Tucson Tragedy Will Happen Again if We Aren't Serious About Mental Health

How the mental health system failed Jared Loughner, despite Arizonas lenient commitment standard (Daily Caller)
Read more stories from The Daily Caller MSNBC's Chris Matthews is the left's version of a 'birther,' says Pat Buchanan Congressman's wife sentenced to jail for Tax Fraud Giffords making miraculous recovery, can move arms and legs Military commission prepares to recommend that women be allowed in combat roles TheDC on TV: Jamie Weinstein discusses Health Care on the RT's 'Big Picture with Thom Hartmann' As Americans grapple with the implications of Saturday’s shooting in Tucson, which ki...

Sherrod Brown: Tucson Tragedy Highlights Poor State Of Mental Health Safety Net
Sherrod Brown: Tucson Tragedy Highlights Poor State Of Mental Health Safety Net This morning during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) argued that the Tucson tragedy highlighted the the poor state of the nation’s mental health safety net and said that the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, “should have been identified at the community college when he was thrown out”: BROWN: It’s only going to get worse because of state Budget cuts. ThatR...

Investigators look over bag suspect may have carried
TUCSON — Authorities are examining a black bag containing 9mm ammunition they believe was discarded by the suspect in the Assassination attempt on a congresswoman. Pima County Sheriff's deputies, working with the FBI to gather evidence from the shooting Saturday, said they believe a black diaper bag found Thursday morning by someone walking a dog was used by Jared Loughner, 22, who faces federal Murder and assault charges. The bag was found near the Loughners' suburban home, Sheriff's Deput...

Tucson Tragedy: The Case for Doing Nothing
From The Economist blog ‘Democracy in America’: Still, freakish death is profoundly unnerving and facing its immunity to reason tends to aggravate rather than soothe our cellular fear of disorder and death. Far from leading us to Resignation, the inscrutability of a sui generis disaster sets our minds in mad motion. We desperately and pathetically grope for some blameworthy failure of foresight, some forward-looking lesson, some food for prudence. It doesn’t matter if ther...

Mental health services severely cut in Pima County, AZ in 2010
It's not just patients on the organ transplant list in Arizona that have suffered under Jan Brewer's administration. Mental Health services in the state were drastically cut in 2010. WASHINGTON -- In the past year, Pima County, Ariz., where Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others were shot Saturday, has seen more than 45 percent of its mental health services recipients forced off the public rolls, a service advocate told The Huffington Post. The deep cuts in treatment were protested st...

Investigators Find Black Bag, Ammunition; College Releases Loughner Records
What is this? One big development today in the investigation into Saturday's Mass Shooting: NPR's Dina Temple Raston has confirmed that investigators have located a black diaper bag with ammunition in it. In a statement, the Pima County Sheriff's Department said the diaper bag resembled a backpack and contained 9mm ammunition consistent with the caliber of the weapon used in the shootings. CNN reports the bag was found this morning by a teenager walking his dog. It was found near the neighborhoo...

Wall Street Journal: Loughners Downward Spiral
Wall Street Journal: TUCSON, Ariz.—Students and faculty at Pima Community College feared for their safety as Jared Lee Loughner’s increasingly erratic behavior led to a series of encounters with Campus Police in the eight months before he was suspended from school last fall, police reports show. After he was accused of shooting 20 people last Saturday, school officials described his behavior while at Pima as odd and disruptive. But police reports show in chilling detail that the behavi...

Obama's call for civility seen as striking right tone
WASHINGTON — President Obama's warmly received plea for tolerance and temperance in the wake of last weekend's massacre in Tucson has created an opportunity for him to change the tone of political debate in Washington — and possibly advance his overall agenda. Former White House officials and experts in government and communications said Obama's healing words at Wednesday night's memorial service conveyed a message the country needed to hear. By not pointing fingers or seeking to scor...

Major milestone: U.S. Rep. Giffords moves arms, legs
TUCSON, Ariz. -- U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is opening both eyes, moving both legs and arms and is responding to friends and family. Her doctors call it a "major milestone" in her recovery. "We're hoping that she crosses through many more," said her neurosurgeon, Dr. Michael Lemole. Her remarkable recovery five days after being shot through the head has provided a much-needed dose of jubilation after a tragic week that left the nation in mourning. Giffords and 18 others were shot Saturday ...

Limbaugh's 'Straight Shooter' Tucson Billboard is Removed
Even gun metaphors need a rest now and again. In the wake of the Tucson, Ariz., shooting at an event hosted by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Talk Radio host Rush Limbaugh has been emphatic in his assertion that he and other right-wing political figures in no way contributed to the mindset of suspected gunman Jared Loughner. But an unfortunate billboard advertising Limbaugh's show has given his critics some ammunition of their own. You must login to comment. The Fox Nation is for those opposed to into...

The Tucson, Arizona Shooting 2011: The Interaction of Mental Health Problems and the Language of the Gun
David Brooks and some of the letter writers capture the reaction to this tragic incident well with their sentiment that “the political opportunism occasioned by this tragedy has ranged from the completely irrelevant to the shamelessly irresponsible.” Looking ahead and more calmly, it will be important to think about several dimensions of the tragedy, including first the provision of Mental Health care post-deinstitutionalization, second the Regulation of dangerous weapons, third the ...

Republicans' health repeal would cut off expansion of mental health services
Amanda Terkel has a very good reminder about the Affordable Care Act--with their Repeal of the "job-killing" health reform law, they would kill an expansion of Mental Health services. "The shooter was a very disturbed individual and it appears there were so many warning signs that he was going to do something horrible," Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) wrote on his Facebook page. "We should be focusing on the Mental Health crisis in our country, not politics." As Igor Volsky of ThinkProgress points ou...

Could AZ Shooter Have Been Stopped? Foxs Megyn Kelly Asks OReilly: Where Were The Parents?
Fox’s Megyn Kelly sat down with Bill O’Reilly to talk about the red flags and-possibly-missed signals that might’ve landed the Arizona shooter into police custody or a Mental Health facility before Saturday’s nightmarish Shooting Spree. Kelly outlined the low-level run-ins with police that suspect Jared Loughner is known to have had in the months ahead of the shootings, but concludes that minor drug arrests would not have aroused much suspicion-perhaps...

Consider removing mentally deranged individuals from society
Now that attempts to lay the blame for the Arizona shooting on Talk Radio, Sarah Palin or the Tea Party movement are clearly going nowhere, the new meme seems to be that stricter Gun Control laws could have prevented this tragedy.  I submit that another law is exactly the wrong response to this.  What we need is to start holding officials accountable for enforcing existing laws and consider using existing tools to remove mentally deranged individuals from among us.  While gun cont...

Students' rights weighed as colleges try to assess threats
A growing majority of colleges nationwide are keeping tabs on Students through "threat assessment teams" charged with identifying dangerous students, causing debate to erupt over how much power the schools should have as they try to flag disturbing behavior. Two states — Virginia and Illinois — now legally require such teams and 80% of colleges nationwide have started them since the 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech that left 32 people dead. At Pima Community College in Arizona, a Behav...

Did Pima County Sheriff Dupnik ignore Jared Loughner's warning signs before Gabrielle Giffords shooting?
Almost immediately after the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords and several others by Jared Lee Loughner, Pima County, Arizona Sheriff Clarence Dupnik began politicizing the tragedy [1]. Part of that politicization was justified, part was not. Specifically, considering the role that an overly hostile political environment might have played in the tragedy and urging calm is acceptable, but naming specific persons (Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh) as possible contributing factors is not. In any case, ...

Hundreds come out for Ariz. girl's funeral (AP)
TUCSON, Ariz. – The family of the youngest Victim of the mass shooting in Arizona held hands and paused in a moment of silence Thursday under the large American Flag recovered from Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks, and later escorted the 9-year-old's small brown casket into the church as little girls about her age cried. Several hundred other mourners, many in white T-shirts, lined a road near the church to show support. Christina Taylor Green was born on Sept. 11, 2001, and featured i...

AlaskaDispatch.com: Guns culturally separate Alaskans from rest of U.S.
One thing most Alaskans know is that guns are tools. Many in the 49th state still live close to the land. They use guns to feed themselves by killing animals for food, and they use guns to defend themselves against Grizzly Bears that would like to make them food. Confession here: I once used a Handgun to shoot a grizzly bear off my leg after making the unfortunate discovery that not all grizzly charges are bluffs. Whether the gun saved my life or simply prevented the bear from ripping me up ev...

The Youngest Victim Is Laid To Rest
Arizona Republic: TUCSON - The family of the youngest Victim of the mass shooting in Arizona held hands and paused in a moment of silence Thursday under the large American Flag recovered from Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks, and later escorted the 9-year-old’s small brown casket into the church as little girls about her age cried. Several hundred other mourners, many in white T-shirts, lined a road near the church to show support. Christina Taylor Green was born on Sept. 11, 200...

Former Classmate Of Rep. Giffords Shares Personal Memories
Since last weekend’s deadly shooting in Arizona that claimed six lives, and left 14 wounded - including a vibrant, young Congresswoman - people have been trying to understand how something so heinous, so senseless could happen. It appeared that Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was specifically targeted by the gunman, prompting some to surmise the attack was politically motivated. That touched off a national debate about the tenor of Rhetoric in this country and whether it has ...

Lawmakers And The Crazy Laws They Want To Pass In The Wake Of Tucson Tragedy
When House Majority Leader John Boehner suspended legislative activity in the House of Representatives following the mass Murder in Tucson, Ariz., it was a laudable and thoughtful move. He had previously offered that, "An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve," and by calling for a legislative pause, he reinforced a moment that called for comity. Potentially tendentious legislative debates could wait a week, as legislators took some time to soothe their frayed psyches and show...

Melody Moezzi: Enough With Insane Mental Health Cuts
At 14, I joined my High School Speech and debate team. Ever since, I've been hooked on public speaking. Put me in front of a bunch of strangers, the more the better, and I thrive. I don't need to imagine people in their underwear. All I need is my voice and occasionally, a microphone. So, you can imagine how bizarre it was for me when I recently found myself feeling nervous in front of an audience of only a few dozen people. I'd been invited to speak at an alumni event, which would have been f...

Time for 'If You See Something, Say Something' to Apply to Mental Health, Too
Many years ago before the deinstitutionalization of the nation’s mental Hospitals, the Secret Service would visit the psychiatric facilities to find out if patients posed a threat to the President or any other elected officials.  In the mid-1970’s most states responding to Court Cases by incarcerated patients began the process of closing mental hospitals and returning patients to the communities so they could be in the “least restrictive” alternative. -- The safe hav...

Early Morning Swim
Civility?! But words had nothing to do with Arizona! Wingnuts following their Paul Wellstone script. Way to look petty and small, there, Quitter. The wages of Fiscal Conservatism. But…but…it snowed in New York last month. Teabaggers: still not all all Racist. No Comments Spotlight Tags: Early Morning Swim Related Posts Early Morning Swim October 25, 2010 Early Morning Swim: Sherrod Brown and Rachel Maddow Discuss Violence in Our Politics January 11, 2011 Early Morning Sw...

Early Morning Swim: Sherrod Brown and Rachel Maddow Discuss Violence in Our Politics
Meanwhile, God bless Sheriff Dupnik. The Arizona sheriff investigating the Tucson shooting that left U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords critically wounded had harsh words today for those engaging in political Rhetoric, calling conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh “irresponsible” for continuing the vitriol. “The kind of rhetoric that flows from people like Rush Limbaugh, in my judgment he is irresponsible, uses partial information, sometimes wrong information,” Pima County Sh...