At odds with reality
Aaron Alexis shot out the tires of some construction workers’ tires in 2004. Three years before he joined the Navy. In 2008, while he was in the Navy, he tore up a nightclub. In 2010, he shot though his ceiling because his upstairs neighbor made too much noise in his opinion while he was living in Fort Worth. After he was evicted from that apartment, he shot through the wall of his new apartment in the house of his landlord and employer, for unspecified reasons.
In the the first case, the paperwork was lost on the way to the prosecutor’s office, in the second, local authorities left it to the Navy to punish him, but they decided it would just be easier to get rid of him. In the third, the police decided that there wasn’t enough evidence against him. The fourth incident was never reported to authorities.
Just last month, in Rhode Island, Alexis called the police because people were talking to him through the walls and ceiling of the motel room and they were sending vibrations through his body. The Newport police warned the Navy about Alexis’ bizarre behavior. Last month.
But, you know what caused the incident at the Navy Yard? Security clearance procedures. Well if you ask Congress. Susan Collins, a Republican Senator from Maine says the military needs to cut the time between renewal of clearances says the Washington Times;
“One step that can be taken immediately is ensuring that criminal databases and the terrorist watch lists are always consulted and that there’s some sort of continuous monitoring that would pick up problems rather than waiting as long as five or 10 years to review security clearances,” said Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, on CNN’s “New Day” on Wednesday morning.
Yeah, well, how would that have prevented Alexis from walking into the Navy Yard with his access card?
To his credit, General Martin Dempsey told the media today that this tragedy shouldn’t stigmatize veterans when they’re looking for work and require a security clearance;
Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, says those who have served in the military should not be stigmatized by having to answer questions about their mental health status on security clearance forms.
I’m pretty sure that Alexis wouldn’t have been truthful about that question anyway. And if you scare military people away from the jobs that require a clearance, you won’t have anyone to fill those jobs, speaking generally.
You know what else caused the shooting, as long as we’re looking for politically expedient answers that are easy to understand and specious? Sequestration.
A Pentagon inspector general’s report on Tuesday said the Navy Commercial Access Control System (NCACS) is flawed in screening contractors because it uses only commercially available databases, not government lists such as the FBI National Criminal Intelligence System or the Terrorist Screening Database.
Yeah, in order for the screening process to work, there has to be information there. In Alexis’ case there was nothing, because no one wanted to do anything about him. Just like no one wanted to do anything about Jared Loughner, James Holmes, Adam Lanza and Nidal Hasan. Everyone knew that there were problems in each of those five cases, but no one wanted to say anything – well, until after the fact, then you can’t keep them away from the TV cameras or force them to shut up. Is that too simple? Is that too easy to understand? Is that not complicated enough for the people who have a string of letters and periods after their names?
What needs to change is the culture, and the government can’t do that for us. So nothing will get done except a bunch of stupid laws and regulations that wouldn’t have prevented this tragedy or any of the others. But the politicians will feel better about themselves and those who think that government actually does something will sleep better thinking the government is on the job. The rest of us, firmly rooted in reality, will sleep with a gun under our pillows.
Thanks to Twitchy for the cartoon.
Category: Who knows
The narrative on several tv and news stations now is that this is the Navy’s fault for not doing something about him when he was in, ignoring the fact that if the police hadn’t screwed up in 2004 he likely would have never made it into the Navy.
When you’re dealing with a lunatic, particularly one that likes to shoot guns inappropriately, the last thing most sane people want to do is call attention to themselves in the eyes of the deranged, lest said deranged shows up on THEIR doorstep, or shoots out THEIR tires or through THEIR wall. And currently, no institutional structure can take action without assuredly being sued out of existence for persecuting and discriminating against someone who is mentally ill. And so it goes.
Here’s the real question – what good is a background check database if nobody puts information in said database?
It is relatively easy to get convicted criminals in the database because, by definition, they have been convicted of a crime after having their day in court. The problem is getting the mentally ill in the database. Unless someone has been adjudicated insane or committed (volunatrily or otherwise), how does one end up on the list? Does a psychiatrist/psychologist have a duty to report? Can they be sued for reporting? Since the ACLU has argued that the insane have a constitutional right to not take their meds (and thus be crazy and stinky all over city streets), I am sure they will argue that putting someone on the nutty list without a hearing violates their civil rights.
And cutting closer to home (yes, I know this is going to be VERY unpopular here), but when does the VA have a duty to report someone with PTS as someone who should not have a gun? Are their standards? I can see this being abused both ways.
In the end, the real problem is not guns, it is mental health. Guns don’t kill mass quantities of unarmed people, crazy people with guns do. Thus, the question should not be how to snatch up guns or what guns should be legal, it should be how to keept guns out of the hands of the insane.
And in other news, the US has been the safest its ever been for the last 50 years. Here’s Tom with the weather.
@ #4
I like it better when Ollie does the weather…
Many conservatives are afraid to fund mental health screening because they are afraid it will catch them! Case in point all of the anger management problems on this blog. Paranoia runs deep into your heart it will creep comes when your always afraid the man(OBAMA) come and take you away!
Jeebus-phony Vn war protester, if you’re going to quote crappy 60s music at least get the lyrics right:
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away
Dumbass!
VWP,
TOO LATE! The Demonrat Libtard Progressives already caught Teh Mental first. You’re living proof!
Fuckin’ asshole!
VNP–GFY.
Remember, it was LIBERALS who threw open the gates of the loony bins in the 1970’s-80’s, with “help” from the ACLU and liberal judges who were so concerned with the “rights” of the mentally ill.
VWP? Is that your personal best you can do throwing down the race card? fuckstick…
@5 “it’s raining more anti-gun legislation” now to sports to discuss how much the Seattle Seahawks suck ass with Tom….
Let’s see, Charlie Manson encouraged mass murder because of a song, “Helter Skelter”, and speaking of the Beatles, Mark David Chapman, shot John Lennon because of Salinger’s, “Catcher in the Rye.” By the logic of the anti-gun legislation we should start banning music and books too.
So glad those two yahoos in CO got recalled.
This man should have been dealt with in 04
O’Reilly segment incapsulates the blame AR-15 frenzy by media (FOX News culpable to a lesser degree)…
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/oreilly/index.html#http://video.foxnews.com/v/2680715830001/the-press-at-odds-with-the-american-public/?playlist_id=86923
Susan: the potential for abuse of mental-health “diagnosis” disturbs me far more than the possibility of mentally-disturbed individuals being allowed their freedom. I want 1984 to remain a calendar year and a book vice a prophecy.
@3
Actually, the ACLU has also sued, quiet regularly, to block people with mental issues from being added to the NICS rosters. Then you have the fact that something like 13 states have multiple year-backlogs in reporting. And then you have issues with outright refusal to report (VA Tech shooter was never reported). And the ACLU’s go to argument that ‘criminalizing’ insanity will lead to fewer people that need help seeking it (which is an accurate and legitimate claim, to my knowledge).
All of this creates a very easy blind for politicians hell bent on taking people’s firearms instead of standing up to the ACLU and others and demanding reporting. At the federal level, monies could be held up for various state projects and agencies until some sort of compliance with submission timeframes was instated and MET, but that would be political suicide. Arguing that ‘it was them guns’ is only political suicide outside of big cities and liberal states.
The question that keeps occurring to me is ‘how the fuck does a cop lose that paperwork’. Followed by ‘how does he or anyone who supervises him still have a job’?
Lost paperwork. Jesus tapdancing Christ.
In a nutshell, mental health issue are terribly hard to legislate and adjudicate… guns are physical solid objects that many of these jerks have no problem attempting to ban. It’s just sheer laziness at the root of the problem.
Yep. It seems to be almost a core ideal of liberalism that people are too stupid to be trusted with guns. Any shooting kicks up a knee jerk reaction from Feinstein about ‘banning guns’ again.
And every time they try to ban this or that gun or this or that feature or this or that function, they claim they want a ‘dialogue’ with the citizenry. Then they don’t like what the citizenry overwhelmingly has to say. There’s a drastic lack of staying power in any gun-ban movement, which is why they always demand action be taken the next day- the longer people have to be informed, the less it looks like a ban of firearms will do anything to keep people safe.
This was caused by repeated failures of law enforcement, military and civilian, going back almost a decade. Newtown was the failure of a mother to secure firearms in her house which she shared with a son she knew to be extremely violent and mentally unstable. Aurora was a mentally unstable man with a history of issues that never went reported or examined. None of these things would be fixed by a ban. And it’s really hard to get support for mental health legislation.
‘Do something, anything’ is the name of the game, and those with an agenda are hell bent on making sure that the ‘anything’ is their favored ‘something’.
As horrible as these mass shootings are, you’re still a lot more likely to be killed by your doctor or in some other form of accident. Those killings don’t get the attention they deserve. Everyone should resist the urge to DO SOMETHING NOW! (Unless, of course, you have some other agenda.)
@19 I’ve seen what passes for “dialog with the citizenry” –it generally comes in the shape of a form letter, normally with a “this is what you want, and this is what you’re gonna pay for it” theme.