Crazy?

Tr*mp's teleprompter comments on the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings got a lot of air time — especially the parts where he suggested he might be open to some degree of gun control — but one line kept getting dropped off: "we must reform our mental health laws to better identify mentally disturbed individuals who may commit acts of violence and make sure those people not only get treatment, but, when necessary, involuntary confinement."

Thomas Szasz

The movement to deinstitutionalize psychiatric patients was kicked off by Thomas Szasz in the 1960s, beginning with his very influential book, The Myth of Mental Illness.  Granted, his arguments for the civil rights of psychiatric patients may have had less impact than the desire of states to close down the very costly state facilities where they were warehoused; but the process was a civil rights victory nonetheless.  Now, that victory may be undone.

Granted, the Tr*mp speechwriter's chief intent was yet another reiteration of the standard Republican line: guns don't kill people, crazy people (and minorities) do.  In the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting, it's normal to think the gunman "must have been crazy" — and people with psychiatric problems are "other" enough to fit the Republican template for victimhood quite readily.

It remains to be seen whether or not Tr*mp's call for involuntary confinement will become a major Republican talking point in a debate over how to deal with gun violence.  If the private corporations currently running so many of our prisons decide to get into the business, the likelihood will increase exponentially.