We're Still Flying Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Inexplicable school shootings and growing violence are big problems. The solutions are bigger and deeper than our politicians alone can fix. Maybe stop doing harm?

This is your reminder that May is National Mental Health Awareness Month. We do not need or want more reminders.

The latest reminder is another horrific and senseless snuffing out of young and innocent lives by a deranged person, this time at an elementary school in deep southwest Texas. It was followed by the predictable politicization and finger-pointing from the usual ultracrepidarians, as political battle lines hardened when we needed our betters to unify in grief with victims' families. Instead, we got what journalist Glenn Greenwald called the “naked exploitation of the dead bodies before anything is known about the people involved." Again, tone-deaf politicians fail us, led by the President of the United States. But he was far from alone.

And it wasn’t the only senseless act that may or may not be attributable to mental illness or the ability of deranged people to get their hands on guns. We’re still reeling from another teenage male's horrific murders at a grocery store in Buffalo days earlier. Reminders of so many senseless “mass killings” come to mind as we ask where the next one will be. There’s a reason I possess a conceal-carry permit and spend time at gun ranges. I’m overdue for another visit. I aspire to be “a good guy with a gun” who deters crime. Or is at least prepared to.

It is interesting to see people's different reactions. For example, the US Senator who races to the Senate floor before many facts are known to ask eight times, “what are we doing?”

"Spare me the bulls**t about mental illness,” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) ranted to his colleagues. “We don’t have any more mental illness than any other country in the world. You cannot explain this through a prism of mental illness because we don’t — we’re not an outlier on mental illness. We’re an outlier when it comes to access to firearms and the ability of criminals and very sick people to get their hands on firearms. That’s what makes America different,” he said. He then lectured Senators about doing their jobs. Not exactly a way to build bridges or motivate colleagues.

Let’s entertain the potential for legislation and new laws for a moment. Murphy’s not wrong about “criminals and very sick people” getting their hands on guns. Here’s what other Senators said about possible legislative remedies, as reported by Punchbowl News:

→ Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa):

“I’ve been trying to get the ‘Eagles Act’ passed since I introduced it after the Parkland shooting. And this is something that’s got bipartisan support. It’s pretty simple: to be able to help people get the help from the Secret Service program to recognize people that [may cause] harm to themselves or harm to other people. So get them help and if they have mental health troubles like we know the guy in Buffalo, we know the guy in Parkland had, they wouldn’t be able to buy a gun.”

The Eagles Act is named after the mascot of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

→ Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska):

“I haven’t seen any of the details, but there’s often a common theme and it is young men who have been somehow … very disturbed by social media and things that lead to this and I mean, that is a common, common element. I don’t know that’s the case now. But to me, that’s the focus on mental illness and those issues.”

→ Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine):

“One thing that many of us have supported is to have some sort of red flag law, along the lines of what Maine has … which requires due process and a medical professional to be involved, but I don’t know the details of the shooter here, of the killer. But that’s certainly something I think we’d look at.”

Two sets of bipartisan Senators continue to champion “red flag” laws and expanded background checks.

These senators are at least looking at possible legislative provisions that focus on solving problems. At least they aren’t screaming into cameras or disparaging their colleagues or millions of Americans in a partisan fashion. Agree with them or not, but that’s a model of a responsible legislator. More of this, please.

But there’s the fact that most recent mass shooters weren’t diagnosed with mental illness, according to the FBI. Most shooters obtained their guns legally. Something is wrong here. Like the Buffalo killer before him and countless others, the Uvalde killer left clues and warning signs everywhere that were ignored or overlooked. While Texas does not have a red flag law, New York does. We’ll learn more about how the Uvalde killer obtained his murder weapons in the days ahead. Uvalde is a small town. Everyone knew this kid had serious issues. Who sold him the guns?

That didn’t stop Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer from placing two long-standing gun control bills on the legislative calendar. Both would expand background checks and would have done nothing to prevent Ulvade’s tragedy. That tells you something else is motivating the Majority Leader. They’re placeholders. Look for divisive partisan show votes ahead in advance of November’s elections.

Or how about the ruminations of US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, with millions of Twitter followers disparaging pro-life Americans (it’s hard to miss the irony here). I’m still trying to find the law I supposedly support that “let children be shot in their schools.”

And don’t get me started on know-nothings in Hollywood. More about them later. They’ve been part of the problem for a very long time.

Meanwhile, at least 19 sets of parents and scores more families are grieving over the sudden loss of innocent life. Like the hundreds of other parents from dozens of other schools, grocery stores, nightclubs, and workplaces years and decades before them.

Governors Greg Abbott (R-TX) and Doug Ducey (R-AZ) proposed detailed school safety plans from the last school shootings before the pandemic. They are well-crafted. However, not all their proposals have been implemented, especially Ducey’s Significant Threat of Protection (STOP) “red flag” laws, which some civil libertarian gun owners don’t like. Predicting violence (cue Stephen Spielberg’s Minority Report) is not an exact science, and the potential for abuse is undeniable. But carefully written and narrowly targeted - and enforced - red flag laws can help save lives while protecting rights.

But thoughtful ideas emerge amidst the putrid, self-righteous, sanctimonious pontification and partisan disparagement from our self-appointed moral superiors. According to Darvio Morrow, writing for RedState.com, some ideas have already worked in places like Cleveland, Ohio.

Every time these incidents occur, the immediate reaction from some is to talk about gun control. I don’t know if gun control would’ve prevented this terrible tragedy from happening. I do know that even if you ban every gun in America tomorrow, people who want to use weapons to harm people will find a way to do so. It is against the law to commit murder. By definition, criminals don’t follow the law. So what else can be done?

Before his retirement in the 2000s, my father, a long-time school security officer, was one of the founders of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District Police Department. In 2007, Asa Coon shot two students and two teachers at Cleveland’s SuccessTech Academy before committing suicide. The school district and political leaders at the time responded by installing metal detectors in all schools and hiring more CMSD security and police officers. There has not been another major shooting incident like this in a CMSD school since.

Perhaps Congress should ask Israel how they’ve avoided a calamitous school shooting (and hostage-taking) for 48 years (May 15, 1974, hat tip to The Hugh Hewitt Show). Israeli schools are hardened and include adequately-armed police. Police were apparently on the scene at Uvalde’s school and engaged the shooter before he unleashed his evil. The scumbag was wearing armor. He crashed his vehicle into a barrier a short distance from the school. Was it enough? Thank God a Customs and Border Protection agent who was part of an elite unit happened to be nearby. None of that was enough to prevent what happened.

But is more legislation, more gun controls, and even more police solving this issue?

It doesn’t hurt to ask how we got here and whether the government is more the problem than the solution. President John F. Kennedy’s presidency was snuffed out too soon for many serious legislative accomplishments, but he deserves credit for the Community Mental Health Act of 1963. Possibly inspired by a book that would in 1975 become one of the most famous films in American history, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Dr. Stephen Moffic, writing for Psychiatric Times in 2014, noted this:

The book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, written by Ken Kesey, who had worked in a VA hospital, was published in 1962. In that year, I was a 16-year-old, fascinated with Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams and deciding to become a psychiatrist.

In 1963 - 1964, a play based on the book had a successful run on Broadway. Both the book and the play portrayed a repressive, overcrowded psychiatric hospital. Whether President Kennedy was familiar with either the book or play is unclear, but he pushed through the landmark Community Mental Health Act in 1963, paving the way for the deinstitutionalization of the state hospitals like the one portrayed by Kesey. . .

By the 21st century, more and more patients were ending up in jails or prisons. Earlier, those same patients might have been hospitalized. From 2008 to 2012, I worked part-time in a medium-security prison in Wisconsin. To my surprise, because of federal funds from lawsuits (ie, federal suits that required Wisconsin prisons to provide treatment for inmates equivalent to that offered in the community) I had more resources and time to help patients than I did in the public outpatient clinic in Milwaukee.

Read his entire post. He wrongly blames Ronald Reagan for block-granting mental health programs to states that used the money for other things. But it is still instructive. Another well-intended government program that didn’t quite work out as envisioned. Thanks, Hollywood, for the inspiration. It is possible now that this is old history and not relevant to Uvalde. We’ll see.

PJ Media’s Stephen Kruiser: “These shootings are always gut-wrenching for me. I have a child. I worry. However, I don’t think that disarming all of the legal gun owners in this country will stop the crazies. Comparisons to boutique countries in Europe are apples and oranges and utter crap.

“One thing I know for certain is that the problems we are seeing go well beyond the mere availability of weapons. I’ve got a lot of thoughts about that. Now is not the time for them but I will conclude with this: what ails America isn’t going to be fixed with some hyper-partisan bandaid applied by a politician (emphasis added).

“Any politician.”

On the same day as the Uvalde shooting, forty or so students from Alexandria City High School (“Remember the Titans”) brawled at a shopping center a few blocks from my home in Northern Virginia. One student, a graduating senior, is dead. After-school and gang-related West Side Story fights and skirmishes are legendary. This one happened at 12:30 p.m. They seem more frequent and violent now. That no guns were involved doesn’t make it any less senseless or tragic. How many other events like this happened elsewhere on May 24th, or any day, for that matter?

There’s this perspective from Alex Berenson, author, science writer, and former New York Times reporter, on his Substack site:

I know, I know we could ban every assault rifle in the United States and we wouldn’t touch the homicide rate. But we have to acknowledge that the repeated - and repeated, and repeated, and repeated - mass murder of innocents is a sign of deep sickness.

We have turned far, far too many teenagers and young adults into lonely overmedicated sleepless social media addicts. Yes, illegal drug use is down, but it hardly matters given how many young people are legally prescribed Adderall and Ritalin and Vyvanse.

All those are fancy names for speed or its chemical cousins, pure and simple. Psychiatrists and other physicians hand out so many prescriptions for these uppers - whose production is limited by the Drug Enforcement Administration - that pharmacies in big cities regularly run out of them and have to wait for new allotments.

There is growing evidence that pandemic lockdowns and heavy cannabis use have also contributed to our growing national health issues, mental and otherwise. “Cannabis causes psychosis, and psychosis causes violence,” Berenson notes, the author of “Tell Your Chidren: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence.” No, we’ll never eliminate or prevent all senseless events like this. Evil will always be with us. But we can do smart things and minimize or prevent many of them. Senseless tragedies like this are going to happen. But some things are seriously wrong here, and politics-as-usual isn’t going to fix it.