Was it Gun Rights or an Epic Government Failure behind the Isla Vista Bloodbath?

Isla Vista, CA—Rather than deal with what really facilitated the savage stabbing, running down with a car and shooting massacre, the usual Leftist suspects seek to politicize the event.  They want to blame the crime spree on the rights Americans have to keep and bear firearms.  Let’s first examine just what went wrong.

This all begins with a failed mental health system and serious medical malpractice.  We used to place mental patients like Elliot Rodger in institutions for public safety reasons.  Modern pharmacology produced wonder drugs that control most disturbed people that exhibit anti-social pathologies.  We’ve emptied out the insane asylums thought our nation controlling them instead with mind-altering drugs. 

Rodger was under psychiatric care for most of his life and had a long history of refusal to take the drugs that would likely keep him under control.  Rodger’s caregivers had a duty to institutionalize their uncooperative patient.  Instead they let his roam free even after they came aware of his threatening behavior. 

The next culprit is the so-called Brady background check required of all gun buyers.  California politicians demanded additional waiting periods to make “doubly sure” that nobody that was prohibited by law could obtain a firearm.   The problem here is that the zeal to protect the privacy of dangerous mental patients sidelined the Brady checks that accordingly failed. 

Finally the police have some serious responsibility here.  Rodger’s family and caregivers redundantly and frantically warned the police of his very real death threats against young women that shunned him.   What the cops did was appalling.

The police had the duty to bring Rodger to a mental health facility for examination by medical professionals.  Instead officers from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff actually chose to play doctor and examine the patient themselves.  Of course the cops did not have Rodger’s substantial medical records to help them make their unprofessional and uninformed medical diagnoses.  

Had the cops simply done their job Rodgers would have gotten treatment and been disarmed.  

One could reasonably argue that even without a firearm Rodger was unstoppable in that he very efficiently stabbed three men to death and then ran four others down with his high performance BMW automobile.  He had three handguns he purchased by falsifying the Brady Background Check forms.  Each purchase was a separate felony that carried a ten-year prison penalty.

There were plenty of safeguards that should have prevented this horrible holocaust.  All of them failed.  Once again politicians want to make Americans defenseless in the name of safety.   The gun rights haters seem to forget we have a Bill of Rights and that the gun bans they seek are simply not surviving various court challenges. 

Perhaps those concerned people need to revisit procedures and laws already in place if they want a real solution.   All the necessary safeguards and laws were in place however the failure at each and every level is mind blowing.

In the next months the families of these victims will hire lawyers and the taxpayers will be in for a huge financial beating over the epic negligence involved at every level.