A Prescription for Newtown

The Newtown tragedy has prompted numerous individuals in the news, blogs and in social media to call for greater gun control or less frequently, more mental health care. While both suggestions would be a step in the right direction, they alone will not make us safer.  The real prescription is much harder.

Any solution must ensure that guns and other tools of mass homicide do not get into the hands of alienated homicidal mentally ill individuals. However, passing draconian laws limiting access to firearms to all would rob too many law abiding citizens of their rights without really being effective. Any regulation of firearms needs to allow for competent individuals to possess guns firearms for self-protection, hunting, and sport shooting.  Firearms aren’t the only option for mass murder. Bombs, arson, and even knives have been used in mass killings. The key is limiting access to the tools of mass murder to mentally ill maniacs.   

The challenge here is that we do not know fully know how to successfully diagnose and treat this type of illness.  Unfortunately, there have been enough of these killings that psychiatric professionals should be able to develop a likely cohort that will include these potential killers.  However, the vast majority of individuals meeting that profile will not commit mass murder but it is better to temporarily restrict these individual’s civil liberties with respect to gun ownership, body armor, bomb making ingredients et cetera than to allow yet another senseless tragedy to occur. 

Our efforts should concentrate on identifying the individuals who fit the profile and to intervene before the sickest members of that group are able to act on their impulses. Increasing access to mental health care would help, and we need a mechanism to allow for individuals to be compelled to undergo a mental health evaluation when the warning signs are detected.  If an individual is diagnosed by mental health professionals as meeting the profile of someone who may potentially be dangerous, then weapons of mass murder need to be temporarily removed from their household.  Not only would this decrease the potential of these individuals to worsen and go on a murderous rampage, but it would also decrease the rate of suicide. Individuals meeting the criteria to have their access to weapons curtailed are also likely to be suffering from mental illnesses that are highly correlated with suicide. More than 50 percent of the death by suicide involve the use of a gun.

We need a society that can accept the temporary loss of some rights for some for the safety of themselves and the community while allowing individuals to get treatment and hopeful regain their full second amendment rights. It should be possible to establish temporary, public armories to store weapons removed from such households, so that other members of the household can still access their weapons for hunting, sport shooting and other lawful purposes and to allow for the return of weapons to individuals who have been judged to have recovered from their mental illness.  We need to concentrate on limiting access to weapons of mass murder only to those who are most likely to be of harm to society.