By Dick Miller
WE CONNECT DOTS: The issue of gun control in Ed Rendell’s campaign for a first term in 2002 sticks with me. We worked on an endorsement by a retired state police officer who had been impressed with Rendell’s service as Philadelphia District Attorney.
Mindful of the NRA influence on PA politics, Candidate Rendell came out with a bizarre slant on gun control. He would “limit” gun owners to one purchase per month. The cop TV commercial went out the window. NRA opposed Rendell anyway.
The proposed ban on assault weapons is too little. An estimated three million Americans have invested $600 to $1,500 in such weapons. How are they compensated for their financial loss even if we are able to convince gun owners to ignore their second amendment right?
The ban is too late because the debate is coming after the most contentious election and argument over taxes and program cuts in modern history. A shift in alignments for the gun debate would make it worthwhile. However, the opponents of an assault weapons ban are among the same lawmakers who want to keep reducing the taxes of the rich.
Like liquor and marijuana, assault weapons are not amenable to prohibition.
Other options should be considered to achieve any meaningful changes.
Possession of body armor by a non-police person is already a crime in some states.
In some of the mass shootings the perpetrators wore body armor. They didn’t carry out these horrible crimes because they wanted to commit “suicide by cop.” Any sick s.o.b. who will shoot helpless children is first a coward.
The second option is to get serious about the treatment of mental illnesses.
We don’t commit the mentally sick for intensive treatments these days because we don’t want to pay for it. Mental health advocates have little political clout. They have never been known to deliver victory or defeat to a lawmaker.
With a nearly non-existent constituency, mental health budgets have been cut, by one estimate, $5 billion since the Great Recession began in 2007. Two decades ago there were 559,000 hospital beds in the U.S. dedicated to treatment of mental illnesses. Today that total is closer to 43,000, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
Matt Mangino is a former member of the PA Board of Probation and Parole and Lawrence County District Attorney. “Jails and prisons are America’s de facto psychiatric hospitals,” he writes. “According to National Public Radio, the three largest inpatient psychiatric facilities in the U.S. are Los Angeles County Jail, Rikers Island in New York City and Chicago’s Cook County Jail.”
Mangino, publisher of a crime-and-punishment blog at www.mattmangino.com, thinks policymakers can make better use of funds wasted to house and medicate mentally ill in prison. Mental health treatment funds have been wastefully re-directed to correctional warehousing, he added.
When our government doesn’t have courage to tax and spend, lawmakers and budget cutters invent reasons. In this case, we have been told, that mentally ill people need to be mainstreamed at an early date. Back out on the street, these individuals become part of a huge caseload for mental health counselors.
Another law-and-order type believes PA legislators adopting Gov. Corbett’s “block grant budget” (to counties) “broke faith with mental health advocates.” In recent years these same lawmakers have substantially reduced the state mental health system. He and many others believe the entire issue is more state than Federal.
The NRA and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) made efforts to resolve the gun control problem more difficult in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Buried in the thousand-page 2010 law is a “brief provision restricting doctors to gather data about patients’ gun use,” according to the Washington Post. Reid, in a tough re-election fight, inserted the provision at the NRA request.
Doctors can link mental illnesses with physical problems, but we don’t see insurers rushing to provide private coverage. The carriers, of course, point to resistance by those who pay the premiums.
Gun applications in Canada are submitted to the regional mental health board which simply checks “yes” or “no” when asked if the app should be granted. There is no breach of patient privacy. This is part of Canada’s universal health care.
