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Details on Cho's mental state and legal status
Here's the article, in the Washington Examiner.
It may be a bit more complicated than that ... remember the Gun Control Act definitions were drawn up nearly forty years ago, and the mental provisions were a minor issue. [Heck, until we cleaned it up in '86, the statute had two different definitions of felon, one for whether a felon could purchase and one for whether a felon could possess).
The federal definition of prohibited person (18 USC 922(d)(4) is "has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution." "Mental defective" isn't used in state law, nor I suspect in psychiatry, these days. So the best you can say is that a finding that someone is a danger to self or others *probably* falls within it, just on the basis "that sound defective to me." In practice, reliance is usually put on the other clause, committed to a mental institution, since at least that gives you something firm and clear to go on.
What's a bit of a mystery to me is why a judge would find that a person was an imminent danger to self or others and then assign him to outpatient treatment. What if he doesn't go? What if he finally flips before he gets an appointment? He either is a danger or he's not, and if he is, should be committed then and there.
[UPDATE: the stories imply that he was either (a) temporarily committed for observation, or (b) voluntarily checked in for observation. I'd guess the former (why hold a judicial committment hearing if the guy is there voluntarily?) I checked with a friend who has practiced psychiatry for 30+ years, and testified at more such hearings than you can count. They told me that findings of dangerousness, but refusal to commit, is not totally unknown, but very, very, very rare. If a person is insane to the point of being a danger to life, you don't release them and say "now, do be sure to get some treatment." They need to be off the streets and treated, right now. Such a ruling can only be explained by the fact that a judge can do anything he wants without consequence.
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This area needs to be watched closely because it could become a means for back door gun disarmament. They have tried once before in Virginia to ban possession for people in outpatient mental health therapy. That would not only scare some people from much needed treatment, it would disarm a large segment of the population where some doctors give out anti-depressants like candy. Not only that, some anti-depressants are given out for sleep disorders, pain management, and autonomic disorders.
What exactly is mentally ill anyway? If somebody believes that transubstantiation is real and that the bread and wine at Christian Communion actually transforms into the physical body and blood of Christ, is that not crazy? As Lilly Tomlin once stated, “When we talk to god it is called praying, when god talks to us its called schizophrenia.” People who think they know God because they believe the bible is a manifestation of his will are to be deemed crazy. This can be a real problem for a legal definition and due process. Just ask Galileo who thought the Earth revolved around the Sun.
I thought I read that he had voluntarily entered into treatment. If that is true, I don't think he was "committed."
Perhaps he was not committed involuntarily. However, the press has repeatedly reported that a judge did rule him a threat to himself and others.
Call me uninformed, but I sort of thought that sort of judicial ruling would have been reported into NICS.
he could have voluntarily entered treatment, then decided to withdraw before the shrinks thought he was fit to leave. that will not infrequently result in court proceedings to turn a "voluntary" psych patient into an involuntary one.
The paper trail for the court action in Cho's case is 6 pages long and or page 4 the Doctor that did the actual eval concluded that he was having a mental problem but was not a danger to himself and/or others. Here is the url: http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/vatech/seunghui2005ord4.html. I would venture that section A of the certification is why he was not held.
Mark
What if you have been declared incompetent to handle your financial and property assets, but have no mental or psych problems? This area is really full of lots of interesting issues about which reasonable people can honestly disagree.