We’re all hearing about the Maine spree shooter having been hospitalized in a psychiatric facility for two weeks this summer. He apparently was having auditory hallicinations. We don”t know if they were command hallucinations which are auditory hallucinations that instruct a patient to act in specific ways. These commands can range in seriousness from innocuous to life-threatening.  He had also threatened to carry out a shooting at a military base.

If you were’nt already aware of them you have probably heard about the yellow flag law in Maine, and similar laws called red flag laws in other states in the news, you now have if you are following the news.

My background with guns:

I was a reserve police officer for 20 years. Because of this I had a number of police officers referred to me for counseling. Because I carried a firearm at times both on and off-duty I was comfortable with officers bringing their weapons into therapy.

When I was briefly the member of a group practice my boss had a state police officer in therapy. He insisted she leave her gun in her car. This was probably against police policy, in fact when I went to the reserve police academy the instructor asked whether any of us had guns in our cars and told us to get them because of the chance someone might break in to the vehicles.

I once had a client who had muliple personalities and one of them I knew could be dangerous. I knew she had a revolver. Before our sessions I insisted I look in her purse to make she she didn’t have a gun there.

I also knew the psychologist who did fitness for duty evaluations for the Boston Police Department. He could ends a police officer’s career. He had to accept that one of his clients could hold a grudge against him.

Therapists always assume some risk of harm. I once had a woman in therapy whose husband was violent with her. He used to bring her to and from therapy. He was none-to-happy about her being in therapy especially when I encoraged her to go to community colllege. He burned her books. One time I saw him waiting for her in his pick-up truck and he had a rifle on the gun-rack in the rear window. I had the thought that he could end up shooting me.

All this is by way of prelude to my question. Would you like to be the therapist who raised a red or yellow flag to stop someone like Robert Card from buying a firearm?

I don’t know what happened during Robert Card’s hospitalization, however I am certain that the facility is under high alert with a large police presence.

How many therapists would want to stop a would be killer from buying a firearm? I would hate to be in the position of either reporting a highly unstable and potentially violent client as a danger to others whether to stop them from buying a firearm or to initiate an involunetary inpatient psychiatric assessment. I was lucky enough as an outpatient therapist never to have the responsibility of doing this.

This is a risk many therapists and other health care professionals have to accept as part of the job, but having the task being actual job is another matter.

It’s bad enough that we live in a political climate where violence against those one disagrees with is encouraged by the likes of Donald Trump and where we have stories like Man breaks into Jewish family’s home ​and threatens to kill them ‘because they’re Israeli’.

I don’t have an aswer to how people who professionals consider to have a high potential for violence to raise a flag, red or yellow or whatever it’s called, to stopped them from acting on their wish to inflict harm on others.

You can say it’s a dangerous job and someone has to do it but those in the mental health and other health professions didn’t sign up to be police officers, fire fighters, or soldiers.

I can only imagine living with the fear for myself and my family that a patient or client of mine was seething with so much rage at me and plotting retribution that I was living like someone who had testified against a mob boss only without being in the Witness Protection Program.

By far the majority of people who are hosptialized in psychiatric facilites involuntarily haven’t been violent and will never be violent. A yellow flag law like the one in Maine would. as I understand it, prohibit all of them from purchasing a firearm. This might seem unfair but it would be a price society would have to pay. However such a law wouldn’t keep someone intent on acquiring a firearm from getting one and seeking revenge against anyone who they blame for impinging on their desire to walk into any gun store and buying an assualt rife and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

It seems to me that the only solution to ending the epidemic of killings using assault rifles is very long term since there are so many already possessed by Americans who wouldn’t readily give them up even in a buy-back program. The answer should be a no-brainer. Assault type weapons should be banned. At least would-be killers wouldn’t be able to walk into their neighborhood gun store and buy one.

It would take several generatons for those who now own them to die and then hopefully not give them to their kids who would then pass them onto their kids.

Earlier today: If only Trump with his hapless lawyers could trade them all in for Elle Woods he might stand a chance of the not guilty verdict she got in Legally Blonde. Trump needs a real life smart as a whip Lawyer Barbie

Read Stressline archives here, including one posted earlier this morning.