Ay ya yi. What now?
James Fuller, victim of the Tuscon tragedy, yells, “You’re Dead!” to Trent Humphries in a taping for Christiane Amanpour’s show. Humphries suggested that any gun control discussions should wait. Fuller disagreed loudly (and violently, obviously).
Thank God he is where he is supposed to be – getting a psych evaluation. The arm-chair psychologist in me is pretty sure it’s PSTD. He desperately needs help, whatever the diagnosis.
It’s a tragic shame that Jared Loughner didn’t get the help he desperately needed. Why didn’t he? Erratic outbursts in class – some threatening to harm others. A teacher was afraid that a discussion she had with him would have turned violent. Danger to self or others. Should that have warranted an evaluation? I guess it’s easier to kick him out of school. It’s no longer their problem.
If Loughner got the evaluation Fuller is getting, could the tragedy have been avoided? Sadly, we’ll never know.
Spinny Liberal 
January 16th, 2011 at 4:44 PM
I agree spinny. Adequate mental health care in most places is appalling. Sadly too, it is one of the areas that gets cut first when economic hard times hit.
BTW, thanks for your comments on my blog. I agree that the TP is nowhere near what Reagan was. In fact, most of them today would have considered him a RINO.
Something malfunction on my blog where your comment was not there. I received your message through the e-mail alert but was unable to locate it on the site.
-Larry
January 16th, 2011 at 7:58 PM
I really enjoyed your blog. I didn’t know the story about what the doctor said to Reagan after the assassination attempt. It’s so strange how different things are now than then.
January 16th, 2011 at 8:53 PM
Great analysis Spinny. With regards to Loughner, I think that there were a number of places that the proverbial ball was dropped… Certainly one could make a case with what happened at the school for sure but I think ultimately, there are holes in the system right now that make it way too easy for the rotten apples to drop through the cracks. The school took the easy road out by not actually pushing the system into work as far as seeing to it that Loughner was sent to wherever he REALLY needed to be sent.
On the other side of the handoff was the Sheriff’s Office. It is in my opinion that they really needed to follow up better with this guy. He had developed a bit of a rep with a few misdemeanor pickups prior to the whole Pima CC thing. I think that was an opportunity to get him somewhere as well.
Regardless, the system in most places isn’t adequately capable of properly diagnosing these types of problems when they come in contact with them. Even if they see something wrong, often the course of treatment is too short or a complete misdiagnosis lets these wackjobs out too soon with the wrong treatment altogether.
I hope Fuller gets the right kind of help and I hope his outburst was just him trying to make some sort of a “statement” on things and not actually a true thought of his. Sadly, it seems Loughner was beyond any help a long time ago. Glad to see your head is all “spinny” over here… keep up the good work(and take it easy on us Conservatives, we’re sensitive you know! LOL)
January 16th, 2011 at 9:10 PM
I didn’t know about the midemeanor pickups. That’s also really disturbing because they had the opportunity to place him under an involuntary psych hold then. Water under the bridge that we didn’t have to cross. Anyway, yes, my head has been getting all kinds of spinny. Thank God I have this outlet because being headless isn’t a good look for me. 😉 I’ll try to go easy on y’all, especially now that you’ve admitted that you guys are more sensitive than you let on. 😉
January 17th, 2011 at 12:04 AM
I think the problem for Loughner is the odds. Insanity defenses are often unsuccessful, so unless a judge declares him incompetent (which is highly unlikely, given the outrage), he’s probably looking at the death penalty.
January 17th, 2011 at 8:16 AM
Yup. Being lucid at the arraignment didn’t help an insanity defense or having any shot of being ruled incompetent to stand trial. I think the best his attorney can do now is to try to get the death penaly off the table. Though, I think that would be extremely difficult too.
He’s toast.