As we have argued here previously, the path to reducing the incidence of mass shootings begins at the gravestone of the gun control movement. And fortunately, Congress seems to have found the trailhead despite all of the emotions involved in the midst of a spate of mass shootings.
As of Thursday evening, there was evidence that the recent shooting of 14 people in San Bernardino — a rare incident with husband-and-wife perpetrators — might have been inspired by Islamic terrorism. The more typical example of this all-too-common and tragic occurrence was the shooting last week in Colorado Springs. As with earlier shootings in Aurora, Colorado and Sandy Hook, Conn., and elsewhere, the perpetrators tend to kill after years of suffering undiagnosed or inadequately treated mental illness.
It is heartening to see a bipartisan bill in Congress to begin addressing this problem, because government currently does quite a bit when it comes to mental health, and does most of it wrong. Those who are indigent and require care often cannot get it until they are already in prison. Whether or not they have a “right” to mental health care, the failure to provide it can have tragic consequences for innocent third parties.
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Tex., the former Chief Psychiatric Nurse at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Dallas, and Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., a psychologist, are co-sponsoring the proposal. As Johnson points out in her oped on the bill in the Washington Examiner, the current Medicaid rules actually punish facilities with more than 16 psychiatric beds by refusing to reimburse them. “People who need treatment are turned away because of this rule, day after day,” Johnson notes. “This bill would allow more available beds in care facilities.”
Moreover, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) lacks the focus it needs. Currently, it blows much of its budget on gimmicks. Last winter, for example, the agency created a hotline for people to call who were worried about a major winter storm. But mental health isn’t about excessive worrying. The bill that is going to the House floor would allocate the federal money going toward mental health in a far more sensible way. A top priority will be identifying and treating the severely mentally ill — those with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, for example — not just casually helping people survive a case of the worries.
This bill would also encourage states to adopt and keep what is known as Assisted Outpatient Treatment, a form of court-ordered diversion for mentally ill defendants facing minor charges. As Johnson notes, this program can have effects far beyond mass shootings. A system that properly recognizes the problem of mental illness can actually help people stay out of jail and in many cases lead relatively productive lives.
Guns are the first target after each mass shooting because politicians like to pretend there is an easy solution to everything.
But the solution isn’t nearly as easy they make it seem. Of all the variables that go into these terrible public shooting events, access to weapons is probably the hardest to control. Given the presence of roughly 300 million privately owned firearms in the United States, it would take decades, perhaps even a century, before even the most draconian and unconstitutional gun ban could theoretically be effective in preventing such shootings.
Mental health reform, on the other hand, seems complicated and messy. Yet it would be necessary even in the absence of mass shootings, and it will begin helping people who desperately need help from the very moment it begins.
