More, and very disturbing, details about the Navy Yard shooter are emerging. Those who would tell us whether we can or can not exercise our rights as law-abiding Americans seem more than a little incompetent when it comes to doing required background checks for security clearances.
Perhaps one of the most telling comments in this post is "While in hindsight, the string of events could have set off alarm bells within the Navy, officials said Monday that it is difficult even now to see them as glaring indicators of last week's shooting rampage." With such rare yet tragic behavior, the "glaring indicators" are usually the act itself - until then it is always about probabilities. So what they are admitting is that any form of "enhanced" background checks would not have made any difference - how could it when people, such as these officials, work so hard to explain away a history of troubling behavior.
Well, one could give a long lecture about base rates and sensitivity and specificity and the problems with predicting rare instances of behavior, but what's the point? It seems to me that the first answer is to move the bar in a way that catches more "suspicious" behavior and at least subjects it to further scrutiny. What is the greatest risk, too may false positives or false negatives? Clearly we would rather risk false positive identifications given the tragic consequences of failed prediction (false negatives). Yes, it is easy to say that Alexis' behavior may or may not have been predictive of this event - confirmation came on the day he killed 12 people. Yes, it is likely that many people who engage in similar behavior will never be mass murderers. Still, if one works this predictive equation - with all the pertinent variables - the misconduct, the firearms-related offenses, the mental health concerns - there is sufficient evidence there for concern and if people had not worked (and were not working) so hard to explain it away or justify their decisions, this might never have happened. We do not need to always rely on hindsight to obtain our focus.
At its most simple, there is a decision here to be made; whose rights are we going to threaten? On one hand, the rights of those who have concerning behavioral histories and suspected mental illness can be held sacrosanct, in which case we must accept cases like this. Yes, we can try to put all of this under the pejorative heading of "profiling" and thus refuse to do something that might help.
On the other hand, to avoid that, one could simply deny a right that is enshrined in the Constitution to a large law-abiding segment of the population, suggest that the only rights we can exercise are those that can be exercised peaceably by the least able among us. This has been the favored approach of a group that prefers to extend protections to many special groups - their rights to fair and equal treatment - yet heaps derision on an even larger group wishing to exercise their rights.
It seems a choice based on ideology, not effectiveness. Those who hate , do not carry, and are afraid of guns, who despise as antiquated a certain set of values, will choose to deny rights they themselves do not care to exercise. They will suggest the Constitution is a musty old, out-dated relic. Others, who abide by the law, who are not criminals and who desire to take responsibility for their own security in a safe and responsible manner, will suggest that a better approach is to hold individuals accountable for their own behavior.
Let us take the issue of mental health as an example. We have come a long way in removing the stigma associated with mental health problems. This is a good thing. However, to the extent that mental health concerns - specific severe mental health concerns - might typify some who engage in mass murder, it behooves us to, without stigmatizing, consider them as predictors of such behavior.
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