As Alan Dershowitz points out in his recent New York Times Op Ed, there has been an interesting dichotomy in the reactions to Jared Loughner’s recent Arizona rampage (I choose not to use “alleged” in this case as many media outlets seem to feel is necessary). On the one hand, you have a debate over the role of heated political rhetoric and the availability of guns. The Left accuses the Right of using violent imagery and demagoguery to vilify political opponents and their ideas. Additionally, those on the left claim that it was far too easy for Mr. Loughner to get access to the guns and ammunition he needed to carry out this heinous act. Many commentators, however, particularly those on the right, see things differently. To them, this atrocity was the result of the actions of one deranged madman, who was not motivated by any amount of public discourse, and who would not have been deterred by any amount of gun control. To some it is anathema to limit access to guns or tone down the rhetoric because we can’t alter our society to fit the unpredictable needs of someone who clearly was mentally unstable. Jared Loughner has been declared mentally ill in the court of public opinion and that should be the end of the discussion.
At the same time, it seems that those on the right are only willing to declare him insane in the court of public opinion, not the actual court room in which he will stand trial. After John Hinckley was successfully able to invoke the insanity defense for his attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, Congress and legislatures around the country responded by making sure that defense was unlikely to be successfully used again. All of the evidence that has turned up that Loughner was fixated on Giffords and had planned this attack for some time, instead of being evidence of a mental illness, is seen as evidence of pre-meditation. Despite the wave of evidence coming out from the testimony of family and friends, online posts, videos, etc, it is now so difficult to plead insanity that even someone like Loughner is unlikely to be able to invoke it. The state of Arizona, where Loughner will likely face charges for the non-federal victims, doesn’t even allow a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.
It seems to me that there are two ways to address this apparent inconsistency, though both solutions are probably off the table for Mr. Loughner. First, we could implement a system of laws and regulations that controls access to weapons by the mentally stable and unstable alike. This is clearly the fear of some gun enthusiasts who have driven an increase in gun sales since the massacre. This approach does nothing to stop people like Jared Loughner from being violent, but may limit the amount of damage they can do. The second approach is to have a system in place that makes sure that people like Jared Loughner have access to mental health care. This man had every red flag possible, and yet nothing was being done to prevent just such a tragedy as occurred. As the House looks to cut federal programs by as much as a third, spending on mental health care by governments is not likely to increase any time soon.
We need to make a commitment to stop violence such as this from occurring in the future. That commitment can be to provide affordable, possibly free and mandatory, mental health care to those who need it, or it can be a commitment to restrict access to the kinds of weapons that allow massive violence to occur. Either way, we can’t say insanity was the only cause, and then that criminal punishment is the only answer.
With limited money for the mental health system, I suspect that one of the best uses of some of limited resources would be to educate people about mental illness. (As far as I know there is no mandatory eduction in schools or colleges about mental illness.)
When Monica Crowley of the McLaughlin Group calls Jared Loughner a “psychopath”, or Frank Rich of the New York Time stipulates that he was a “lone nutjob”, there is clearly considerable societal ignorance and prejudice about mental illness.
Most people who don’t have friend or family with schizophrenia have not seen young people spiral into psychosis, in spite of the best efforts of the family.
This is 1% of the population, over 3 million people in the United States.
How about in addition to flat-out education about the causes of schizophrenia some compassion training for prejudicial folks in the media?
Being deranged does not mean that you are insane. You’re making up your own definitions of words and then using those new meanings to make your argument. The right is simply saying that he was not politically motivated – he was just an evil person.
I consider it quite likely that Loughner’s rampage might well boil-down to being a psychotically conceived, extremely elaborate suicide.
(All on his subconscious:) by his rampage, and its consequences, he “removes responsibility” for suicide from self, and “delegates responsibility” for his being executed to the legal process.
Sort of like the well-known “cops suicide,” whereby someone who wants to end-themselves approaches a policeman in a threatening manner, thus hoping to precipitate the policeman to slay him.
Loughner’s case might be seen as a hyper-elaborate version of that suicidal intent.
And all of this could be entirely sublimated, to his consciousness. he might not even be aware of it.
People who don’t have a major interest in guns, will tend to look at the whole thing rationally and logically and reason out that there could be at least some improvement to controls put on guns in an effort to statistically reduce the chances of a crime like that. They can do this because they are not tempted by the fact that they want a gun etc. People who have a major interest in guns, usually on the right, typically see everything as a means to an end to get a gun. Or as they say, protect their rights to have guns. The reason some end up on the right is simply because politicians like Sarah Palin and Mccain will typical exploit this by waving the notion under their noses like a carrot. And yes, there are people so shallow that they’d vote for someone for one issue like that. IT happens on both sides. But that’s where some of the votes come from and a portion of some of the right are “born”. Notice how when someone is defending gun laws, 9 times out of 10 they are on the right. It’s not because they necessarily disagree with the left on other issues, but usually they’ve given it no thought at all. I’m not saying republicans are irresponsible or selfish because there are smart ones, but pointing out that the most shallow ones tend to get caught up in things like protecting their guns. And they could could less if someone gets shot in the process. They just want their “dang” gun, lol. So they will jump into forums and try to defend it with a lot of anger, spin and mentioning weird conspiracy theories. Keep in mind that this is only one sector of the right and not all of them. But while the right will attribute problems to one lone “madman”, and claim that’s why no action should be taken.. At the same time, THAT one madman is a reason to at least look things over. Yet they don’t want to because they fear it will mean a limit on guns.
And in defense, they will usually say they want it for hunting etc.. Interestingly enough, on the week of Loughner’s arrest, the sales of glock 19 and that automatic part sky rocketed according to the company that sells them. Yet, they’d tell you it’s for hunting. You never know when you have to gun down 20 bambi’s, lol. Or perhaps protect your self from 20 people with the auto attachment. My theory is that even though there are valid reasons to own a gun, that it’s mostly the angry, selfish, immature and mostly young people who are the same ones screaming about their rights so much…. Hey, you only have to be 18 to vote and have an IQ only high enough to sign something to get a gun (in some cases and places). I have a cousin, who’s pretty young, stupid, mentally handicapped, did not drive until he was 28, prone to fits of anger, drinks, and yet has amassed what he calls his “gun collection”, along with his fireworks etc. Knowing him, I don’t think he should be allowed to have a gun. Laws in his state are very loose, I suppose. I live in another state, am educated, kind, careful and a lot older. Yet I’d have to go through quite a lot to get a gun where I live. In fact I don’t have one. That’s while it will always be a problem. There’s is no logical standard set for all places..
I think it’s a challenge to walk these lines of vocabulary without somewhat blurring the distinction between moral culpability and legal or medical insanity. It’s nearly impossible for most people to imagine how a person could be sane and yet commit the atrocities that this man did. So, we start putting labels on him to distance him from ourselves and our own moral viewpoint of his actions.
“Psychopath” and “nutjob” obviously carry a tone of judgment about Loughner’s sanity, but “evil” carries just as much judgment. Evil implies that he is in some what not normal, in some way different from the rest of us. To make the argument that he wasn’t politically motivated, but also that he is not insane, you would have to assert another motivation.
A suicidal motivation is certainly a possibility, but that still brings us back to the question of his sanity. Is it likely that a person suffering no mental illness would consciously choose to take his own life by attacking public officials and a crowd of bystanders? It’s hard to imagine such a thing being true.
Ultimately, I agree with, and I think I was trying to make in the original post, the point that we need to be careful about confounding our moral repulsion to Loughner’s actions and the possibility that he may be mentally ill. Going forward, we all need to be careful about which type of judgments we’re making and be sure that our vocabulary is consistent with our message.