Very sad story out of Connecticut about a Grandma who picked her 2 year old and 6 month old grandkids up from daycare, drove out to a lake, and then used her husbands gun to kill the two children and herself.
I don't have a lot of commentary on the story itself. As I said, very sad all around, with a bunch of folks asking 'what if.' I know the day care workers are kicking themselves for letting the kids go, but the grandma was on their approved list of folks to release the kids too.
Nope...my emotion over this story comes in the very first sentence:
'Debra Denison's struggles with mental illness were well known in her family, and when she wanted to pick up her grandsons from day care to mark the older boy's birthday, mother Brenda Perry hesitated.'
If that statement is true, then the question must be asked: Why was there still a gun in the house?
Did people not know that her husband had a gun? Was an investigation already completed into her condition?
Basically, what we have here is a perfect example of how adding new, restrictive laws ISN'T going to make things any safer. This sad situation is a perfect example of how we can't even use the exisiting laws on the books properly because even though people thought Grandma was getting a little loopy, NO ONE did anything about it Even the husband in this case didn't do anything. I mean, if my wife starts acting crazy(or crazier) I'm going to have to face up that the responsible thing to do is keep the guns away from her.
The trick here is to keep things from being too knee jerk. There is a thin line between having a safe and timely responce to a family members concerns and knocking down doors to seize guns because of anonomyous phone calls.
You could do mandatory psych evals, with hard cutoffs? Would that make you feel safer?
ReplyDeleteI give 'psychology' and 'psychiatry' zero credibility, and personally would see such shysters thrown out of any court they attempt to enter. People do bad things for stupid reasons. That is what it comes down to. If you want to eliminate bad things, eliminate people, or live with what has been, is, and will be the occasional bad results.
You do realize, as a veteran, your government considers you a potential terrorist. Further, as a gun owner, psychology considers you paranoid and some other things, right out of the box. Be careful who you trust, how, and what power you lend them for... your own safety.
I don't think he's talking about the government taking guns away from her husband, or denying him the right to own them. Rather, it strikes me that the point is that her family should have made damn sure she had no access to weaponry. If I remember the one story I read correctly, she had BPD, which is a hell of a mental illness. My former mother-in-law has bipolar, and her husband--a vet and a sharpshooter--got rid of his guns after the second time she threatened to use one (on whom still is not clear). Sucks for him, but probably a damn good thing for me and mine, given her propensity for violence and hatred of me after her son and I divorced. (I did warn the kids' school about her, in fact.)
ReplyDeleteSabra, you got closer to what I was aiming at. Personal responsibility. These seem like real folks, so I'm sure there is already enough guilt making the rounds, but, like you said, this isn't just a case of Grandma acting a bit goofy. She should not have had easy access to his gun.
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