person hasn't done anything), could not be.

Since that is what I advocate, not arming nuts, maybe you'll have a word or two to say about that.

pgbach troll-rates this comment a ZERO. Why? Does it show a fear of fact-based argument?

Re liability: The law passed last year only crated a safe haven for manufacturers and dealers who'd complied with all relevent State and Federal regulations. Why should they be punished when the purchaser's been cleared by a law enforcement background check?

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Democratic Candidate for US Senate, Wisconsin 2012

HELP!! Can it be that there is no way to locate the "parent" to a comment when the "parent is on a preceding page?" Or have I just not had enough coffee?

Thanks...
Further number crunching for Obey's district put's support for the Amendment a little over 80%, can't be precise without going ward by ward in Eau Claire County, which is split with Ron Kind's.

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Democratic Candidate for US Senate, Wisconsin 2012

So are you saying that violence is somehow a requirement of a noble society?

"I will state, as I always do, that guns don't kill people...people kill people."

Actually, guns don't kill people--bullets kill people. Or perhaps you'd prefer this one: Guns don't kill people--people with guns kill people.

In my opinion, the argument that guns don't kill people is a red herring. It totally ignores the fact that guns make it much easier for someone who is angry or sick to kill their fellow man. A knife could do the job too, but as the massacres at Columbine, Virginia Tech and others teach us, guns are far more efficient at f*cking up as many peoples' lives as possible in a very short amount of time.

Seems like a good idea. Problem was from a legal standpoint that victim didn't press charges. Maybe if the psychiatrists had been in contact with the school disciplinary committee -- to whom the perpetrator had been referred, and the police, something could have been worked out even in the absence of charges.

It seems that all the attention on “assault weapons” and magazine capacity is aimed at the exceedingly rare mass killing. I doubt those restrictions will have much effect on the thousands of suicides and individual murders that happen every year.

Why is Senator Harman obsessing over this?

Representative Harman (blush)

Not too bad, but wholly good?

Well, you wouldn't want to see her "obsessing" over the IDF having seeded South Lebanon with cluster bomblets, would you? Now, that would be mad.

There are a million ways people can screw up, that's for sure! Even so -- better to attempt to do something than to remain in (depraved?) indifference.

I simply don't care about the Virginia Tech Massacre and the Media Driven Maudlin Sorrow.

We live in a country that stigmatizes mental illness, prizes gun rights over healthcare, all while we remake Iraq in our image?

http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/2410/157_Dead_in_Four_Bombings_in_Capital

There have been numerous studies

Links? 

Dissent Protects Democracy.

But a highly regarded university in my state (Weslyan University) has offered courses in porn (at least in the recent past).

 Really?  As a rape prevention strategy?  Did Weslyan have a big problem with sex crimes on campus that the porn cured?

Now, back when I was in Nurse Practitioner School, we had what was called "Sex Week," which we all looked forward to for two years.  We saw Misty Beethoven (the only movie name I can remember) and several other films that were extremely explicit.  The goal was to "desensitize" us so we wouldn't be embarassed when we saw naked patients or discussed sexual problems with them.  It worked for me, and it was actually helpful to the shyer med students (who were younger than we were) as well.

So, I will grant that seeing 700 penises in 7 days may make a medical practitioner more comfortable with future patients' bodies, but I truly doubt that it is a legitimate therapy for sexual deviants.

Jan

Thanks, I though I had done that but I guess I did not click to "save changes."

Excuse me for trying to be polite, a posture with which you are evidently unfamiliar.

I agree with most of what you say, but I do not think the movies and video game imagery are completely irrelevant.

They are part of a complex of factors, symptomatic of conditions of modern life -- in which the generations are segregated from each other and where which young people, no matter how potentially talented and/or intelligent, are told in a million ways that they don't measure up and are not worthy (or may not be worthy) of active participation in and recognition by society.

The flaw is that there are ways to lessen gun violence, that don't involve having a government shrink examine and create records on people who have given no reason for worry. Also, the "mental detector" scheme would not catch someone who goes bad after they buy their guns, so its proponents are going to eventually have to admit they favor periodic scrutiny.

Elsewhere I post here my agreement that weapons and muzzle energy ought to be subject to reasonable restriction, as well as my argument that use, which is happening today, of restraining orders issued against persons who commit domestic violence to deny them the right to possess firearms, ought to be be extended to specified other wrongs, such as stalking, harassing, trespassing, etc. Under this expanded system, persons subject to these orders would be required to turn over all firearms during the order's duration, or for a specified period of time.

This has the advantage of being a public process, based on known facts, with legally safeguarded avenues of appeal, and it would happen only to those who had given some reason to be concerned (and based on the V-T shooter's apparent MH history, I would say that under my scheme he would be a prime candidate for such an order).

None of these saving graces would be present in the Bach-Lippin "mental detector" scheme.

UPDATE:

CNN also learned Wednesday that in 2005 Cho was declared mentally ill by a Virginia special justice, who declared he was "an imminent danger" to himself, a court document states.

A temporary detention order from General District Court in the commonwealth of Virginia said Cho "presents an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness."

A box indicating that the subject "Presents an imminent danger to others as a result of mental illness" was not checked.

In another part of the form, Cho was described as "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization, and presents an imminent danger to self or others as a result of mental illness, or is so seriously mentally ill as to be substantially unable to care for self, and is incapable of volunteering or unwilling to volunteer for treatment."

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/04/18/vtech.shooting/index.html

So on these facts(?), whether or not Cho would have been filtered out under the "mental detector" scheme, he was an almost certain candidate under my proposal for a restraining order forbidding the possession of firearms, because the whole ball got rolling with stalking complaints.

It is very rare for someone to just blow up with no warning.

The principle is the same. As you wisely said, negative judgment of Limbaugh and ORielly says more about those who making the judgment than the those two men.

When I hear that rich people are deliberately depriving people of their heath care or keeping their employee in poverty so they can make obscene profits, it sounds like hate to me, but it is probably just me.

If we cannot take assault weapon phallic toys away from ego-insecure self-absorbed people who care not whit what damage the society experiences, how much harder will it be to take away weapons from larger parts of the population?

Bullets are not like drugs.  Bullet casings require substantial manufacturing effort.  Raw supplies are tracked in the markets.  I suspect the raw materials in gun powder may also be easily tracked.  Could there be SOME black market bullets?  Of course.  Could they replace the current supply?  Unlikely, not unless there was no law enforcement.

Well I don't think that the it was about rape prevention per se, lol.  I doubt any studies were done in Middletown, CT or on campus, to see if rapes declined though.  But I understand the effect on many guys who watch it is that it has a calming effect on their overly aggressive male sex drive, lol.  It can have a very carthatic effect on the male sex drive.

But they had an honest to goodness class about it at Weslyan, Jan.  It was written about in the papers and reported about on TV.  I think they've discontinued the course though...but Weslyan is a bastion of liberalism.

The Opening of Misty Beethoven is from the 70's and is considered one of the better porns ever made, if you had to watch one that isn't a bad one to have to sit through.  How do I know this?  I am in the video business, lol.  An occupational hazard... ;-)  

But as far as rapists go I wouldn't consider them sexual deviants.  I think rape is considered an act of violence more so than a sex act.  It's definitely an attack... 

Now that we have taken this thread waaaaaaaay off topic, lol. 

To hoppy:

If one was only able to view the following from an NBC Newscast, I can understand the feeling of incomprehensibility.

I watched NBC News tonight. The very next day after 35 of their fellow students and faculty were killed, a memorial service featuring Bush, was held. And, incomprehensible to me, the students were shown doing a VT cheer. This sounds more like a reaction to losing a football game than to losing dozens of lives.

I was able to watch the entire event live. I also saw the newscast and NBC News did not place the students reaction of "doing a VT cheer" in the full, true context of the event. The audience's reaction was in direct response and transpired immediately after the following speech (the last speaker), at the conclusion of the "memorial service":

“We are Virginia Tech.

We are sad today and we will be sad for quite awhile. WE are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to know when to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did not deserve it but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, but neither do the invisible children walking the night to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory; neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokier Nation embraces our own with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail, we will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech. "
Presented by:

Yolanda Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni: Poet, Virginia Tech University

The "cheer" may have seemed uncomfortable, but to my perspective it was understandable in the context. I hope this puts the reaction of the students and the audience in a better perspective.

~OGD~

Guns require more manufacturing than casings, casings can be reloaded. If the black marketer chooses not to manufacture he can divert ammunition from legal manufacturing, outside the U.S. if necessary and smuggled in. Prices will be lucrative and black marketers will be resourceful.

The current supply need not be replaced. Only a tiny percentage of ammunition is used illegally and that is what would be replaced by black market ammunition.

Interesting. At least some of the right wing blogosphere is scapegoating the judge who failed to commit Cho in 2005. Here's a link. From cnn.com via the linked page:

Virginia and federal law prohibit the sale of guns to anyone who has been sent unwillingly to a mental institution.