The issue here is whether having guns in classrooms will solve the problem of campus shooters.

I don’t think they will.

1) As I noted in the original post, these shooters are suicidal. As such, it is rather unlikely that they will be deterred by the possibility of more guns on campus.

2) The notion that having a permit means that these people will have the skill to draw their weapons and take down the shooter. This strikes me (as I said before) as nothing more than action hero logic. As Capt. D. notes above (#8) even trained soldiers often freeze under fire. The notion that 21 and 22 year old students who are half-comatose during a lecture will be able to instantly know what is going on and reaction properly and quickly in the midst of panicking colleagues is sheer fantasy.

3) BTW, as you yourself corrected me earlier, students under 21 couldn’t have concealed carry permits. So, what if the shooter attacked a freshman level general studies class?

4)You are being awfully simplistic (i.e., good guys with guns are better than bad guys with guns). While I won’t argue with that, per se, I maintain that the issue at hand is whether having more guns on campus would decrease these types of events or diminish their harm. I don’t think that there is any evidence that they would. Now, while it is appealing to assume that having armed persons present could prevent extended attacks, I am not convinced that a firefight in a conference hall would have as perfect an outcome as you think it will.

As such, I am not sure where the “lie” is in my position.

If you ever spent time in the presence of many law-abiding people who are armed, and you came away from such events with no one being killed, injured or even scared by those firearms, you would begin to understand why many of us shake our heads in frustration when people say the opposite of what we know to be true.

We have, at least, the empirical evidence of our own experience. We can add to that the experience of places such as Utah, where state colleges are forbidden from banning guns from their campuses, and not one person has been harmed by the presence of guns.

It’s unlike you, Dr Taylor, to misrepresent the truth in this way. You have swallowed the “more guns equals less safety” lie without anything to back it up. More guns in the hands of bad guys is less safe for us, but the same isn’t true when you apply it to the law-abiding. Since we follow the law, and don’t carry firearms when the law says we can’t, we’re put at a huge disadvantage compared to those who don’t care about the law.

So I ask you, please stop repeating the lie that proposals to allow concealed carry permit holders to continue to carry concealed firearms on-campus would make you less safe. You don’t know that, and you’re reacting from emotion, not logic. What you keep saying is demonstrably untrue.

On the other hand, just before this shooting there was another at a city council meeting. Of all places, you’d expect the city council to have significant police security. And, if I understand correctly, this one did (it just didn’t have metal detectors at the door). Even so, the shooter killed three plus himself and wounded the mayor.

Prompted by the NIU shootings, Stephen Taylor persuasively demolishes "the notion that these shootings are caused by schools being gun free zones and that if these shooters knew that there might be armed students/faculty/whomever that it would dis…

I’m sorry if I implied that you were on the side of making mental health records more accessible to different government agencies. My comments were not directed specifically at you.

I was really just trying to get out in the open the issue of civil liberties and medical information regarding mental health. There was much talk about this in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, and it seems to pop up when these things happen. There is a rush to deny the “crazies” of the world the same rights as others (such as access to firearms) when a person with a mental illness commits a crime. Why it is acceptable to suggest such things but unacceptable to deny rights on the basis of things like race or religion is something I don’t fully understand, but it happens.

I agree in part about the state of our mental health system, but even with free mental health care, an individual has to voluntarily go to get it, and there will always be a number of individuals who don’t. This is where we have to face the fact that not all crimes can be prevented. Gun control, better mental health – the highly motivated will always find a way. As long as people are free – that is, not being forced into therapy, or otherwise deprived of liberty – some of these kinds of tragedies will happen.

I’m sure in the aftermath of this there will be much talk about what to do about the problem, but I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t think these things can be prevented.

I mentioned quite specifically access to appropriate treatment. By all accounts, the US has a health care financing system that is inadequate. Millions lack access to insurance and those who do often have policies that don’t cover particular mental health procedures adequately. Policies that do have a mental health component are biased towards cheaper methods of treatment–usually through pharmaceuticals–and don’t cover long-term, one-on-one therapy.

Many anti-anxiety drugs have rare side effects that can induce anti-social behavior. Because of a lax regulatory regime and the power of pharmaceutical coompanies, alternative treatment methods are downplayed.

My point is that we should look at the structure of mental health treatment instead of talking about secondary issuues like gun control.

I suffer mental illness, and know a lot of people who do, through group therapy and other types of treatment. I’ll tell you this much – the only reason my treatment is successful is that I know what I tell my doctor or my psychologist is confidential, and won’t leave the room. There are only a few conditions under which it is lawful for them to share information about me without my consent, and if that were to change, I would probably refuse further treatment. I know some of my friends would probably begin lying about their conditions to avoid losing their rights and privileges under the law.

We’re talking about a tiny, tiny population of the mentally ill that become violent. Usually they are untreated, or refusing treatment. If we start allowing or requiring doctors to share diagnoses with other government agencies, we will force a lot of people with mental illness to take their illness underground. They will fear – with good reason, in the information age – that the information that leaves the doctor’s office will end up in places it need not end up, Like in employer background checks, and become a basis for unlawful discrimination. They will worry that the information will find its way to potential creditors or insurance companies. And it probably will.

All you succeed in doing by destroying doctor-patient confidentiality is forcing a lot of high-functioning people to take their conditions underground. You make the problem worse, not better.

The best you can do on the mental health end is make treatment more accessible – but treating people differently on the basis of a medical condition, and sharing information about a medical condition, is a slippery slope. You would hurt a lot of good people by going down that road, and I’m not convinced that it would help. I would argue that anyone who is both homicidal and suicidal is highly motivated, and it’s quite easy for a highly motivated individual to get a gun illegally if they can’t get one legally. I mean, if a person is hell-bent on shooting up a room, they’re going to get a gun one way or another.

There are civil liberty issues at stake when we talk about limiting a person’s rights based on a medical condition; and, with mental health, you don’t always have clear-cut diagnoses. This is muddy water that is best left unentered.