No, but even the New York Times has noticed that “spree killers” as they called them in an article a few years ago–while trying to blame it all on gun availability–noticed that these are overwhelmingly people with severe mental illness.

I’ve been making list while working on my new book (a history of deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill), and the list is very long. Many of them you know about, because they used guns, and were therefore newsworthy. Many others used knives or swords, had somewhat smaller body counts, and didn’t advance the gun control agenda–so they received very little attention. See here for some background a partial list of these tragedies.

If you do not know anyone who suffers from schizophrenia, you may not realize how severe a problem this is. The movie A Beautiful Mind captures well what paranoid schizophrenia does to a person. It almost always strikes in the late teens through the mid-20s–with a few examples outside that age range. About 30% spontaneously recover; the rest spend the rest of their lives ill. At best, medications control the symptoms. In 1991, about 5% of all U.S. murders were committed by psychotics who had stopped taking their medications–meaning perhaps .5% or less of the population.

Until the 1960s, psychotics were generally hospitalized as soon as it became apparent that they were seriously ill, and might be a danger to others. One study in the 1930s suggests that about half of all psychotics were hospitalized. Today, it is about 5%.

Most severely mentally ill people are not a danger to others. Mostly, they are a danger to themselves. The rate of freezing to death more than doubled from 1974 to 1984; detailed studies of such deaths in D.C. suggest that it was because of the demolition of the public mental health system, and near abolition of involuntary commitment. We now have large numbers of mentally ill people wandering the streets, dying of TB, malnutrition, violence, and exposure. A small number of them have delusions so overpowering that they strike out at enemies that the rest of us can’t see. When they get access to the gun, the results are tragedies that destroy our gun rights.

Patrick Purdy is who caused California to adopt its 1989 assault weapons ban, and started the epidemic of bans in other states. He was also severely mentally ill–telling a judge that he was shooting at “Communist trees” when he was arrested.

It is not the drugs that cause these tragedies; it is usually that people who need them stop taking them, and they spiral out of control. I’ve seen it close at hand.

Is there a central database linking similarities in all these types of cases where one can watch the trends develop? One that we can access, not just the .gov types.

it was obvious from the pictures that they were released by the police

Ironically, a bill to do just that was introduces yesterday. The strategy behind that is lost on me, as an identical (I think) bill passed in the Senate last spring, and is still active now. Not sure why they don’t just get behind pushing that one in the House now, rather than introducing a new one.

Weer’d Beard, to answer your question, no–we aren’t currently limited to reduced capacity magazines, but we’re hanging on to our full capacity ones by the skin of our teeth.

I have an older brother who is at least not dangerous or scary when he is taking his medicine. When he was younger, if he stopped taking his medication, he would become increasingly strange and then violent.

Apparantly he reloaded the shotgun a couple of times too.

Also, they had a guy (former NY Detective, I think his name was Michael Gayner) talking about how he used an automatic glock handgun.

Just some random piece of the puzzle? Somehow I doubt it, especially when you take into account that there are all kinds of drugs filtering thought people back into the water. You run the risk of some strange interactions.

No mag ban yet although it’s been thrown against the wall, previously as an addendum to a child exploitation shell bill.

Does IL have any law on high-cap mags? I know all of Cho’s Ebay Glock mags were just 10-rounders