GUNS: The Haves and the Have Nots
From the days D. J. Jaffe called for “Safety from Mentally Ill Assassins,” the media relished showing photos of stunned, bug-eyed young men staring at a news camera. Anyone could tell those people were insane! It was a shame that all perpetrators couldn’t be caught, tried and punished. Most shot themselves before being captured after killing and wounding others. A cry went up for more “beds and meds” and tougher gun laws for “the crazy” and foreigners.
Back in the 1970’s, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, in collusion with The Treatment Advocacy Center, told the press that one out of every five persons in the US had a brain disease even though there were no lab tests to confirm this diagnosis. One fifth of the members of every mega church, homeless shelter, and Star Wars convention were potentially dangerous assassins. They should be prohibited from owning a gun.
Violent acts including homicides by the emotionally disturbed accounted for only four percent of documented violence. (Involvement of alcohol and street drugs or antidepressants in youth raised the incidence to 22 percent). Of course politicians had seen to it that alcohol and drug abuse records were strictly confidential, sacrosanct, so that these clients did not go on the No Gun List.
The acts of foreign terrorists and those diagnosed as mentally ill were but a small percentage of all the people killed by violent acts. In the United States, incidents of domestic violence and homicide and suicide led the world per 100,000 populations. Calls, even by children, to police over imminent violence, did not mean that peace officers went out and garnished the gun or added the owner to the No Gun List.
The Americans who had guns committed more rampaging gun killings than ISIS, Al Quada and drug cartels worldwide.
With major killings at schools, churches, political rallies, nightclubs and on the sidewalks, devastated communities called for all teachers and government workers to be armed. Gun shows sold out on the first day. Tourism in the U.S. declined.
In January 2016 most of the 500 million dollars President Obama allotted for more access to mental health treatment went to strengthening the data base for reporting those committed to treatment since those in their right minds wouldn’t want anything to do with possibly being diagnosed, without any lab results, as being mentally ill. Treatment for mental illness would put one’s name and address on the No Gun List which could be sorted by neighborhood like the list of sexual predators.
By January 2017, those who had a permit for a gun became the new Haves, no longer defined as having a job, a house, a college education, marketable skill and savings for retirement. Now the American Dream, denied to Hispanic and African American males with arrest and jail on their record, was to own guns. Owning a gun was patriotic. The gun that killed Travon Martin was sold to a private collector for an undisclosed sum. Soldiers who sought mental health treatment were called “malingerers” and could never again be in combat for their country even after successful treatment. There were more gun and knife shops than southern churches and Starbucks.
Some of the wealthy Haves miniaturized their license to carry a gun, coated it with gold or sterling, and wore it as a massive ring or wore it around their neck. Some tattooed the gun license across their abs, a far different sign than Wm. F. Buckley’s suggestion that all AIDS carriers be tattooed. Being armed, sexy, and rich was the focus of television and magazine ads for perfume, cars, vacation cruises, assisted living facilities, and sports teams.
While White Americans who had been members of the middle class were much more likely than Hispanics, black and Asian Americans to commit suicide in 2016, white blue collar workers were now more and more subject to poverty, unemployment and social indignities, and little hope. Since most diagnosed individuals with mental illnesses now could not own guns, desperate individuals resorted to overdoses of opiates or shoving a cop and running away, called “death by cop.” Women, particularly Native American women, and men who had lost the right to own a gun and a valued place in society resorted to end their lives by overdoses of heroin, OxyContin and meth in 2015, which doubled by 2025. Handfuls of commonly prescribed drugs could also be lethal. Adverse reactions to a prescriptive drug were the 3rd leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer. The culprit drugs and deadly interactions were listed on the internet but not in medical school texts. The fifty thousand suicides in 2017 exceeded total deaths by the West African Ebola virus, persons who died of AIDS in 1995 and deaths during any single year of the Vietnam War.
The Mental Health Family Act authorized any individual displaying behavior that was aberrant such as not changing clothes, talking to oneself, failure to maintain housing, or a negative attitude to be sentenced to outpatient commitment for treatment without choice or committing a crime. Funding of mental health clients to be trained as peer supporters to work in Emergency Rooms, on crisis calls or to provide extra services to those who frequented the behavioral health units was pulled. Any family member, without permission of their loved one, could have access to their psychiatric records.
Anti-psychiatry activists and those who had been vocally concerned about conditions of the mentally ill in prisons, jails, and hospitals and the long term effects of Electro Convulsive Therapy, Trans Cranial Therapy and prescribing anti-psychotics to seniors with dementia were guilty by association. They fought back on Blogs. They pointed to the unfunded programs to prevent poverty in childhood, social inequality, early separation from parents, childhood sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, and bullying in schools -- all of which correlated with mental unwellness as surely as smoking with lung cancer. They went on the No Gun List. Activists talked about Social Justice Issues, but popular magazines and those interviewed as “experts” on TV represented pharmaceutical companies. The genetically based Brain Disease model garnered the most research money and time at medical conferences and in legislators’ offices.
Those who had a permit to buy guns were suspicious of those who declined to possess a gun or any weapon of destruction on moral grounds. Those who participated in peace marches, contrary to the war mongering in the Far and Middle East of the general populace were suspect. From video tapes the demonstrators could be identified and at least ordered in for a Good Citizen’s Mental Health Evaluation. Walgreens Drugs, Walmart, Target, and CVS used the GCMHE to screen their customers to help them see a nurse practitioner or a psychiatrist from Australia or India by telemedicine. Prescriptions from the psychiatrists could be filled at the pharmacies of each retail outlet. Furthermore, pharmacists were asked to keep an eye on those who failed to get their pills every 30 days whether or not the patient had the money for the co-pay or had disabling side effects. Irregular filling of prescriptions was reported. The anti-psychotic Abilify came with a digital tracker for consumption. Failure to take Abilify as prescribed by those sentenced to out patient commitment in their own homes resulted in being picked up by the police for non-compliance. Those who had fears, deep confusion, despair and messages from God wrote poetry and memoirs about their tragic lives. Some left their digital legacies on Facebook.
Fewer and fewer gun owners were hunters, continuing the trend of the twenty-first century. Some trusts and corporations bought political favors and guns for their members. The Have Not “Mentally Defectives” were soon at the mercy of normal gun totters who perpetuated racial discrimination, dehumanization, economic exploitation, religious extremism, and “my country right or wrong” nationalism.
In the Deep South where Jim Crow laws once prevented Blacks from owning a gun, the county sheriff, in addition to consulting federal records of treatment for mental conditions, was able to make subjective decisions on who shouldn’t own a gun. Someone who could have a gun lost the privilege if he lived with someone on The List. Those with physical disabilities who had a payee or guardian to help them live on $600 a month could not own a gun. College students who needed scholarships or Pell grants could not own a gun until they graduated and got a job. Same sex-partners and the trans-gendered were Have Nots. They were labeled from an update to the Gender Identity Disorder lists of patients submitted by psychiatrists. Fox News reporters could have arms because they needed extra security.
Finally the year came when there were more Have Nots than Haves. Those who had guns, now in the minority, felt threatened and afraid. They avoided engaging with a person diagnosed with a thinking or emotional or gender identity or racial paranoia disorders, even their relatives and former friends. Police departments purchased weapons from the stockpiles of the Russian-American War. Home Owners’ Associations purchased tanks. Republicans ran on a platform of cutting the budget serving all those on The List who had trouble finding employment except from others like them.
Then the daughter of the President of the U.S., Herbert W. Bush, was gang raped at gunpoint at a fraternity party. Barbara was armed but only managed to shoot one of the young men in the foot, while a linebacker wrested the gun from her hand. Most citizens said she shouldn’t have been at a fraternity party in the first place. They wanted to know what Barbara was wearing. Within a year, hounded by reporters and magazine editors, Barbara killed herself with a gun. Utterly distraught, the President called on Congress to ban all guns except for military use. Even the police would only have stun guns with restrictions on their use.
Such a bill never made it out of committee. Bush was voted out of office by the independent Second Amendment Party.
Meanwhile, those on The List, in order to deal with their own relationships and conflicts, had been teaching active listening skills, negotiation, arbitration, mediation, peer support, open dialogue, and reconciliation. They fanaticized that all guns would be melted down to form a Statue of Safety to be erected off the coast of Los Angeles, styled after the Statue of Liberty off the coast of New York. In the majority, those on The List could have run their own candidates for public office, but they, thought to be of unsound mind, had lost the right to vote. Starting with the southern states and sweeping to the northeast, western American states, the west coast, and the Great Plains, registering to vote required a government issued ID, a U.S. birth certificate, and a license to carry a gun.
©Bonnie Schell
May 7, 2020