The Arizona Shooting

[herr]

http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_r...ing&keywords=?

January 20, 2011, 9:00 pm Myth of the Hero Gunslinger


By TIMOTHY EGAN

Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.

Tags:

Gun Control, Tucson shooting


PHOENIX — To many gun owners, the question of whether to arm even more people in a country that already has upwards of 300 million guns is as calcified as a Sonoran Desert petroglyph. It’s written in stone, among the fiercest of firearms advocates, that more guns equals fewer deaths.
But before the Tucson tragedy fades into tired talking points, it’s worth dissecting the crime scene once more to see how this idea fared in actual battle.
First, one bit of throat-clearing: I’m a third-generation Westerner, and grew up around guns, hunters of all possible fauna, and Second Amendment enthusiasts who wore camouflage nine months out of the year. Generally, I don’t have a problem with any of that.
Back to Tucson. On the day of the shooting, a young man named Joseph Zamudio was leaving a drugstore when he saw the chaos at the Safeway parking lot. Zamudio was armed, carrying his 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. Heroically, he rushed to the scene, fingering his weapon, ready to fire.

Suppose, in the few seconds of confusion during the shootings, an armed bystander had fired at the wrong man.

Now, in the view of the more-guns proponents, Zamudio might have been able to prevent any carnage, or maybe even gotten off a shot before someone was killed.
“When everyone is carrying a firearm, nobody is going to be a victim,” said Arizona state representative Jack Harper, after a gunman had claimed 19 victims.
“I wish there had been one more gun in Tucson,” said an Arizona Congressman, Rep. Trent Franks, implying like Harper that if only someone had been armed at the scene, Jared Lee Loughner would not have been able to unload his rapid-fire Glock on innocent people.
In fact, several people were armed. So, what actually happened? As Zamudio said in numerous interviews, he never got a shot off at the gunman, but he nearly harmed the wrong person — one of those trying to control Loughner.
He saw people wrestling, including one man with the gun. “I kind of assumed he was the shooter,” said Zamudio in an interview with MSNBC. Then, “everyone said, ‘no, no — it’s this guy,’” said Zamudio.
To his credit, he ultimately helped subdue Loughner. But suppose, in those few seconds of confusion, he had fired at the wrong man and killed a hero? “I was very lucky,” Zamudio said.
It defies logic, as this case shows once again, that an average citizen with a gun is going to disarm a crazed killer. For one thing, these kinds of shootings happen far too suddenly for even the quickest marksman to get a draw. For another, your typical gun hobbyist lacks training in how to react in a violent scrum.
I don’t think these are reasons to disarm the citizenry. That’s never going to happen, nor should it. But the Tucson shootings should discredit the canard that we need more guns at school, in the workplace, even in Congress. Yes, Congress. The Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert has proposed a bill to allow fellow members to carry firearms into the Capitol Building.
Gohmert has enough trouble carrying a coherent thought onto the House floor. God forbid he would try to bring a Glock to work. By his reasoning, the Middle East would be better off if every nation in the region had nuclear weapons.
At least two recent studies show that more guns equals more carnage to innocents. One survey by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine found that guns did not protect those who had them from being shot in an assault — just the opposite. Epidemiologists at Penn looked at hundreds of muggings and assaults. What they found was that those with guns were four times more likely to be shot when confronted by an armed assailant than those without guns. The unarmed person, in other words, is safer.
Other studies have found that states with the highest rates of gun ownership have much greater gun death rates than those where only a small percentage of the population is armed. So, Hawaii, where only 9.7 percent of residents own guns, has the lowest gun death rate in the country, while Louisiana, where 45 percent of the public is armed, has the highest.
Arizona, where people can carry guns into bars and almost anyone can get a concealed weapons permit, is one of the top 10 states for gun ownership and death rates by firearms. And in the wake of the shootings, some lawmakers want to flood public areas with even more lethal weapons.
Tuesday of this week was the first day of classes at Arizona State University, and William Jenkins, who teaches photography at the school, did not bring his weapon to campus. For the moment, it’s still illegal for professors to pack heat while they talk Dante and quantum physics.
But that may soon change. Arizona legislators have been pushing a plan to allow college faculty and students to carry concealed weapons at school.
“That’s insane,” Jenkins told me. “On Mondays I give a lecture to 120 people. I can’t imagine students coming into class with firearms. If something happened, it would be mayhem.”
He’s right. Jenkins is a lifelong gun owner and he carries a concealed weapon, by permit. He also carries a modicum of common sense. The two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

• Copyright 2011 The New York Times Company

http://wt.o.nytimes.com/dcsym57yw100...No&WT.tv=1.0.7

[Zat0pek]

Originally Posted by MoMoNoMo

Zat, that is a fascinating, if deeply disturbing, story. It's hard to imagine no parent had reported these folks to authorities sooner. Maybe I missed it, but what WAS the woman diagnosed with?
As to the whole political speech thing, I know you treat it with contempt, and clearly there was some early wrongful jumping to conclusions (and I'll admit to having leapt a bit too far myself) but I still don't see how you can completely dismiss the very possibility of an angry environment being A -- repeat A -- factor in tipping someone over the edge, unless you can somehow prove that a paranoid schizophrenic is utterly and completely unaffected by his/her environment. So far you've merely blown this point off.

Multiple personality disorder was the biggie; several other secondary that I don't recall, but they were psychotic conditions. Here's the thing: The course that case took was actually the norm, as we see in Arizona. People come out of the woodwork afterward talking about his odd behavior, but there was no avenue to report it. That's what I can't get through people's heads: Arizona was the norm, not the exception to the norm, in terms of the inability to identify and treat. Lots of people in this kids life recognized serious problems, just like lots of people in the life of the woman I represented saw lots of problems.

And they were completely unable to do anything about it. That's the whole point.

Not to be disrespectful, but I keeping "blowing off" the discussion about political speech because (1) I've already addressed it and (2) there simply isn't anything to discuss. There is no connection. I can't discuss something that doesn't exist. As I said repeatedly, everything in the world is and can be a trigger. I just can't be any more clear about that. There is nothing to discuss because if you want to discuss ANY trigger, you might well discuss the whole world. We might as well discuss black cats, the Pope, hot air ballons or shampoo commercials. They all have the same bearing.

A psychotic brain is a disordered and irrational brain. To keep trying to discuss how these hundreds of thousands of differently disordered brains will or will not interpret or perceive a certain thing is beyond an exercise in futility. Even if we instantly and magically sanitized the airwaves and newspapers of anything even remotely hostile it wouldn't change a thing because these hundreds of thousands of disordered brains are still out there, twisting and bending the world around them in ways that we can neither understand nor anticipate. Order must first be brought to those brains.

One last time, this time with feeling: Focusing on the triggers does nothing but distract from the real problem, REGARDLESS of what trigger we're talking about. We can't eliminate or even reduce "triggers" but we can do something about how we identify and treat the mentally ill. "Triggers" are NOT the problem; the problem is how we identify and treat people with mental illness.

That's my whole point.

I have an idea on how I'd like to change it, but like any thing, there are drawbacks.

[Zat0pek]

Originally Posted by MoMoNoMo

After a little research, here's what I found in the "Clinical Handbook of Schizophrenia" on the question of whether environment plays a role in pushing such people to violence.

"The link between anger and violence is not a simple one. Whereas anger can be an activator of aggression, it is neither necessary nor sufficient to induce violence. ... This is very relevant for people with psychosis, whose experience and response to anger-provoking events may be partly influenced by not only their delusional thinking but also their day-to-day life within adverse, controlling, disrespectful and unempathic environments."

The handbook lists four factors to study in linking psychotics and violence: 1) the patient's underlying illness; 2) substance use; 3) anger; and 4) environmental factors.
***
It would be hard to argue that political speech these days -- when we are bombarded by largely negative and often hate-filled messages from television, radio and the Internet -- is not a part of the environment.

This is the danger of reading something like that. The "environment" referred to isn't society; it's the immediate environment (home, family, etc).

In all the people I committed at Menninger's, in all the people I committed at the state hospital, in all the people I've dealt with in that arena in the last 21 years, not once has political speech even been discussed. It is a NON-ISSUE that is a massive distraction from the real problem.

But here's the real irony: I've seen a number of situations where political speech DID incite violence, but it was in people without psychiatric issues who were simply zealots.

[herr]

Interesting story about a schizophrenic. They are not all violent; but they are wacko!

[MoMoNoMo]

Originally Posted by KenA55

Not really a question of interpretation, but rather one of direction. The constitution exists to limit Federal government, and protect individual liberty from government intrusion. That's the heart and soul of the great experiment. Policy aimed at expanding the reach of Federal government into new areas is diametrically opposed to the intent of the constitution. There is no trace of libel in the observation that this administration is intent on pushing the Federal envelope outwards, as was the last, and the one previous to that. And so on... it isn't some sort of new and recent thing.

Forget interpretation, the principle at stake is whether centralized govt expansion can be limited by such a founding credo, the answer does seem to be probably not, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try (and try again as the present structures collapse into bankruptcy under their own weight).

I know I said we should stick to the topic at hand, but what the heck. I came across this excellent, thought-provoking commentary on the inviolability of documents like the Constitution, and wanted to share it:

"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

The date was 1816. The author, Thomas Jefferson.

[KenA55]

And not being an advocate of frequent and whimsical change, he and his peers wrote the proper and rigorous process for change into the document. Change by proper procedure is constitutional, change by way of ignoring intent and whimsical reinterpretation conducted on the fly by elite, non-elected bodies is criminal in nature.

Unfortunately, no one is impeaching the criminals who reinterpret any way they like, so the foxes are essentially guarding the constitutional hen-house. Can anyone in their right mind claim progress in the enlightenment arena since the civil war times? All we are doing today is marching back down the road to unlimited, all-reaching, centralized government structures. The enlightenment that was the direct result of constitutionally imposed de-centralization of power has grown very dim.

[MoMoNoMo]

(Washington Post)
TUCSON -- In the weeks and days before the shooting rampage in Tucson, suspect Jared Lee Loughner surfed the Internet on his computer in what investigators believe was an effort to prepare for his alleged assassination attempt, law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation said.
Loughner pulled up several Web sites about lethal injections and solitary confinement in prison, said the sources, who asked to be anonymous because the investigation is ongoing. He also viewed Internet sites about political assassins, according to an analysis of Loughner's computer that was completed by investigators last week, the sources said.

[Zat0pek]

Originally Posted by MoMoNoMo

(Washington Post)
TUCSON -- In the weeks and days before the shooting rampage in Tucson, suspect Jared Lee Loughner surfed the Internet on his computer in what investigators believe was an effort to prepare for his alleged assassination attempt, law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation said.
Loughner pulled up several Web sites about lethal injections and solitary confinement in prison, said the sources, who asked to be anonymous because the investigation is ongoing. He also viewed Internet sites about political assassins, according to an analysis of Loughner's computer that was completed by investigators last week, the sources said.

Not quite sure, but I think your point in adding the emphasis on the word "political" is that you somehow believe that supports the utterly false contention that things said in a campaign had something to do with Loughner's actions. Again, this is false. Loughner was most likely doing this for the same reasons that my roommate suddenly felt compelled to head to the governor's mansion.

Let me try to explain, and I'll illustrate it afterward by describing a fascinating discussion I had with my roommate when he returned back after his hospitalization.

As I said, in my experience and based on what I have been told repeatedly by psychiatrists doing commitment hearings and represent mental health service providers, the delusions very often have either religious or political components to them. This is where a lot of the delusions of grandeur come from. The delusions basically become self-reinforcing. From what we know so far, Loughner is a textbook example. His life sucked. He couldn't get a job, got kicked out of school and couldn't get a date. All of those are due to his mental illness.

But what starts to happen is that there are pockets of clarity (when he realizes his life sucks) in the storm of the delusions. Those pockets of clarity are where the resentment starts to build and the delusions begin to look for a target that is "at fault" for his life sucking. The dissonance that is created between the delusions and reality leads him to the logical conclusion that someone or something is to blame for his persecution, and that if he can just eliminate that someone or something, everything will be fine.

For example, my roommate thought he was the Christ child. When you have such delusions, but also see in the pockets of clarity that your life sucks, what can emerge in the storm that is a psychotic's mind is that he must be being persecuted because he is this great figure, but but has a horrible life. For people with horrible lives, it becomes easy to blame authority figures. It could be any authority figure: Parents, cops, elected officials, teachers, judges, anybody. Because elected officials, the government and political figures represent power, the conclusion is often that eliminating them will solve the problem.

The next step for someone like Loughner is to realize that political assassins also get great notoriety (John Wilkes Booth, Sirhan Sirhan, John Hinkley, etc.), something that, due to the delusions, he believes he is owed. Thus, the assassination becomes the "cure": His persecutor(s) are eliminated and he gets the respect and honor he is "due." Most people don't know that the commonly used standard for the insanity defense (that the individual was incapable of discerning right from wrong) actually came from political assassination in England. The M'Naghten Rule, as it came to be known, is named after the assassin. Sometimes political assassinations are for political reasons, and sometimes they are just the unfortunate target of a psychotic mind trying to quell the storm.

Hinkley's attempted assassination of Reagan is an excellent example of this. It would impress the love of his life, Jody Foster, and she would be his if he could just take out the President. No doubt it made perfect sense to him.

Realize that I am way oversimplifying this and by no means does it play out this way for all psychotics. As one very prominent psychiatrist once told me:

"A psychotics mind is like a raging storm at nighttime. Even through the driving rain and wind, you can still see flashes of reality sometimes when there's lightening. There are occasional pockets of calm. Just like it can hail like crazy in one place, then not at all two blocks over, or a tornado can flatten one house and leave one right next door untouched, you never know for sure what areas of the brain are going to be hardest hit by the storm. Despite the similar characteristics of all storms - rain, lightening, thunder, wind, hail, even tornadoes - each one is different and impacts different places. And last but by no means least, the sights and sounds of the storm can scare the hell out of you."

Which brings me, finally, to what I learned from my roommate.

After he returned from the hospital, he really opened up about his condition. He had not disclosed it to me before, and now I had a strong sense that there had been a lot of shame on his part and that he kept his condition well hidden (all he had told me previously was that he had a "vitamin deficiency"). Now that I knew the real story, he seemed relieved and grateful to have someone to talk to about it. His meds were straightened out, he was completely lucid now and one night, he really opened up and poured everything out.

He described his delusions. His were auditory, not visual. Yes, he literally heard voices. He reminded me that when we were looking at apartments he was very concerned that there was adequate soundproofing in the walls so you couldn't hear your neighbors. I just figured it was because he didn't like noise when he studied.

I was wrong.

It was because he couldn't tell the difference between the real unseen voices of the neighbors from the auditory delusions. The voices were reality to him. And when he heard voices but couldn't see the speaker, he couldn't tell if the voice was real or an auditory delusion. He told me it is for that reason why some psychiatric hospitals are in peaceful, tranquil countryside settings. It's so the patients don't hear things when they can't see the source.

He said the voices he heard said things that played hard on his emotions and were full of lies. Some built him up, others tore him down. Often they would claim that he was "chosen" for something . Sometimes the voices were sporadic and there would be long periods between the times he heard them, but as things got worse, they increased in frequency to the point that they were practically all he could here. The voices would eventually become so prevalent that they are controlling.

After that, he would use me as a reality check. If the people upstairs had a party, when we got up the next morning he'd ask, "Did you hear a party last night?" I'd confirm for him that, yes, those sounds were real and there was nothing to worry about.

The reason that talking about something in the environment be a "trigger" of some kind is irrelevant beyond description is because of the storm. The only way to eliminate the triggers is to eliminate the world. All of the nonsense blaming this or that politician or commentator for Loughner's actions (some the "blame" being spewed within an hour of the shooting, before anybody knew anything) is nothing more than political talking points. That fact doesn't change if you switch the parties of those being shot.

Normally, such grossly baseless fabrications asserted for blatant political haymaking wouldn't raise anything more than a chuckle or an eye roll from me. But in this particular instance, it effects a subject that is already mired in myth and misunderstanding and involves a legal and medical system that is in dire need of a complete overhaul without which a lot of people will continue to, at worst, be killed or injured or, at best, live desperate lives. Not a situation in which I will tolerate the normal political theater of any party.

[MoMoNoMo]

Zat, thanks for that. It's extremely interesting -- and I am not being snide or sarcastic, it really is interesting. I bow, as to the medico/legal aspects, to your knowledge and experience, which is considerable.
But as to the political side, I just feel you may be pushing back a bit too hard. Yes, I was one of those who almost immediately thought I saw this as a politically motivated attack, but consider the context: A politician whose office had been attacked at a time of very high, Tea Party-fueled, anti-Obama and anti-health care rhetoric -- and who said she felt "targeted" by some of the language being used -- is shot in the course of carrying out her official duties in a state where anti-Obama and anti-Democrat rhetoric has been particularly harsh. It just wasn't that great a leap to suppose, in the first blush of the moment, that those dots could logically be connected.

[jaygray]

What is odd to me is that, separate from the shooting, the fact that Giffords' office had been vandalized isn't being discussed at all. That seems much more obviously a political act which is unacceptable.

To me "conservative" means to doubt. You can talk about a wide range of implications of this but "I don't know" is often the only answer. My younger brother has schizophrenia. I don't know what is going on in his mind. I can hold a conversation with him maybe 5 or 10 minutes max. To state categorically that there was or was not any connection between political rhetoric and Loughner is un-conservative. Whether or not there was a connection we'll never know, and it isn't the biggest issue, anyway.

If we can make airports safe with metal and other detectors, why not other public areas? Should not bus & train depots and schools and sporting arenas? If we accept the individual right to firearms, and that that right is not limitless, what prevents us from also accepting gun-free zones for obvious situations besides airports?

If we cannot predict the onset or trajectory of mental illness, and we cannot limit freedoms based on hearsay, nor can we impose something like Soma from Brave New World, what can we collectively do to reduce the likelihood of these spasms of violence, whether it's by guns or something else? I doubt we can. I mean, enough of these incidents have occurred now that an econometric (a la Freakonomics) study can reveal broad similarities and trends. And so it ends up being a matter of odds. But to me there are some levers. One is to overhaul our illegal drug policy (I've talked about this before). Second, my brother is lucky. He's in a group home, and his being there is contingent on some basic behaviors, like taking his meds. It hasn't always been so. He has been homeless for most of his adult life. So from my point of view this model is essential. Third, I have no problem with schools notifying the BATF of erratic or disturbing behavior, so that there's an equivalent of a TSA watchlist of folks for whom all kinds of licensing should proceed more carefully.

Parenthetically, I wish Obama in his Tucson speech (which was wonderful) had included "exes" in his list of people he encouraged us to say we love. So many of us are divorced now that the children of divorced parents deserve to hear their parents say they love each other, in spite of everything. I also wish he had encouraged saying love to people (esp. family) you're angry with. Loughner seems to have had an angry background.