by Karl Denninger, Market Ticker:
…. and this one cost many lives.
Like so many others before it nobody is going to point the finger where it belongs and force those who are supposed to be accountable to be actually held to account — including, in this case, a bunch of dead people so why are not a huge number of government employees in the dock right here, right now?
I’m speaking of the Maine shooting incident.
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The suspect has been reported to be a firearms instructor and veteran. He also, it was reported, spent two weeks in a mental hospital this summer before being released, reported “hearing voices” and had threatened to shoot up a National Guard outpost.
Involuntary commitment is a bar to firearms ownership. So how is this guy an actual firearms instructor post that incident, and why is it that all of his guns were not confiscated? Oh, I know, Maine didn’t bother to actually run his voluntary surrender for mental issues that were sufficient to throw him in the loony bin for two weeks through judicial process and thus his confinement was voluntary — and remained that way despite a credible threat to commit mass-murder and displaying clear evidence (“hearing voices”) of profound mental illness!
That was a decision and that decision cost lives. How difficult would it have been to involuntarily commit him? Quite possibly a fair bit of trouble, but when someone shows up and tells you they’re going to shoot up a military installation and does two weeks in the nuthouse as a result you’d think there would be culpability at a civil and criminal level if you do nothing and let said person back out into the public complete with all of his firearms, particularly when you had two weeks to seek said judicial hearing and deliberately did not.
If you deem said person “fixed” and “safe” once you had every opportunity to examine, assess and decide you damn well ought to be criminally liable when you’re wrong. In this case that includes every single individual and entity within Maine that had anything to do with his mental treatment and their failure to refer and prosecute it through due process in the judicial system. I do not know whether such was attempted or not, but in any event it obviously didn’t happen and therefore some number of people are guilty as accessories before the fact to these crimes.
The responding officer learned later in a letter from the National Guard that a fellow guardsman “is concerned that [the reservist] is going to snap and commit a mass shooting,” according to the report filed in connection with the wellness check.
So now we have independent verification that in fact the state deliberately ignored clear evidence that absolutely could have been brought before a judge and involuntary mental commitment ordered.
No, you can’t stop someone from getting a gun. Plenty of people obtain them illegally and in fact most of the gang-bangers didn’t walk into a store and buy a firearm — they either stole it or otherwise got it through illegal means (e.g. obtaining it from someone who previously stole it.) But that’s not the point here, because this individual was known to be loco and yet, it appears, he was released from a mental hospital despite threatening mass-violence and still had his weapons.
