Gov. Tim Kaine signed an executive order this week to close a loophole in Virginia law that allowed a 23-year-old student who had been court-ordered to seek outpatient mental health treatment to purchase the firearms he later used to massacre 32 people at Virginia Tech.
Seung-Hui Cho was ineligible to purchase weapons under federal law, but his name wasn’t on the commonwealth’s no-gun list because he had not been involuntarily committed to a treatment facility, which only happens in extreme cases. Henceforth under Kaine’s directive, such people will be barred from buying guns in Virginia. This is a reasonable limitation that even the National Rifle Association supports.
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But if Cho had not killed himself, the courts would eventually have to grapple with the same question now posed by John Hinckley Jr.: If an insane person commits a violent crime, should he be released when the underlying mental disorder is “cured”? It’s a tough call, especially since the course of mental illness is rarely predictable.
Hinckley has been involuntarily confined at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital ever since he tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981. He’s now seeking unsupervised monthlong visits to his elderly parents’ home in Williamsburg, in
Kaine’s own state. Hinckley’s doctors believe he no longer poses a danger to the public, but there’s no guarantee he won’t relapse outside the therapeutic setting where he’s been living for 26 years.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Zeno, who objects to granting Hinckley more freedom, told a federal judge that the would-be assassin still exhibits “grandiose and narcissistic” behavior. Zeno’s caution is well-founded. Unlike psychiatrists, prosecutors are primarily responsible for protecting society from people like Hinckley.
It doesn’t matter what dark forces compelled Hinckley — or any other of the tiny minority of mentally ill people who become violent — to do what they did. Once they’ve demonstrated homicidal tendencies, they need to be locked up permanently. The consequences of relapse can be fatal.
