“Always after a mass shooting, the question comes up: How could we have prevented this? In most cases, my response has to be there isn’t anything we could have done. In this case, this law might have prevented this from happening, and it will absolutely be useful for the future. This addresses the question of what do we do about the people who have not faced some diagnosis and who might just fall through the cracks.” – Dr. Garen J. Wintemute in ‘After Attack Near Campus, California Weighs Gun Bill’ [at nytimes.com]
Is there any way a concerned citizen can apply for a restraining order against his medical license?
He looks a bit crazy in that picture and I’m concerned about his access to (and prescription of) addictive narcotics.
I think he’s excessively proud of his new dentures.
That hemorrhoid must really hurt…
At some point they will produce a prescription medication for hoplophilia, which they can then force feed to all the freshly giagnosed “gun nuts,” which will be a proper medical term.
I wonder why it is that someone with enough brains to practice 30 years and be working in an ER can lack the cranial capacity to look at the real causative factors. Instead of pinning the blame on political corruption or citizen disenfranchisement, too many people always head for the low hanging fruit in trying to explain this dilemma. If politicians ever get out of their over-stuffed taxpayer paid for armchairs, the answer is right in front of them; citizens are becoming disenfranchised with the very system they grew to understand would make this all work. What is causing it? Greed, avarice, corruption, secularism, immorality.
In this case, the mass shootings are the “miners’ canaries” of our failing experiment. Everyone knows about the political mafia gangs with the likes of the Bush and Clinton families and the big dons as Rockefeller and Kissinger; they know about that ravenous marauding elephant in the room, but everyone conveniently avoids discussion about it for fear of themselves getting trampled. Meanwhile, it’s SSDD and lame-tard responses like from the MD here provide absolutely ZERO help in getting any closer to a real solution.
The solution is, first off, is to get out the crayons for these challenged members of society and explain to them what an elephant looks like. I mean, some of these people are really that stupid.
While the liberals are busy still thinking that they only reason they can’t all get together around a campfire and sing Kumbaya is because there are dangerous people with guns in the woods, the globalists have been devising their plans for over a century. When enough people decide to say NO, then something will happen. Until then, we will continue to see individuals break out of normal behavior and express the frustrations of millions of others by taking it out against their fellow citizens on the street.
The globalists expect these frustrated individuals to go for the low hanging fruit amongst their own while they stay quietly in the background manipulating the populist chattel (or should I say cattle?) over cocktails. But back to the topic at hand ……. Dr. Wintemute, here, represents the majority of brain dead, low-hanging fruit pickers in our country, who will always manage to avoid the hard choices that our forefathers at least had the cojones to address.
“I wonder why it is that someone with enough brains to practice 30 years and be working in an ER can lack the cranial capacity to look at the real causative factors.”
My friend, you need to stop watching so many medical TV shows….
If instead of an MD working in an ER, would you ask the same question of a master machinist working in a high-tech industry like, say, building new chip fabs?
While I have a lot of respect for doctors, unless they took the MD/Ph.D. dual track they have NOT been trained as researchers and their skills are honed for treatment of existing problems, NOT for addressing root causes. Doctors are, however, trained to be decisive, to trust in their own decisions, and to speak authoritatively.
While many MDs are in fact quite bright, the above, combined with institutional training to believe in one’s own conclusions, often leads them to think they can act as experts in any area. (Just ask any financial planner, for instance, how good of an investor the average doctor is, compared to how good he thinks he is.)
Don’t get me wrong, I have much respect for doctors and their ability AS HEALERS, but I wouldn’t want them making public policy any more than I’d want them designing a bridge.
the same way that there are still religious doctors and scientists.
Doctors (non-surgeons) are trained to treat symptoms by picking a drug from the recommended list. Anything else goes to see a specialist. The specialist will proceed to do the same thing, or as a surgeon, cut something out as they were trained to do. Only a Forensic Medical Examiner is a trained MD who actually looks for a root cause.
“It is unclear, however, if the measures contained in the bills could have prevented his actions if they had been law.”
So who do you believe? The doctor who says the laws would work, or the usually anti-gun New York Times, who says it’s unclear?
Gosh, Matt. That’s like being asked if you would rather be kicked in the sack or poked in the eye with a pointy stick. Can’t we avoid them both?
Maybe I’m missing something, Let’s suppose new measures were in effect that would prevent someone from legally purchasing a firearm at a gun store.
What would prevent them from then purchasing a gun on the street, illegally, the same way countless other criminals and gang members do?
Why, the law, of course…
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Christ! I should have known. Dumb ass me!
behind a paywall, and I refuse to pay to see what “law” he means.
The proposed CA gun protection order statute, which RF discussed on NPR yesterday.
(It wasn’t paywalled for me. Apparently I haven’t exhausted my 10 free articles per month or whatever.)
In this case, this law might have prevented this from happening,
You mean all those shit awful laws in CA and other things he went through to legally buy a firearm? Good thing your liberal imaginary safety net works, in your mind.
Furthermore, is it just me or is this guy incredibly blazed in that picture? Looks high as a kite
They used to blame rock music and musicians for suicides to. Please lets just end the BS some people are just plain crazy and stupid. You can’t fix either one. Morality and respect for life can’t be legislated.
10,000th time is a charm, eh, Doc? Geez, I hope this guy doesn’t practice medicine with the same plodding, dreaming, take-it-up another useless notch approach as he does criminal justice. Because, you know, in crime control as in medicine, a lot of times all it takes to cure a problem is just the right shot.
How about a different slant on this which has to do with policing rather than mental health assessments in two questions that need to be asked and answered of the local police:
1) If Roger’s videos were what upset the family enough to have them call the authorities, why did the police not view the videos ahead of time so that they knew what they were dealing with?
2) If Roger’s family said they were concerned he might hurt himself or others, why did the police apparently NOT run his name through the California gun owners registry to determine if he owned firearms?
We are told that gun registration schemes are needed to “keep guns out of the wrong hands” but that is an ineffectual prophylactic effort only. The databases should also be queried in any interaction with a citizen who is consider a safety risk.
My guess is that the police dismissed the parents’ concerns as some overreaction to an internal family squabble or the like. It would seem to me that viewing the videos and knowing he was a legal gun owner might have led to an “interview” that was more extensive than a seemingly casual conversation at the door of Roger’s apartment.
Second-guessing the police is always difficult but there seems to have been several missed opportunities in this case.
The YouTube videos and gun ownership records may have been enough to grant a search warrant as well. This would have led to discovery of the manifesto and most likely stopped the threat.
It’s foolish to think you can stop someone intent on murder by passing laws against the tools they choose to employ. As point out by others, in this case the knife was the more deadly tool, not everyone shot died. Any how would the cops know what guns the person owned, how could they be sure they collected them all?
This legislation will be abused on a grand scale to disarm the population, I can easily imaging:
– Cops using it to disarm gun rights activists.
– A domestic abuser could use this law to have the cops disarm a potential victim.
– Angry anti-gun neighbors using it to disarm the neighborhood “gun nut”
– A new and fun way to SWAT someone
What it won’t do is stop someone intent on killing from killing. Even if the law worked to disarm the criminal, they could get an illegal gun on the street, craft an 80% lower, use a knife, drive a vehicle over people, etc.
In short… stop trying to regulate the tools, and start addressing the problems with the person.
Why is this being described as a “mass shooting”? What tolls that phrase?
Been asking that for days myself. If it was a mass shooting, then it was also a mass stabbing. Those poor roommates– Only the “shooting victims” are mourned, if you read the headlines–hell, the roomies are apparently not even considered “victims” since the only “victims” mentioned in the press were “killed in a mass shooting” or were “victims of a gunman” or some such.
Spot on. Well said.
Maybe–just maybe, mind you–because he shot 13 people.
If all of California’s “common sense” gun restrictions aren’t working then maybe it’s time to start looking at the person, rather than the tool used.
In any event the good doctor forgets that the perpetrator in the Santa Barbara slayings was receiving treatment for his mental health, and was evaluated by mental health professionals shortly before the attacks and deemed not a threat. How would that have changed under this proposed law?
I’m reading through the NYT comments, and find it hard to not get really pissed off with all of the users demanding new laws that California already has.
e.g: If the Police had instant access to a database of gun owners/recent purchases, when they first went to see Elliot Rogers, (at the request of his parents), they would have realized that this mentally unbalanced individual was stockpiling handguns. The lives of 6 students might have been saved.
You mean, like the California DROS?
Also, did you know that the UK and Australia have “reasonable” gun laws?
I went through his last year in Mass. All these gun control dopes testified we needed laws like gun registration, assault weapons bans, safe storage laws, etc that WERE ALREADY IN PLACE! It just goes to show they are useful idiots, who can’t even be bothered to research what they are so upset about.
This gun violence restraining order is a great tool……for a burglar. He/She fills out the form, cases that house to make sure the cops take all the guns, and then burgles a documented disarmed house. Profit!
Gun control advocates think like this:
1960’s “This law will create a non-violent society.”
1970’s “Ok, this new law will absolutely create a non-violent society.”
1980’s “Ok, this newer better law will actually create a non-violent society.”
1990’s “Ok, this even newer and more better law will definitely create a non-violent society.”
2000’s “Alright now, if we add these new laws to the pile of stuff we already passed, this will finally create a non-violent society.”
2010’s ” If we just add this new law to the 385 previous failures, err, I mean previous laws passed, then we will finally achieve a totally non-violent society…… with rainbows……. and unicorns…… and friendly dragons…….. Trust me, because I’ve been so totally right all along this process”
If you substitute “anti-gravity” or “gold from lead” for “a non-violent society”. it totally illustrates how twisted their thinking is.
Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
That trick never works.
This time for sure!
This article is less unbalanced than most from the NYT, however what irks me about the piece is that you’re required to read half-way through it before any mention that people were killed by something other than a gun! Looking at this incident with the benefit of hindsight, it’s hard to image any conclusion other than in the years of planning for his “revenge”, if he had been denied access to any firearms he would have continue to kill people with other means, as he later tried to do with his car.
Moreover, this incident puts the lie to the “a gun makes it easy to kill people” claim. Here, his first victims were killed by a knife, then he shifted to a gun. If it was so easy to kill someone with a gun, one would assume that he would have done that first. Once again, if someone is intent on doing harm and spends years planning for it, the tool chosen is immaterial and if denied one tool, they will resort to another.
Again, sloppy journalism at best, and more likely more coordinated activism on the part of the NYT. The point of the legislation in work for months was better training of police officers, and more help for the mentally ill. There were a couple of thoughtful professionals who wrote in or called to describe the gray area of “how to apply the 72 hour hold, for adult children like Rodgers, whose family are sufficiently worried to asl for a welfare check.
Instead this gets spun for publicity purposes as another gun control law. And since citizens across the country are waking up to the abuse of power at both state and federal level, on all civil rights, by the current “progressive” party in power, they understandably are suspicious of the motives of the press, and that party, and the rank hypocrisy revealed in the administration of legislation, when poorly conceived and worse, horribly bungled in the administration of justice.
The simple fact is Rodgers was insane, crazy, psycho…whatever term you prefer, and his Mom reported him to the police long before his final video and suicide note/manifesto was published only, on ten minutes or so before he began his rampage.
Should the cops have insisted on a check of his residence? Did they have that right under the current interpretation of the code, by their own training? Is there an alternative code for judicial action (yes) that could have been used by parents and therapist? Why didn’t the father go visit his sons apartment in person, if his ex-wife was concerned enough, and the therapist alarmed enough to call the cops in person?
What is it about our culture that facilitates this waiting for the Big Brother state to take action, rather than accept personal responsibility?
There are obvious commonalities between Rodgers, Holmes, Lanza, and Loughner, just to name the most recent high profile examples, that the National Media simply dont appear to want to address, or worse, want to paper over in the near hysterical rush to portray this as a gun issue, and attempt to fix with yet another regulation on one tool of violence, while ignoting the others, and more important, the person who used the tool.
And what can we do, to better help the mentally ill, and the families and mental health professionals whose hands are tied by the limitations of current laws.
That was the pount both Mr Farrago, and the California lawmaker were trying to make on the NPR show, where the host, and producers apparently could or would not allow that message to stand. And instead went for the cheap sensationalism, that is the least despicable judgement one can give for their reporting: if it blleeds, it leads…
My usual rant: If laws could prevent murder, why don’t the laws against murder stop it?
My first question about this legislation: How will the family know if the person has firearms or not? I haven’t heard anything about this shooting to acknowledge if the family knew or not that the killer had legally (or theoretically illegally) possessed these firearms.
If morality weren’t an obstacle for me, I’d vow to publish a new method of mass murder for every gun law passed. I realize it would be an incredible challenge. I’d likely not be able to keep up my career or my relationships, but I believe that, at least for a while, I could publish a novel method of mass murder, in excruciating detail, for every state or federal level gun law enacted.
The point of the exercise would be to prove that gun control isn’t murder control. Perhaps that lesson would come home when some nut drives a big rig through the bleachers at a high school football game or when someone chains the doors at a public building and sets it on fire.
Mass murders are a tiny percentage of our violent crime cornucopia. The more people armed in more places the more of these ‘ordinary’ crimes are stopped. If all the guns disappeared today, the result would be increased victimization, not decreased. I can’t think of a single new gun restriction that would be in any way useful or meaningful from a crime prevention stand point, but I can think of many already in existence that if repealed would, if not reduce crime, restore the rights of the people to those which were intended.
They took away the guns from the Chinese, so now the mass attacks are committed with a knife or sword.
Personally, I would rather be shot to death than hacked to death.
I’m not sure that ‘took away’ is the right phraseology. Prevented from having would probably be more apt.
I for one would rather be shot as well, with a gun in my hand, fighting to make sure that my liberty to have a gun in hand is never removed, than to face being hacked to death.
The answer is obvious. Diagnose anyone who wishes to own a gun as mentally unstable, thus meaning that no one can ever (lawfully) own a gun.
As facetious as that is, I’d bet my bottom dollar that most who self identify as progressive would be in favor of that, if not more. Remember, we aren’t fighting people who are anti-gun. It’s about freedom and control.
Gary Wintemute isn’t just any doctor, he is an anti-gun advocate who has filed declarations is opposition to lawsuits seeking to do away with California’s “may issue” concealed carry permitting system–one of the “more guns=more gun crime” types.
What surprised me most about the article were the rather moderate comments attributed to Sen. Darrel Steinberg addressing the potential for due process violations and abuse of the procedure in interfamilial squabbles. He is one of the three (actually two now that Sen. Yee is gone) gun control advocates in the Legislature. Maybe he is eyeing a run for governor?
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