“better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”
I think what we are seeing in the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy is the price of freedom. We now have a mental health system modeled on this premise and it does not appear to be working well. I doubt if I am the only person who has known at least one seriously mentally ill person who could have benefited from some forced “help,” help that they never received because they could not be convinced of their problems and they had not yet met the standards of being an imminent danger to themselves and others.
The time may have come when we may need to think it ‘better that one or two people get help they don’t need than that ten dangerously ill people walk around like ticking time bombs.’
The immediate pleas for tighter gun control sound a lot like Sleeping Beauty’s plot to destroy all the spinning wheels. We might minimize gun related tragedies, but those who are delusional and dangerous will find other weapons. (Have we already forgotten Andrea Yates? She didn’t use a gun. And no one is suggesting we ban bathing young children. My sister [the lawyer] once defended a woman who killed someone with a cast iron frying pan. No one suggested banishing frying pans.) I know that guns are dangerous. That is why we chose not to have any in our home - at least at this point. But having grown up in a family where guns were appreciated and respected I do tend to see them as neutral instruments when handled correctly.
We can talk a lot about mental health awareness. But when the very sickest of our society are unable to self-diagnose and aren’t treated until very near or after the fact of tragedy, that is an abomination.
Creating a Functional Home Gym Space
3 hours ago
No comments:
Post a Comment