Trump Sees Mental Institutions For Troubled Youth As Solution To Shootings. Experts Say Idea Is ‘Ridiculous.’
“Most of these shooters are angry, antisocial individuals you cannot spot in advance, and even if you could, you don’t have the right to institutionalize them.” said Dr. Michael Stone, a forensic psychiatrist at Columbia University. Meanwhile, mental health experts are disturbed by the derisive language President Donald Trump has been using. Media outlets also take a look at the gun research and laws that might come from the shooting.
The New York Times:
Opening Mental Hospitals Unlikely To Prevent Mass Shootings, Experts Say
President Trump called again on Thursday for the opening of more mental hospitals to help prevent mass murders like the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Yet ramping up institutional care, experts say, likely would not have prevented most of the spree killings regularly making headlines in this country. “We’re going to be talking about mental institutions. And when you have some person like this, you can bring them into a mental institution, and they can see what they can do. But we’ve got to get them out of our communities,” the president said during a meeting at the White House with state and local officials. (Carey, 2/22)
CNN:
Trump's Language On School Shooter's Mental Health Could Be Harmful, Experts Say
In a tweet Thursday, President Donald Trump described someone who would shoot up a school as a "savage sicko." At CNN's town hall on the Parkland, Florida, school shootings on Wednesday, NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch described the gunman as "an insane monster" who is "nuts" and crazy." And at a White House briefing Thursday, the President again used the term "sicko." The shooter, Nikolas Cruz, struggled with depression, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism, according to a 2016 Florida Department of Children and Families report. But having a mental health diagnosis does not mean he would become violent, many experts say. And although Trump has said he wants to focus on mental health to stop school shootings, calling Cruz a "sicko" doesn't help, those experts claim. (Christensen, 2/22)
The Wall Street Journal:
Trump’s Stance On Guns Puts Pressure On Congress
President Donald Trump’s calls for changes to gun laws in the wake of last week’s Florida school shooting push Congress toward a new politically fraught debate just months before the midterm elections. For more than a decade, and after multiple attacks on students, lawmakers have shied from making any significant changes to gun legislation in part because of the influence of the National Rifle Association. (Bykowicz, Peterson and Nicholas, 2/22)
The New York Times:
States Mull ‘Red Flag’ Gun Seizures From People Deemed Dangerous
In the last two months, law enforcement authorities in California took a gun away from a 38-year-old man who had threatened to kill himself, his wife and their young child if she left him. They removed three weapons from a 23-year-old ex-Marine who, the authorities said, had developed a paranoia that all males wanted to harm him. And they took a handgun from a 39-year-old man whose terrified neighbors reported that he was firing his weapon in the backyard; the man, who said he thought he was aiming for raccoons and rats, was found to be intoxicated, the police said. (Johnson, 2/23)
The New York Times:
Major Shootings Led To Tougher Gun Laws, But To What End?
Since last week’s deadly shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., a pitched national conversation about gun policy has dominated town hall meetings, a White House summit meeting, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference and the never-ending stream of social media feeds. Below is a brief review of several laws governing guns in the United States and how effective those policies have been in curbing violence. (Qiu and Bank, 2/23)