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.
