What do pundits mean when suggesting "early intervention"?

[Thunderbeast]

I am hearing a lot today about the killer in El Paso. Many are saying that he is a troubled kid with early signs of violent ideation. Pundits are calling for more early intervention.

How, I ask, does this work in practice? Even when an individual is diagnosed with a severe mental illness, and may verbalize threats or intent to harm, our society and our laws protect civil liberties with a very narrow interpretation of "threat to themselves or others". Law enforcement can not act unless a very high bar is reached when making that judgement. Unless the threat is imminent, judges ruling that adults are deemed incompetent is very rare. Law enforcement does not have the resources or skills to "monitor" all of the troubled people who have expressed violent ideas...waiting for them to act out.

There is not one answer that will stop this plague of violence. We must stop private ownership of rapid-fire weapons. We must spend more effort on helping young men find meaning and connections. Racism and nativism must not be tolerated in politics, religion, or conversations across the kitchen table.

[gratuitous]

1. They mean, "Don't offend the Holy Relics"

The High Church of Redemptive Violence, our national religion, holds our country in such thrall that we willingly and even eagerly sacrifice our friends, neighbors, and relatives (including children) to avoid offending the True Believers. Little girls afraid to use the bathroom at school, because they've heard that the classrooms will go into immediate lockdown in an active shooter situation? Yeah, that sounds right to a disturbingly high number of people. Metal detectors dot the public landscape for everything from schools to sports stadiums to airports? A small price to pay to avoid any regulation of firearms. Dozens dead in the twinkling of an eye? Just the price of freedom! The violence hasn't failed us, we have failed the violence. We need more weapons in more hands to save us from more weapons in more hands.

[ooky]

2. It's like asking what the white stuff in bird shit is.

It's shit too.

[Marengo]

3. What or who will be regulating what may and may not be discussed across the kitchen table?

[dawg day]

4. Considering how ineffective protection of victims

Of domestic abuse has been... when the abuser is already IN the justice system, I think this isn't going to work. And we know Trump doesn't want it to work.

[leftstreet]

5. "Texas grandma..foils grandson's mass shooting plot"

Texas grandma heroically foils grandson's mass shooting plot by bringing him to hospital

Aug 5, 2019
A Texas grandmother was hailed as a hero by federal authorities after she foiled a potential mass shooting by taking her grandson to a hospital after he allegedly made threats.

William Patrick Williams, 19, was taken into custody by federal agents in Lubbock, Texas, after he told his grandmother about a plot to "shoot up" a local hotel and then commit suicide by cop, according to the Department of Justice.
(MORE: Mass shooting that killed 20 in El Paso investigated as 'domestic terrorism': Officials)

According to a criminal complaint, the plot came to light on July 13, just weeks before a pair of mass shootings claimed the lives of at least 31 people in one weekend, when Williams told his grandmother that he'd purchased an AK-47.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/texas-grandma-heroically-foils-grandsons-mass-shooting-plot/story?id=64785245

This could be considered 'intervention.' Not only did a family member act, but law enforcement took it seriously

[stopdiggin]

6. a handful of these people would qualify for legal intervention

the vast majority would not .. and, in fact, the majority would be perfectly capable of passing any background checks needed for purchase. I do not mean to discourage the idea of early intervention. If family (or LE) can manage to wangle some help for people with problems that is all to the good. But the OP is absolutely correct in noting that the restrictions on both resources and legal means are severely limiting.

(And thus the "pundits", as OP points out, are yapping away about corrective tool that essentially doesn't exist.)

[jmg257]

7. Maybe something like this?

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212354257

Guns seized from home of SC teen who posted racist video and threatened to shoot up his school after expulsion.

https://www.thestate.com/news/local/education/article233574517.html

Deputies seized weapons from the home of a 16-year-old Cardinal Newman student this summer when they arrested him after the youth said he hated black people and threatened in a video to “shoot up the school,’’ according to the Richland County Sheriff’s Department.

The Sheriff’s Department said the guns were taken as part of its investigation of the 16-year-old’s threats, spokeswoman Cynthia Roldan said Tuesday. She did not immediately have a list of the types of weapons taken from the home..

“We seized all the firearms in the house,’’ Roldan said.

[Igel]

9. Lots of things like that.

Too many times the guys that massacre have a track record, breadcrumbs, leading up to what they did.

Most of the time the exact same set of breadcrumbs leads up to nothing.

Sometimes it leads up to a pile of corpses.

Now, even if gun ownership is deemed a right, that doesn't mean that when the breadcrumbs are there and there's a long trail of them that that right can't be suspended while the breadcrumbs are checked out.

Then, if it's not serious, the guns are returned. If there is a problem, then there has to be some sort of legal process available both to deny the person that right and, upon rehabilitation, restore it. We do that with hackers, with embezzlers, with law enforcement personnel, with educators.

All due process has implicit in it the possibility of error. Due process lets innocent people wind up in prison, and due process lets guilty people walk free. Sometimes. That's how it works in an imperfect universe. But the goal of the system, with adequate due process, is to work towards minimizing the punished innocent and the exculpated guilty. Which, in this case, letting racists who make stupid threats and don't pose a risk keep their guns, and require that people who aren't racists but do pose risks be prohibited from possessing guns.

Due process would mean that if you have guns and are checked out, somebody can't file substantially the same complaint 24 hours later and start the process over. That would be harassment, and that's wrong if it's because the cop doesn't like your skin color, your income, or your gun ownership choice.

There's also the need for the investigation and its findings--but not its result--to be kept confidential. Otherwise you'll have people do electronic lynchings or witch burnings: Instead of standing in front of the jail with torches and rope and guns, saying, "Do something!!!" and, if the mob doesn't get its way, telling the cops to bring the guy out so that the mob can do the "something" that it "knows" the suspect deserves, we easily and sometimes with the same glee destroy a person's life. So even if he's not guilty, he's made to suffer for the mob's vigilantism and self-righteousness judgment. And then we move on, and never actually count the innocent lives destroyed. The thing about a bullying mob is that it never can admit its wrong--because as soon as it does, it's no longer a mob but a bunch of people who insist they're not responsible.

[treestar]

8. It's odd, as it would put every introvert or

incel under a kind of scrutiny. The resulting loss of freedom might be worse than the freedom to have guns.

What kind of society do they want in the name of having guns? One where everyone is watched all the time for any signs of being a little off? Sounds medieval.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

10. Generally, they mean violating civil rights.

If they meant better anger management curricula, critical examination of gender roles and toxic masculinity, the role of violence and violent rhetoric in the public square, and so on, they would say that.

[sir pball]

11. I mean, if some kid is visibly growing racist RWNJ

I wouldn't say that "early intervention" in terms of society engaging, educating, and hopefully straightening him out would be a bad thing.

But that's not what the racist RWNJs mean by "early intervention".