How many more must there be?
The murderer who killed eighteen people in Lewiston, Maine is dead, having shot himself after his rampage.
Of course he did. About a third of mass shooters are suicidal during the incident, and the younger the killer, the higher the rate of suicidal intent. This particular murderer was an Army reservist and was taken in for a psychiatric evaluation in July, at which time he is said to have been hearing voices and to have contemplated “hurting other soldiers.” He used an AR-10 pattern rifle during the shootings, a rifle that he had purchased several days prior to his admission for mental healthcare and had a Beretta 92F [sic] that he bought at the same time. At present, it does not appear that authorities attempted to remove his weapons from his possession, despite the episode this summer and the subsequent order from the Army for him to seek treatment.
So it goes, and this does feel like a Vonnegut novel, an exercise in futility, though without any leavening of humor. The usual voices for gun control are naturally out in force on social media to demand that we forbid private ownership of what they call assault weapons, and news sites have been endlessly quoting CNN’s declaration that the rifle used by the killer “is favored by military snipers firing at long distances and big game hunters,” since its .308 chambering uses ammunition that is “is larger and more powerful than the regular ammunition carried in the rifles of soldiers and SWAT teams.”
Perhaps it is best that we all let that attempt at sounding informed slide. Gun control advocates likely will never learn the details of firearms, and in truth, I cannot blame them too much. They want bans and restrictions, and if the laws are poorly written, so much the better from their perspective if that allows them to classify even more guns as illegal for new sales or ultimately for ownership. As I implied last week, they would gladly keep going, adding one law after another, until all firearms in private possession are banned, and new killings would only drive these advocates harder. Whether or not violence rates changed would be irrelevant to their cause.
There is a tautology in their demands: If there were no firearms, there would be no gun deaths. That, of course, would require all guns to be destroyed, including those of various government agencies, and in such a future, whoever had the job of crushing, cutting, or melting the last guns would have to be watched closely to make sure that no weapons were sneaked away, since in the kingdom of the disarmed, the guy with a rusty Lorcin is king. Violence would continue, as it had before the invention of firearms, but there would be no gun deaths.
With close to half a billion firearms in the country, many people skilled in the use of milling and printing machines, and long borders, it is pure fantasy to suggest getting rid of all American guns, even if that were a desirable goal. Even if the proposal were to remove only semiautomatic firearms, that would still mean the rounding up of tens of millions of such weapons, assuming that recent estimates of the totals are accurate. A ban on new sales, akin to the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, would naturally do nothing to reduce the current inventory, and only people who do not care to be gun owners would participate in programs to sell their weapons to the government.
The real question to ask with this and every other mass shooting is why was the shooter out on the street? Someone put in a psychiatric hold for evaluation, who talks of hearing voices, and who threatens harm should not be released the next day, no matter how sternly he is directed to get further treatment. He should be provided a lawyer and a patient advocate, kept under immediate supervision until a hearing can be held, and if he is found to be a danger to others, he should be committed to a mental healthcare institution until such time as he is demonstrably no longer a danger to others. And yes, he should have no access to weapons during that time.
With due process protections, this would not offend the Constitution. Treating the sick members of our society is the duty of any advanced state, and removing from circulation those whose illnesses pose a danger to others is one of its necessary powers. The Lewiston, Maine shooter may have wanted help, or perhaps he merely sought attention—why else would anyone announce a desire to harm those around him—but the military and the healthcare system sent him on his way, rather than giving him what he wanted or needed and what the rest of us assuredly required in this situation.
Would someone planning to be a mass shooter refrain from informing the people around him of his intentions if we put serious effort into finding such persons and forestalling their designs? That is difficult to say, but in case after case, they tell enough of their neighbors, co-workers, and kin to say to me that they could be stopped and possibly want to be stopped, if only the rest of us were willing to do just that.
This would require the government to spend money. Such care is not cheap. It would require the dedication of law enforcement and mental health professionals, since people with anti-social personalities and the like, especially if they are also delusional, are tough to treat. They often do like to be noticed, and if they can feel that they sent out signals that were ignored, that is an additional win for them, but they do not necessarily see—or admit to themselves—that anything is wrong with them. But we are going to have incidents like the one in Maine again and again until we are willing to do something to stop them, as the hashtag goes, and gun control, even if it is again found to be constitutional, is a pointless exercise in the United States.