Tucson, Arizona (CNN) -- In his first public statement since the weekend shooting rampage outside an Arizona supermarket, the husband of a wounded U.S. congresswoman thanked supporters and expressed condolences to families of other victims.
Xliberalfool wrote:
This guy was definitely a member of the "padded walls club". I think that we can all agree on that.
I see many of you writing that someone should have done something about this kid's mental state, long before it came to this.
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Question: Are you all ready to limit our civil liberties in order to stop these types of tragedies from occurring? Are we ready to give up the right to refuse medical/psychiatric treatment? I have experience in dealing with psychotic patients, and many will refuse their medications. Anti-psychotic drugs have pretty nasty side effects, sometimes (but rarely) they can even prove to be fatal.
(There is more under "Reply" to this comment.)
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Right now, we can hold and treat someone, only if their behavior is bad enough that the police believe their is an imminent threat of physical harm to that person's self or others. Even then, the confinement is only a maximum of 2-3 days (I believe that is the law. Let me know if I am incorrect).
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What I am talking about is forcibly treating people on both an inpatient an out-patient basis, for many years/decades. We would have to identify them, round them up at least once a month, hold them down, and give them a depot (long term) shot of anti-psychotic meds. Unfortunately anti-psychotic meds do not work for everyone, and some would require confinement in government run sanitariums.
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How would you like it, if some government doctor thought your son/daughter might be a little too eccentric, and there was nothing that you could do to make government leave him/her alone. That is a slippery slope to start on, and most of all... it is down right un-American. But so is shooting your congresswoman, a federal judge, and a nine year old girl. I have not made up my mind on this yet.
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