Since the morning of April 16, Virginia Tech students, professors and administrators have displayed extraordinary dignity in the face of one of the nation’s great tragedies. My respect for the institution and those who are part of it has increased immeasurably. I can only hope that I, if faced with a comparable horror, would acquit myself as well.
Although punditry is my business, I have largely withheld commentary about the public policy implications of the shooting rampage for two reasons: First, I thought it appropriate to let the mourners bury the bodies of their loved ones before pontificating on the meaning of it all, and second I wanted to see more facts emerge. We do no honor to the fallen by jumping to conclusions based on preconceived notions. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has done precisely the right thing by setting up an independent review panel to inquire into the April 16 tragedy and the events leading up to it.
Presumably, the review panel will endeavor to determine if the rampage could have been prevented, and what it will take to prevent another such incident from reoccurring. The panel’s inquiries undoubtedly will follow many of the same trails blazed by journalists investigating the massacre: Were Virginia’s gun laws tight enough? Is Virginia’s system for treating the mentally ill too lax and unaccountable?
To my mind, the central question is this: How was it possible for someone as mentally unstable as Cho Seung-Hui to acquire two guns? In 2005, a Montgomery County magistrate had found the student to be a danger to himself and others. But, according to Bill McElway with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, state and federal authorities disagree over whether such a finding restricted Cho’s right to purchase a gun.
After the magistrate found Cho to be a danger, McElway reports, he was detained for assessment at a county mental facility, then released the next day. State law did not permit him to be institutionalized: He was to be provided the least restrictive appropriate form of medical care: in his case, outpatient treatment. Because he was released, authorities did not deem him to have been “admitted” to a mental facility. Writes McElway:
That means no record of the person’s assessment, even if the person is found to be mentally ill and a danger, is forwarded to law-enforcement agencies for background check purposes.
So, the “obvious” remedy is to tighten up reporting requirements for mentally ill patients. If future Chos are found to be a danger, that information should be conveyed to law enforcement officials and should be grounds for blocking the purchase of hand guns.
But it’s not quite so simple. The desire to restrict the rights of crazy people to acquire hand guns — a restriction that I totally support, incidentally — will run smack into the rights of the mentally ill. I dare say that the review panel will uncover a host of advocates who work tirelessly to expand the privacy rights of the mentally ill, to avoid actions that would stigmatize them and to require due process before institutionalizing them against their will or depriving them of other civil rights. Cho fell through the cracks, I hypothesize, because a broad-based social movement dedicated to taking the mentally ill out of institutions and integrating them back into society has worked diligently to expand their rights.
We might well find that the problem in Cho’s case wasn’t insufficiently tight gun laws, or inadequate spending on mental health care. As Walt Kelly said, “We have found the enemy and it is us” — our culture and legal system, which gives primacy of the rights of individuals, including those of the mentally ill, over the collective good. Should the review panel find that to be the case, the “obvious” solution isn’t so obvious at all.