President Obama saved a lot of lives. Mental health being added to background checks is astounding.

[HereSince1628]

13. The vast majority of the last -6-? Wow that sounds significant!

Last edited Sat Jan 9, 2016, 12:51 PM - Edit history (1)

It's mind bogglingly silly to make headlines around majorities of six events.

It's beyond mind-boggling when you go to http://www.shootingtracker.com/Main_Page pick 2015 and then start your analysis of their data.

It turns out that for 2015 the mental health status of a majority of shooters -wasn't even known-. There's some question if even half of the names of shooters are known after months of investigations in to the shootings.

I'm all for stopping gun murders, not just mass-shooting. I'm not opposed to efforts that are likely to be effective. But here is what Obama did. He's ordered SS to hand over names of people who receive disability payments for reasons of mental health, but who have guardians/custodians/power of attorneys to handle their finances.

There are an estimated 75K of such people nation-wide. There is -no- published evidence that this class of people represent an enhanced risk of being a gun murderer compared to the rest of the US population.

It's simply based on the assumption that a person not competent to handle their finances is not competent enough to purchase a new firearm. Now I am not going to argue that isn't at least partially true in a 'that just makes street sense sort of way. But as so often turns out, street sense is usually not evidence based.

But I think it's highly questionable as a effective step in reducing gun murders. Who Obama is targeting isn't the James Holmes's of the world who actually committed the Aurora theater shooting. Holmes wasn't on disability, and he was handling his own finances. Holmes hadn't even been adjudicated to be incompetent or dangerous.

The names of SSDI recipients whose names will be added to the criminal database are going to be people with early onset Alzheimer's, people who have had strokes, suffered brain injuries in accidents and war that have led to a loss of cognitive function, and people with various serious cognitive dysfunction that makes it impossible to be gainfully employed, maybe someone with severe autism... it's a pool of about 75000 people, and no numerical estimate exists that describes the likelihood of their purchasing a gun and committing a mass murder.

That's a significant problem for even attempting a guess at effectiveness of this measure. In looking back over news accounts and follow-ups of the mass-shootings of 2015 there is not one event that has been linked to an SSDI recipient who had surrendered control of finances to a custodian/guardian/or power of attorney. A signal for an annual potential effective reduction in mass-shootings through this approach isn't even detectable.

If nothing more consequential than mentally incompetent people being banned from gun purchases they are probably not very interested in making was all that was at stake we might turn to street smarts again and say no harm, no penalty.

But that's not the case. Discrimination against persons with mental disorders runs very deep in the US. It's very likely that what Obama did was apply street smarts based mostly on prejudicial stereotypes generally supportive to the seemingly unquestionable conclusion that ... mentally ill people shouldn't have guns.

And in our society that's so easy and acceptable, because it taps into prevailing stigma about persons with mental disorders in the US. Here the mentally ill are mischaracterized to their dangerousness and incompetence, broadly stereotyped, and made economically and politically powerless. We don't merely want them to be prevented from buying guns, we don't want them to be our surgeons, nurses, police, airline pilots, bus drivers, teachers of our children, co-workers or neighbors.

What Obama's exec action has done is to further reinforce the stigma, using his position to have the US Government endorse the street smarts that mentally ill are stereotypically dangerous and incompetent. I suspect Obama's actions aren't going to do anything to reduce the 16x greater likelihood of getting shot by a cop if that cop suspects a person is mentally ill and a 4 times greater chance of being tazed if a cop suspects a person of being mentally disordered I suspect that Obama's actions aren't going to do anything to reduce the unemployment rate among persons with diagnosed mental disorders that nationally ran at just over 80 percent in 2012.

What I am pretty sure Obama's exec action has done has been to endorse unwarranted prejudice against the mental ill. I suspect many people who share Obama's street smarts are going to be saying to themselves 'YES!!! We finally get to do something about the crazy monsters among us besides the usual shunning from employment, promotions, housing, and social engagement!!