Three Simple Steps to Control Guns

by Molly Ivins

Until we get more love in society, here are some other actions we might consider. With the 20-20 hindsight that's always so useless in these situations, we can see clearly that Larry Gene Ashbrook had a raging case of paranoid schizophrenia, and somebody should have done something about it.

Even then, of course, there is no guarantee that all this shooting wouldn't have happened anyway.

Assume that Ashbrook had been delivered to John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, examined and diagnosed with schizophrenia. The hospital could hold him no more than 30 days.

At least he would have been given medications that are often quite effective in treating the disease. The weakness of the system, in addition to not being able to hold violent patients, is that there is no way to ensure that patients who are mentally ill take their medication, even if they have it.

The outpatient treatment system is pathetically underfunded and needs backup. For example, each patient should have someone responsible for seeing that the patient takes the meds daily. Patients often stop taking medication, either because they don't like the way it makes them feel or simply because in the chaos of their lives -- many are homeless -- getting and keeping track of a prescription is too difficult. A relative, a responsible friend, even a storekeeper (many mentally ill people have a sort of "territory") willing to make sure that the meds are taken regularly would be of infinite value.

In this case, none of the gun laws currently on the books would have prevented Ashbrook from buying weapons, as he had no officially recorded history of mental illness. But that doesn't mean we should say, "Oh, this proves that gun laws don't help" and forget it. Most of the 65 people killed with handguns in this country every day could be saved by simple, far- from- drastic gun-control measures.

We are so blase about gun violence in this country that only these multiple killings now get much media attention. Without three or four or more dead, the media hordes don't show up. But the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of victims of gun violence are single shootings.

In this category, our easiest choices are:

• Close the gun-show loophole.   This was the bill that died this year in the Texas Legislature, killed by the National Rifle Association and its supporters. We already know that the Brady law is effective, so what excuse is there for leaving this idiotic loophole?

  The bill was actually killed in committee the night of the Littleton shootings. The next day, Gov. Bush said he favored some such measure, but then he backed down, opposed the House bill, wouldn't propose one of his own and didn't like the federal version, so the whole project died.

• Trigger locks and/or requiring that guns be locked up.   This is the common problem with legal weapons. It's what happened in the Jonesboro school killings. The boys went first to one home where all the guns were locked up. So then they went on to another home, where the guns were just lying around.

  Granted, it is a considerable imposition to have the government tell you how to handle something inside your own home, but we do it with pesticides and other fatal things. The FBI says that 750,000 guns a year are stolen -- because they're not locked up. And trigger locks to keep kids form using guns are no different from myriad special legal protections for children.

• Straw purchase.   When the state of Virginia passed its one-a-month limit on gun purchases, a curious thing happened. The guns traced in crimes in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York City -- all with gun control laws -- had been overwhelmingly linked to purchases made in Virginia. Traffickers would buy cases of guns at a time and transport to them to the city streets for resale with no checks required. Since Virginia passed that law, the East Coast cities are finding that guns used in their crimes now trace back to sales in Florida, Georgia and Texas.

The latest marketing wrinkle by the gun makers is to tout the TEC-9 as the gun that leaves no fingerprints -- it is "fingerprint-resistant."

Now let's see, do we think that particular marketing approach is aimed at people so neat that they just hate seeing fingerprints on their guns? Or perhaps at shooters who regularly eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches just before shooting?

Who do you think might be interested in a gun that won't take fingerprints?