Funny how it's only violent white guys who seem to be missing out on all the mental health services that would've prevented them from crimes.
There's also a vast misunderstanding of what "not guilty by reason of mental deficiency" (adjust per local legal phrasing) actually means, which doesn't include "dude believed it was okay to shoot into crowds."
Not-guilty-by can include "dude was under the influence and believed he was waving a watering can at a garden of flowers; was not aware bullets were involved." It could include "dude believed he was in a video game and shooting NPCs who were going to be awake again during the next scene." It could even include "dude had become convinced he was trapped in a Soviet prison in 1957 and had to shoot his way out to freedom."
It cannot include, "dude was aware he was in Vegas, and believed the crowds below him included a lot of Muslims, and thought he was doing the country a favor by clearing some of them out." That's "crazy" by normal standards, but it's not the kind of "crazy" that allows for a legal defense.
... we lack vocabulary, here. Part of that is the stigma that mental illness has always had, but part is a lack, even in the mental health care professions, of terminology that distinguishes between delusions of perception (e.g. "those are video game characters; not people") and failure to accept basic societal premises (e.g. "people of X category should be killed if they're in my way").
We see the conflation of these thoughts all the time in cases where white cops killed a black person: "I was afraid for my life" is accepted as a misreading of the situation, rather than a failure of education and judgement.
no subject
There's also a vast misunderstanding of what "not guilty by reason of mental deficiency" (adjust per local legal phrasing) actually means, which doesn't include "dude believed it was okay to shoot into crowds."
Not-guilty-by can include "dude was under the influence and believed he was waving a watering can at a garden of flowers; was not aware bullets were involved." It could include "dude believed he was in a video game and shooting NPCs who were going to be awake again during the next scene." It could even include "dude had become convinced he was trapped in a Soviet prison in 1957 and had to shoot his way out to freedom."
It cannot include, "dude was aware he was in Vegas, and believed the crowds below him included a lot of Muslims, and thought he was doing the country a favor by clearing some of them out." That's "crazy" by normal standards, but it's not the kind of "crazy" that allows for a legal defense.
... we lack vocabulary, here. Part of that is the stigma that mental illness has always had, but part is a lack, even in the mental health care professions, of terminology that distinguishes between delusions of perception (e.g. "those are video game characters; not people") and failure to accept basic societal premises (e.g. "people of X category should be killed if they're in my way").
We see the conflation of these thoughts all the time in cases where white cops killed a black person: "I was afraid for my life" is accepted as a misreading of the situation, rather than a failure of education and judgement.