Solving mass shooter issue -don’t regulate guns; regulate bullets

Gun control will do nothing. The horse is out of the barn. Americans own 50% of all civilian owned guns in the world. We need strict bullet control at least as serious as with driver’s licenses. Licenses of several levels like level one for limited # bullets for a 22. To own high capacity clips or clips for guns with more than one bullet at a time must have advanced level bullet certificates for mental health and from police every two years. To own high caliber bullets or clips with more than a few bullets you would have to have training similar to an officer. Licensees would also have to keep records of their bullets like pharmacists do with narcotics. How many they have, who they give or sell them to, how they were used (target practice, etc).

Louisiana has concealed carry everywhere and more guns per capita than almost any state. Where were the armed citizens here? They clearly could not react quick enough. They likely wouldn’t have been fast enough, accurate enough, and trained enough to counter panic in an active shooter situation.

Armed civilians do more harm than good. Studies have shown that practicing with a stationary target under calm conditions does not prepare you to duck, be aware of your surroundings and avoid tunnel vision of fight or flight situation where you fail to recognize innocent and shoot wildly, and without constant intense training, you do not have muscle memory to overcome the shakiness from stress hormones and fight or flight signals from nervous system removing blood from periphery and giving it to large muscles and center mass plus brain, as well as have the quickness and accuracy needed in a rapidly evolving active shooter situation with innocents running everywhere including in front of your gun. Armed civilians everhywhere will cause more death and injury, not less.

With guns, the only thing needed is a permanent ID embedded in some high tech way so that they can be traced more easily.

More bullets = more death.  Less mental health care = more death.  Remember 1/3 of 30,000 gun deaths in U.S. every year are suicides and 11% of population has mental health issues. You should be required to lock up bullets and loaded guns.

Suggested plan to stop gun violence in America

SUGGESTED PLAN TO STOP GUN VIOLENCE IN AMERICA –

TO BE DEBATED AND DISCUSSED BY EXPERTS IN ALL FIELDS

INCLUDING LAW, MILITARY, NRA, HEALTHCARE, MENTAL HEALTH, POLICE, PRISONS  AND JAILS, RELIGIOUS LEADERS, AND PUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS ON ALL SIDES OF THE DEBATE IN A TRANSPARENT MANNER!

1. America has 5% of the world population but its citizens own 50% of the privately owned guns the world. Tax ammunition outrageously like we tax cigarettes. Considering outlawing owning more than a few weapons needed by one person to be a member of a militia unless they have extensive mental health examination and background check.
2. Half of gun deaths are suicides.  Triple mental healthcare spending and  vastly improve access to mental healthcare.
3. Vastly increase opportunities for teens and young adults for jobs and after school activities. Idle minds are the devil’s  playground. Re-instate the Civilian Conservation Corps started in the Roosevelt era.
4. Outlaw high capacity ammunition magazines and give deadline to turn them in – do not grandfather them. An untrained person having      to change clips would slow down mass murders.
5. Find better high tech way to ID guns so that if their numbers are filed off they can still be traced.
6. Research and discuss ways of tracking and controlling the sale of ammunition and the sale of more dangerous types of ammunition, with consideration of putting limits on certain types of ammunition or finding ways of tracing the sale and usage of certain types of ammunition that are more deadly or meant for military mass murder situations, rather than hunting.
7. Tax guns at enormous rate with goal of decreasing ratio of guns to number of Americans to half as many within 5 years. Increase availability of voluntary turn in of weapons without consequences.  Destroy weapons turned in and do not resell them.
8. Outlaw semi-automatic rifles and handguns. Have a panel of experts including military and NRA representatives determine this issue. No grandfather clause.  Maybe allow some stored in gun clubs to mentally certified people, who have  undergone careful background check as to mental health as well as had an  interview by a trained psychologist. Do not allow storage of these weapons in a home where everyone is not certified.
9. Massive education effort to teach not to stigmatize  mentally ill and to recognize need for mental healthcare.  Teach that most mentally ill people are  harmless, most gun deaths are NOT caused by the mentally ill, but that serious mass murders may be caused by a few very disturbed people who need  help BEFORE they murder someone.
10. Research and find ways to identify loners and help them integrate into society, as well as find ways to identify when they are falling into psychotic mental illness and becoming dangerous to society like with the shooters in Oregon & at the Colorado theater.
11. Massively increase training requirements for law enforcement officers and prison guards to include training about mental illness and psychology (at least one year of classes and rotation through  mental health facilities as part of code gray teams and counseling teams).  Three months of post high school      training is not adequate to be employed as a jail or prison guard.  This will take a 5-10 year transition as our police forces are so incredibly undertrained. Parole officers should be required even more training. Study how many peace officers were involved in murder with their own guns or whose guns were used for suicide or accidental shootings.
12. Vastly improve our education system in the U.S. to  include domestic violence and pre-marital counseling, financial  responsibility, and child development, as well as mental health issues.  Require students to volunteer to help the elderly, the disabled, or the mentally challenged so they understand that the disabled and mentally  challenged are not automatically dangerous.
13. Close loopholes so that NO gun may be exchanged or sold without check with a national database.
14. Have intense discussion/analysis as to what diagnoses or mental certification should cause inclusion in database as the vast majority of the mentally ill are not dangerous. Forcing all that  have been treated or hospitalized for mental illness into a database would be grossly unfair.
15. Judicial reform to take corruption out of our court system and vastly reform family courts thus lowering the extreme suicide rate among veterans and the population due to false defamation of character and wrongful termination of child custody rights.
16. Do not put all felons in database as most are not  dangerous concerning guns – analyze this more carefully.
17. Make national effort to put in place system to help wrongfully convicted felons overturn their convictions so that the database is not overtaxed by excessive numbers of people who are mentally  stable but wrongfully accused of being mentally ill or have been defamed and wrongfully convicted felons, or non-violent felons.
18. Make higher penalties for storing weapons without trigger locks and other appropriate safety measures.

Abuse of Eight-Year old “Murderer” – Are You All NUTS?

An eight-year old in St. John’s Arizona has been charged with murdering his father (premeditated!) and another man in his house with a rifle, after he “confessed” to two police interrogators who questioned him with NO ONE else present. (Apache County Sheriff’s Commander, Matrese Avila and St. Johns Police Detective Debbie Neckel) He had recently been taught to hunt. The men’s bodies were found in two separate locations in the house. The prosecutor, Criss Candelaria, is asking to charge the child as an adult! The judge has confined the child to juvenile detention facility, but is letting him out for 48 hrs for Thanksgiving with conditions (no video games? no knives or guns within reach? etc.) The police have him in SHACKLES and handcuffs. The Judge, Michael Roca, is approving this nonsense!!!

The police, the prosecutor, and the judge should be charged with child abuse. The FBI should be called in to take over and investigate this felony violation of civil rights under color of law. This is beyond an outrage and flies far beyond the twilight zone. The child should be immediately released to his mother.

A five year old believes a body is a bag of skin containing blood. A six to seven year old has no concept of death. They are just starting to understand this means the person is not coming back home. They think the person is sleeping.

All of us know that five year olds have no concept of time – “is it time yet!” An eight year old thinks a body is a bag of skin with bones randomly placed in it.

Children this age are good mimics and repeat what they hear adults say and what is said on TV but they don’t know what they are saying or what the words really mean. They mimic TV and the line between fantasy (what they see on TV) and reality is blurry for them. That’s why they believe so much in boogey men under the bed and in closets.

My son was five and I was called by a baby sitter in panic when she told me that he “knew everything about sex” so some one must be abusing him or telling him everything. The sitter often watched soap operas during the day and they show couples in bed in their bedrooms under the blankets with lights out. The word “sex” is used but not explained. I later found out the sitter would tell the kids to go away from the TV and play in a stern voice whenever bedroom scenes came on. She told the kids they shouldn’t watch because there was “sex.” The subconscious message was bedroom scenes were “bad.”

At dinner I had a casual playful conversation with my son and worked in the word “sex” by saying – “someone told me the word sex today – it sounds bad”. My son said that the sitter didn’t want him to say the word because it was “bad”. I asked him what it meant. He said: “Its when you shut off the lights and tickle each other under the covers.” Then he had a big giggle and ate his pie.

To get even with the sitter for scolding him about being naughty my son used what he knew would press her button. Even a two year old learns to manipulate before he understands what he is doing! He told her: “I know what you do with uncle Joe under the covers.” Uncle Joe and Aunt Carol let my son sleep over to play with their dog, when I am out of town or there is a special event like a baseball game my brother and son like to watch together (my son lost his father so interactions with my brother were important). Aunt Carol, the sitter, thought this meant adult sex and had a cow. My son only knew that Auntie thought the activities under the cover were “bad”. He didn’t know what those activities were – so he imagined them – tickles.

I think this is a case similar to the Ryan Harris murder in Chicago where two little boys were charged after false confessions and an atrocious interview and later exonerated when the DNA matched an adult.

I am a pediatrician and the interview was atrocious. If you want to put words in a child’s mouth and manipulate them into confessing to something they didn’t do, all the techniques are illustrated on this video – be nice start out with facts and then move to theoreticals and abstract concepts which you lead on – imply what you want – voila! – you get a confession! Children LOVE to please.

The biggest mistake is that children DO NOT understand the abstract at this age (death, murder, life, love, suffering). Abstract is beyond their grasp. Consequences are beyond their grasp unless they are short term. Premeditation for more than a short time is beyond their grasp and cannot involve the abstract.

The child was learning hunting from his father. Perhaps his father taught him to be humane and put a wounded animal out of its misery because it was “suffering”. The child then was taught to equate “suffering” with the sight of blood. The child could have been equating blood with being wounded and talking about putting the men out of their misery by shooting them, even if the child did not shoot them. Was he talking in the concrete or the abstract; past, present, or future? You can’t take what he said literally!

Words at this age may not connect with actions. They may be used as if in reality but in actuality the child is discribing fantasy, or mixing up past actions with present (shooting a wounded squirral v seeing his dad covered with blood). They don’t communicate precisely. Actions don’t connect with results very well. They are just learning these concepts.

Children are NOT little adults! Shame on everyone who thinks that this interview has ANY inculpatory evidence whatsoever. The child should not be in juvenile jail. He should be home with his mommy.

For the press to perpetuate this myth that the boy shot or murdered his father and the border is obscene. How in tarnations could an eight-year old surprise and overpower two adults in different parts of the house who are familiar with guns, aim perfectly, and kill them? Are you all nuts! The murderer is by now long gone!  It is NOT alright to use a defenseless, naive, sweet eight-year old as a scape goat and headliner! You are all barbaric and then defame his deceased father with baseless allegations of child abuse!

The press should be ashamed. Perhaps they should study Edward R. Murrow and learn about ethics.

 

See also:  http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-juveniles21-2008nov21,0,5205156.story

In this case Mr. Doody was a 17 year old in AZ when he was accused of murdering 9 people at a Buddhist temple. The only evidence was his “confession” extracted after he was “de-Mirandized” per the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals due to inappropriate 12 hours of intense interrogation without counsel or family. His conviction was overturned and he was granted a new trial.  Sound familiar?