Conservative Libertarian Outpost

In the wake of last week’s shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, some Democrats cannot resist the urge to advocate more stringent gun control. New York Democrats Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy have introduced legislation that would grant $250 million to state agencies and $125 million to state courts to pay for computer upgrades so that information such as an individual’s mental-health history could more readily be made available to the FBI. Said Schumer: “[H]ad it been in place last week, [it] may well have stopped last week’s unspeakable tragedy.” As columnist Ann Coulter quipped, “We’ve banned mass murder and that hasn’t seemed to work. So now we’re going to ban mass murderers. Yes, that will do the trick!” Any chance we could enact a ban on mentally ill senators?

I doubt that we can ban Hopolophobes, but it’s a nice thought.

For Immediate Release
April 25, 2007

From: Dr. Ignatius Piazza
Founder and Director
Front Sight Firearms Training Institute
http://www.frontsight.com
1.800.987.7719

Please Forward to Your Local Newspapers, Radio
Stations, Television News Stations, Family and
Friends

Las Vegas, Nevada: Several years ago, I asked a very
pointed question in a press release sent to the
National Wire Service immediately following the
killings at Columbine High School.

A few days after the Virginia Tech Massacre, I
again asked the same very direct question.

I asked, “How many times must we experience another
Littleton, Colorado or Virginia Tech before we wake up,
study the research and adopt policies which actually reduce
crime and begin saving our children instead of leaving them
helpless victims when the next psych drug user snaps?”

After Columbine, while most journalists and lawmakers
focused on whether or not my answer to protecting
children by arming teachers was the right solution,
it seems everyone missed my understanding of the root
cause that drove these kids to commit such atrocities!
The root cause was and continues to be the
psych drugs that are being pushed on our children!
In some cases children as young as kindergarten age!

After Columbine, nobody wanted to believe the founder
and director of the nation’s largest firearms training
institute when he pointed his finger at psych drugs as the
cause of the problem. During numerous radio, TV and
newspaper interviews I would bring it up and it would fall
on deaf ears with no reaction at all.

So I spent $300,000 to create a Hollywood produced, award
winning DVD entitled Front Sight Story, Chapter One: Your
Legacy. In “Your Legacy,” I interviewed people of age who
actually experienced an America when guns were so freely
available to children and youth, that you could order them
through the mail with no ID required, no waiting period, and
literally carry them to school to place in the back of the
classroom with no problems at all.

During this time, when guns were the most accessible in our
country’s entire history, there were no school shootings,
drive by shootings, or murderous teenage rampages.

What changed? Here is what changed: Powerful psych drugs
were developed and became the profitable, prescription
answer to a wide variety of extremely questionable if not
outright fabricated mental disorder diagnosis of youth.
Little Johnny doesn’t want to go to school? Take this
pill… Little Johnny isn’t learning? Take this pill…
Little Johnny feels anxious? Take this pill… Little
Johnny is sad? Take this pill… Little Johnny is restless?
Take this pill… Little Johnny is rebellious? Take this
pill…

And once Little Johnny started taking the brightly colored
pills to handle the normal challenges of youth that every
prior generation had overcome naturally through the process
of social maturity, Little Johnny began the downward spiral
of adverse prescription drug side effects leading to
multiple prescription, psycho drug cocktails… stronger
drugs… physical and psychological dependency… and the
now infamous and reoccurring homicidal and suicidal
reactions caused by these very powerful, mind bending drugs.

There is a truism I keep posted on the wall above my
computer. It reads, “People of integrity expect to be
believed. When they are not, they let time prove them
right.”

Well, unfortunately and tragically in this case, time has
proven me right. Numerous school shootings over the last
several years ALL linked to children and teens under the
influence of powerful, prescribed psych drugs!

Psych Drugs, NOT GUNS, Are the Common Deadly Thread in
School Shootings!

And now, instead of Dr. Ignatius Piazza, the Founder and
Director of Front Sight saying, Its Psych Drugs– Not Guns–
Doing the Killing, I am getting assistance in spreading my
message from some of the most unlikely, anti-gun sources you
could ever imagine…

See the link below to watch what Michael Moore, the Darling
of the Liberal Left, Anti-Gun Media now has to say about the
cause of Columbine.

Michael and I may never agree about the importance of an
armed society to the freedom and protection of law abiding
citizens or the fallacy of gun control, but we could be best
friends in our efforts to expose the truth about the profit
driven history of psych drug prescriptions systematically
creating homicidal and suicidal monsters out of our youth in
America. In fact, I stand ready and willing to assist
Michael Moore in any way possible on such an endeavor.

Now that people on both sides of the gun control debate
agree that psych drugs are creating suicidal and homicidal
maniacs out of our youth, the time has come to expose the
truth to all of America.

You can help save today’s youth from further psych drug
abuse and protect America’s next generation from the horrors
of psych drug prescriptions. It only takes 10% of the
population to unite, stand up and say, “No more!” for
social movements to succeed. You CAN do something about this!

Simply spread this press release far and wide to all on your
lists and ask your friends and family to do the same.
Instead of circulating the latest joke or cartoon of the
week, make the entirety of this earth-shattering truth the
next e-mail that goes ’round the world! Don’t rely on anyone
else to do what you should do. Don’t be apathetic.

Take one minute to do the right thing and you will feel
great about it for the rest of your life because the future
children you save from being shot by a psych drugged maniac
may be your own children or grandchildren…

See the links below for more irrefutable proof of the
connection between psych drugs and school shootings… It’s
Psych Drugs, Not Guns, Doing the Killing!

Michael Moore admits missing the target in his documentary
Bowling for Columbine– Psych drugs should have been the
right target:
http://www.drugawareness.org/Images/Moore/moore1.swf

Fox National News reporter Douglas Kennedy exposes the link
between psychiatric drugs and school shootings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S-7aNPf33A

Medical Doctors and Psychiatrists Now Admit Connections
Between Psych Drugs and Homicidal and Suicidal Actions of
Children and Teens:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSZ9YTnSkLc

Experts Say Psychiatric Drugs Linked to Long List of School
Shooting Sprees:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55310

Get your free DVD copy of Dr. Ignatius Piazza’s, Front Sight
Story, Chapter One: Your Legacy
http://www.frontsight.com/freedvdoneprod.asp

For More Information on Front Sight Firearms Training
Institute and Dr. Ignatius Piazza’s free, 15 Gun Training
Reports click here:
http://www.frontsight.com

Founder and Director
Front Sight Firearms Training Institute
http://www.frontsight.com
1.800.987.7719

 Context matters.

Seung-Hui Cho’s violent and disturbing play, Richard McBeef, tells a disjointed story of a broken family and the murder of a 13-year-old boy. The writing is childish and unimaginative; the scene is surreal. How does this differ from movies like Saw or Reservoir Dogs? Context.

Many aspiring authors invent horrific scenes. Some progress to successful writing and directing careers. Most linger in obscurity. A minute number go on to commit violent acts. For those few, writing is less an act of creativity than an expression of anguish and rage. Knowing the difference before the fact is sometimes impossible. It’s a question that mental health professionals have wrestled with for decades.

Perhaps one of the distinguishing marks of writing-as-a-cry-for-help is the context in which it occurs. By all accounts, Cho was an isolated individual who behaved in a bizarre fashion. From an early age, he was described as uncommunicative and brooding, and his stalking behavior speaks of a young man who was baffled by the rules of normal social discourse.

So why didn’t someone stop him?

Sadly, they tried. In fact, several individuals correctly read the signs and tried to intervene. Professor Nikki Giovanni reportedly insisted that she would resign rather than continue to expose herself and her students to Cho’s threatening behavior. Giovanni’s department head, Lucinda Roy, was so troubled by Cho that she reached out to him, offering individual lessons and reporting his behavior to campus police. Another of Cho’s professors, Lisa Norris, is said to have approached her Dean regarding Cho’s behavior. Norris also reached out to Cho, referring him to the university counseling center.

Others did the right thing, too. After Cho was arrested for stalking, campus police took him to a psychiatric facility rather than the county jail, which might have been easier. Later, a judge recognized the signs of mental illness and ordered Cho to participate in outpatient treatment. Both the police and the judge could have let him slip through the cracks entirely.

These are cynical times for some people. In the American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Psychology, author Mary Pipher laments that, “we no longer live in a culture where we know most of the people we encounter.” The article was titled, “America: A toxic lifestyle?”

But many of the individuals who crossed paths with Cho responded appropriately – even compassionately – to a very troubled young man. If a finger of blame can be pointed in any direction, it is at the paradoxical notion of the collective “we.”

It is the collectivist’s willingness to trade individual liberty for the illusion of safety that has created gun-free zones that are so very attractive to killers like Cho. And, ironically, the same government that intrudes too far into our lives has withered in one of the few areas where one can make a strong case for government intervention in the lives of individuals: responding to the severely mentally ill.

According to a 2004 study by New York University’s Michael Almog, mental health care is difficult to obtain for “a population that is disproportionately and increasingly male, younger and of non-white race-ethnicity…. Psychiatric inpatients are overwhelmingly discharged to ‘the community’ and with a diminishing probability of discharge to a long-term psychiatric care facility.” The parallels to Cho’s life are eerie.

In the 1960’s, our country began dismantling the state mental hospital system, along with the infrastructure that allowed for the assessment and care of the severely mentally ill. Most noticeable among this group are young men, similar in age to Cho, who are experiencing their first severe psychotic disturbance.

In 1963, President Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act. It promised new outpatient mental health centers meant to replace state hospitals. State hospitals subsequently discharged their patients, but few of the new centers actually materialized. Even if the 2000 centers recommended by the National Institute for Mental Health had been built, decades of harsh experience have shown us that they are not equipped to handle severe mental illness. One of the biggest problems is that these patients simply don’t show up for treatment.

One of the reasons the state hospital system was dismantled was the promise of new medical knowledge. Another causal factor came from civil rights activists who regarded institutionalization as cruel and inhumane. Some activists seemed to regard mental illness as a right that should not be tampered with. “We” were willing to trade the safety of patients and the public for a utopian vision of boundless civil liberty. Now, the most severely mentally ill – those who were meant to benefit from deinstitutionalization – frequently end up homeless or in prison. They are too often the victims or the perpetrators of crime.

Clearly, “we” are confused about violence and civil rights. We force the responsibility of self-care on those who cannot manage it, while denying ourselves personal liberty and the means of self defense. But while collective confusion helped set the tone for the events at Virginia Tech, the wisdom of the individual nearly triumphed.

It was individuals – not an illusory collective – who acted heroically around Cho, even if they were unable to stop him. And it is individuals who will have the power and the responsibility to recognize and respond to the next troubled soul. Isolation, powerlessness, hostility, and pain: these are the context in which fantasies of violence can sometimes become reality. They are also the indication that it is time to follow the example of those who did what they could to prevent the tragedy at Virginia Tech.

References Almog, M. (2004). Managing United States mental healthcare policy: Changing patterns and trends in New York city acute psychiatry use, 1983-2000. Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences, 64(7-A), 2640.

DeAngelis, T. (2007). America: a toxic lifestyle? Monitor on Psychology, 38(4), 50-52.

Moynihan, D. P. (July 12, 1999). Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill. 106th Congress. Downloaded April 23, 2007 from: http://www.psychlaws.org/GeneralResources/article22.htm.

Torrey, E.F. & Zdandowicz, J.D. (1999). Deinstitutionalization hasn’t worked. The Washington Post, July 9, 1999. Downloaded April 23, 2007 from: http://www.psychlaws.org/GeneralResources/article17.htm

By Shawn Smith

(c) 2007
The Independence Institute
13952 Denver West Parkway, Suite 400
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303-279-6536
www.independenceinstitute.org

INDEPENDENCE INSTITUTE is a non-profit, non-partisan Colorado think tank. It is governed by a statewide board of trustees and holds a 501(c)(3) tax exemption from the IRS. Its public policy research focuses on economic growth, education reform, local government effectiveness, and Constitutional rights.

Jon Caldara is the President of the Independence Institute.

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