Two New York State attacks expose critical ongoing problems with criminal justice and mental health systems

In the past month, a man who hates white people went to a New York, NY subway with a plan to kill, and a man who hates black people went to a Buffalo, NY supermarket with a plan to kill.

Besides both being racist, what else do they have in common?

They have in common previous run-ins with criminal justice and mental health systems which allowed them to stay on the street, and to legally purchase the firearms they used.

It doesn't take more than a cursory glance at news articles covering these crimes to note that these acts are typically perpetrated by individuals who are known to healthcare and/or criminal justice authorities who often have failed to fully use the tools available to them to treat and/or prosecute the suspects.

WPVI (ABC Philadelphia) reported on the NYC subway killer's criminal record:

Court records obtained by the Action News Investigative team reveal a terroristic threat charge in New Jersey in the mid-1990s. He was sentenced to probation and ordered to undergo behavioral health treatment.

He has nine prior arrests in New York City dating from 1992 to 1998 for offenses including possession of burglary tools, a criminal sex act and theft of service, NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said in Wednesday news conference.

CNN reported on the accused Buffalo murderer:

[The suspect] made a “generalized threat” in June while he attended Susquehanna Valley Central High School in Conklin, Gramaglia said Sunday, adding the threat was not racially motivated.

State police took the student for a mental health evaluation, Gramaglia said at a Buffalo news conference. After a day and a half, he was released.

...

The suspect addressed the incident in posts on Discord later shared on 4Chan, writing in a post dated January 30 he “had to go to a hospital’s ER because I said the word’s ‘murder/suicide’ to an online paper in economics class.”

“I got out of it,” the suspect claims, “because I stuck with the story that I was getting out of class and I just stupidly wrote that down. That is the reason I believe I am still able to purchase guns.”

“It was not a joke,” the post reads, “I wrote that down because that’s what I was planning to do.”

The suspect goes on to claim his mental health evaluation lasted only 15 minutes after he spent hours waiting in the emergency room.

For many years the media have worked hard to tamp down any discussion of the mental health component of these incidents. But recent study published in the American Psychological Association's Journal of Threat Assessment and Management asked the question "Has the role of mental health problems in mass shootings been significantly underestimated?" and found that "the role of mental illness in mass shootings is sometimes underestimated, due to a range of public health concerns and methodological nuances."

This study closely analyzed public mass shooters who attacked in the United States from 1966 to 2019. The study authors wrote that "further evidence suggests that almost all public mass shooters may have mental health problems, but that social stigmas, which reduce the likelihood that perpetrators will seek psychological treatment, may help explain popular underestimates." (emphasis added)

And yet instead of seeking to address the real issues at play, we are told by anti-gun rights media and politicians after each and every attack that the fault lies with those who uphold the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

We are told that new gun control laws are the only way to end the killing, even if the laws being proposed for the nation were already in place in the state where the attack occurred, or if the law being proposed would have done nothing to stop the attack being used to promote the agenda.

Until and unless our society decides to address the real problems behind these attacks instead of using them to score political points, we will not see any progress in the prevention of such violence.

I will conclude with a final observation from the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management study:

The most lethal perpetrators exhibited signs of mental illness or suicidal intent (or both) in all cases. When people engage in concerning behaviors that suggest a mass shooting risk, their mental health should be carefully assessed alongside other warning signs. However, it is important to avoid treating people with mental illness like criminals, because social stigma reduces the likelihood that they will ask for, and receive, the psychological help they need.

Chad D. Baus served as Buckeye Firearms Association Secretary from 2013-2019, and continues to serve on the Board of Directors. He is co-founder of BFA-PAC, and served as its Vice Chairman for 15 years. He is the editor of BuckeyeFirearms.org, which received the Outdoor Writers of Ohio 2013 Supporting Member Award for Best Website, and is also an NRA-certified firearms instructor.