Trump suggests opening more mental institutions to deal with mass shootings
President Donald Trump said Thursday that the US should build more mental institutions to deal with mass shooters.
(CNN)President Donald Trump said Thursday that the US should build more mental institutions to deal with mass shooters.
"We're going to be looking at that very closely and we're looking at the whole gun situation. I do want people to remember the words mental illness. These people are mentally ill and nobody talks about that, but these are mentally ill people. And people have to start thinking about it," Trump said ahead of his campaign rally in New Hampshire.
"I think we have to start building institutions again because you know, if you look at the '60s and the '70s, so many of these institutions were closed, and the people were just allowed to go onto the streets. And that was a terrible thing for our country. ... A lot of our conversation has to do with the fact that we have to open up institutions. We can't let these people be on the streets," he added.
Trump's comments come less than two weeks after back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, killed dozens. The suggestions also come a day after a man shot six police officers when he barricaded himself for several hours in his Philadelphia home, where police were attempting to come in with a narcotics warrant.
The emphasis on mental illness -- an approach favored by pro-gun groups -- marked a slight change from earlier this week. On Tuesday, he claimed that many Republicans support his push for strengthening background checks on gun sales -- a view that appears at odds with what lawmakers are telling the President in private.
Trump has said he believes he needs to take a concrete step on gun control, rather than a symbolic one. He's been encouraged by some aides, including daughter Ivanka, to press on background checks.
But others -- including those with more experience dealing with Washington Republicans -- have appeared skeptical. There isn't evidence yet that Trump is wielding an aggressive arm-twisting campaign for a specific piece of legislation as the Senate continues its extended vacation. And an ever-nearing reelection campaign, when support from a gun-loving base will be essential, is likely to weigh on Trump's thinking.
Trump said later Thursday he has been speaking with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell about background checks legislation.
"I've been speaking to everybody about it and we don't want to see crazy people owning guns, but I also want to remember that mental illness is something nobody wants to talk about," he said. "These people are mentally ill and we need to study that also."
"The gun doesn't pull the trigger. They pulled the trigger," he added.
He said he's been speaking to "many Republicans" about the legislation.
"They want to see something happen ... it's very simple. They don't want to have insane people, dangerous people, really bad people having guns. Republicans agree with me on that ... pretty much uniformly," he said.
Trump said he fears Democrats would try to add to the legislation in an unrealistic way, stopping the bill in its tracks.
He wouldn't say whether he supports universal background checks when asked, saying instead, "I support strong, meaningful background checks."
CNN's Kevin Liptak and Kaitlan Collins contributed to this report.
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Couple of problems with this plan...
1) Trump removed the Obama era law that prevented the mentally ill from buying guns.
2) Mental healthcare costs money, but it's covered by most insurance plans. Since trump has taken office, 7 million people no longer have health insurance.
The problem isn't money. We used to institutionalize the criminally insane. Then liberals gave them "rights"!!!
True.
Reagan wasn't a liberal.
Originally, he was!
Not even close Vic.
Do I have to go through the trouble of posting his biography?
There are number of reasons why a politician or an elected politician suddenly decides to switch parties. However, the main reason is often that the person feels that his views are no longer the same that the party's views. Sometimes, the switch is done to gain power. This brings us to why did Ronald Reagan join the Republican Party after being a Democrat for so many years.
Reagan started out as a Democrat. While he was a registered Democrat, he admired Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal program. However, sometime around the 1950s, he started changing his views. He became more conservative. This resulted in Reagan endorsing Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, and then Richard Nixon in 1960 even though he was still a Democrat. Then came his job at General Electric where he was required to tour the different plants across the country and give speeches to the employees. However, his speeches started becoming more and more conservative and controversial leading GE to fire him in 1962.
Then, Ronald Reagan officially became a Republican in 1962 by changing his registration. The reason that Reagan gave was that his views and the party's views were no longer aligned. He found that the Democratic Party was concentrating more on individual rights rather than a collective philosophy. He always maintained that he did not leave the Democratic Party, the party left him.
However, this transition from being a Democrat to Republican was not instant. It took Ronald Reagan 17 years to develop his own political philosophy which was more or less in line with the philosophy of the Republican Party. Hence, his reason for joining the party.
Pretty sure that (R) after his name doesn't stand for "Liberal".
Vic, if you see Reagan as a liberal, you have just shown how far the right wing has gone to the right.
'We used to institutionalize the criminally insane.'
Then this 'president' should be the first institutionalized.
I saw him as the gold standard for Conservatives and the GOP, but that dosen't alter the fact that he started out as a member of the democratic party.
We need more sane people like Joe Biden
Ronald Reagan’s Long-Hidden Racist Conversation With Richard Nixon
In newly unearthed audio, the then–California governor disparaged African delegates to the United Nations.
JUL 30, 2019The day after the United Nations voted to recognize the People’s Republic of China, then–California Governor Ronald Reagan phoned President Richard Nixon at the White House and vented his frustration at the delegates who had sided against the United States. “Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did,” Reagan said . “Yeah,” Nixon interjected. Reagan forged ahead with his complaint: “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Nixon gave a huge laugh.
The past month has brought presidential racism back into the headlines. This October 1971 exchange between current and future presidents is a reminder that other presidents have subscribed to the racist belief that Africans or African Americans are somehow inferior. The most novel aspect of President Donald Trump’s racist gibes isn’t that he said them, but that he said them in public.
The exchange was taped by Nixon, and then later became the responsibility of the Nixon Presidential Library, which I directed from 2007 to 2011. When the National Archives originally released the tape of this conversation, in 2000, the racist portion was apparently withheld to protect Reagan’s privacy. A court order stipulated that the tapes be reviewed chronologically; the chronological review was completed in 2013. Not until 2017 or 2018 did the National Archives begin a general rereview of the earliest Nixon tapes. Reagan’s death, in 2004, eliminated the privacy concerns. Last year, as a researcher, I requested that the conversations involving Ronald Reagan be rereviewed, and two weeks ago, the National Archives released complete versions of the October 1971 conversations involving Reagan online.
Nixon couldn’t stop retelling his version of what Reagan had said. Oddly unfocused, he spoke with Rogers again two hours later and repeated the story as if it would be new to the secretary.
“Reagan called me last night,” Nixon said, “and I didn’t talk to him until this morning, but he is, of course, outraged. And I found out what outraged him, and I find this is typical of a lot of people: They saw it on television and, he said, ‘These cannibals jumping up and down and all that.’ And apparently it was a pretty grotesque picture.” Like Nixon, Rogers had not seen the televised images. But Rogers agreed: “Apparently, it was a terrible scene.” Nixon added, “And they cheered.”
Nixon didn’t think of himself as a racist; perhaps that’s why it was so important to him to keep quoting Reagan’s racism, rather than own the sentiment himself. But Reagan’s comment about African leaders resonated with Nixon, because it reflected his warped thinking about African Americans.
In the fall of 1971, the Nixon administration was engaged in a massive welfare-reform effort, and was also facing school busing. These two issues apparently inspired Nixon to examine more deeply his own thinking on whether African Americans could make it in American society. Only three weeks before the call with Reagan, Nixon had revealed his opinions on Africans and African Americans in a conversation with the Harvard professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had briefly served in the Nixon administration. Nixon was attracted to the theories of Richard Herrnstein and Arthur Jensen, which linked IQ to race, and wondered what Moynihan thought.
“I have reluctantly concluded, based at least on the evidence presently before me … that what Herrnstein says, and what was said earlier by Jensen, is probably … very close to the truth,” Nixon explained to a quiet Moynihan. Nixon believed in a hierarchy of races, with whites and Asians much higher up than people of African descent and Latinos. And he had convinced himself that it wasn’t racist to think black people, as a group, were inferior to whites, so long as he held them in paternalistic regard. “Within groups, there are geniuses,” Nixon said . “There are geniuses within black groups. There are more within Asian groups … This is knowledge that is better not to know.”
Nixon’s analysis of African leadership reflected his prejudice toward America’s black citizens. This is, at least, what he told Moynihan. “Have in mind one fact: Did you realize there is not, of the 40 or 45—you’re at the United Nations—black countries that are represented there, not one has a president or a prime minister who is there as a result of a contested election such as we were insisting upon in Vietnam?” And, he continued, a little later in the conversation: “I’m not saying that blacks cannot govern; I am saying they have a hell of a time. Now, that must demonstrate something.”
Fifty years later, the one fact that we should have in mind is that our nation’s chief executive assumed that the nonwhite citizens of the United States were somehow inferior. Nixon confided in Moynihan, who had been one of his house intellectuals, about the nature of his interest in research on African American intelligence: “The reason I have to know it is that as I go for programs, I must know that they have basic weaknesses.”
As these and other tapes make clear, the 37th president of the United States was a racist: He believed in treating people according to their race, and that race implied fundamental differences in individual human beings. Nixon’s racism matters to us because he allowed his views on race to shape U.S. policies—both foreign and domestic. His policies need to be viewed through that lens.
The 40th president has not left as dramatic a record of his private thoughts. Reagan’s racism appears to be documented only once on the Nixon tapes, and never in his own diaries. His comment on African leaders, however, sheds new light on what lay behind the governor’s passionate defense of the apartheid states of Rhodesia and South Africa later in the 1970s. During his 1976 primary-challenge run against Gerald Ford, Reagan publicly opposed the Ford administration’s rejection of white-minority rule in Rhodesia. “We seem to be embarking on a policy of dictating to the people of southern Africa and running the risk of increased violence and bloodshed,” Reagan said at a rally in Texas.
These new tapes are a stark reminder of the racism that often lay behind the public rhetoric of American presidents. As I write a biography of JFK, I’ve found that this sort of racism did not animate President Kennedy—indeed, early on he took political risks to help African leaders, most notably Gamal Abdel Nasser and Kwame Nkrumah. But his reluctance to do more, sooner for African Americans cannot be separated from the paternalism he brought to the Oval Office or the prejudice held by parts of his Boston inner circle.
Kennedy, at least, learned on the job that securing civil rights for all was a moral imperative. Donald Trump, on the other hand, is a symptom of a sickness that dwells in American society, sometimes deeply and weakly, sometimes on the surface and feverishly. He bears responsibility for his own actions, but the tropes, the turns of phrase, the clumsy indirection, and worse, the gunk about American society that he and his most devoted followers pass off as ideas, have an ugly tradition. It is not at the core of the American tradition, for what makes us mighty and successful is that we are much more than the narrowest of our minds. But it remains an ineluctable part of American culture, nonetheless.
Nixon never changed his mind about the supposed inherent inferiority of Africans. At the end of October 1971, he discussed the UN vote with his best friend, Bebe Rebozo. Bebe delighted Nixon by echoing Reagan: “That reaction on television was, it proves how they ought to be still hanging from the trees by their tails.” Nixon laughed.
These days, though Trump’s imagery is less zoological, it is pretty much the same in spirit. And this president, unlike Nixon, doesn’t believe he needs to hide behind anyone else’s racism.
Tim Naftali? Is that the guy who is sometimes on CNN?
Speaking of relevance, how does your post relate....to....anything?
Agreed.
That is just not the case.
Yes, it is.
Yes, it is. It's one of the first thing he signed into law. February 2017. He wasted no time making sure more people would get killed.
I'm not suggesting he didn't sign something. I'm saying the thing he signed wasn't about that.
No, that's false. What Republicans Did on Mental Health, Guns - FactCheck.org
The Social Security Administration is not a recognized authority to determine mental competency. Mental incompetency is still a red flag that fails a background check which denies purchase of firearms.
Obamacare hasn't been repealed. The required coverage under Obamacare has not changed (including required coverage for pre-existing conditions). Republicans did repeal the penalty for not purchasing insurance but that has been the only substantive change to Obamacare.
Lastly, Trump's proposal to build mental institutions is a call for nationalized medicine. Trump is talking about government institutions to house and care for those with serious mental illness.
He needs to be in a mental institution maybe that's why he wants to buy Greenland...
He wants to take control of the Phallus Museum there to hang out with all of the other dicks where he will be right at home.
[Deleted]
Trump is undoing one of Regan's biggest mistake. There are too many crazy people on the loose
True. But removing the law preventing mentally ill people from buying guns in the first place didn't help.
No matter what assine/crazy/stupid/idiotic/down right nutz thing trumpdumpster says or does it is mind boggling the gymnastics people do to excuse or think what he says or does is okay. It's in BLACK AND WHITE IN FUCKING PRINT what he did in regards to mental health and guns...to say otherwise is deaf/dumb/blind
Yes he did
Yes, indeed. Some people, even when shown the facts still insist it's not true. "Delusional" comes to mind. Or as trump would say, mentally ill.
Except he did.
Yes indeed your comment is a lie
Nearly a year ago, on Feb. 28, 2017, President Trump signed H.J. Res. 40, effectively ending the Social Security Administration's requirement to enter the names of people who receive mental health benefits into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. This is the database used by the FBI to determine who is able to purchase firearms.
Text: H.J.Res.40 — 115th Congress (2017-2018) All Information (Except Text)
Text available as:
Shown Here:
Public Law No: 115-8 (02/28/2017)
[115th Congress Public Law 8] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] [[Page 131 STAT. 15]] Public Law 115-8 115th Congress Joint Resolution Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Social Security Administration relating to Implementation of the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007. <<NOTE: Feb. 28, 2017 - [H.J. Res. 40]>> Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the Social Security Administration relating to Implementation of the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007 (published at 81 Fed. Reg. 91702 (December 19, 2016)), and such rule shall have no force or effect. Approved February 28, 2017. LEGISLATIVE HISTORY--H.J. Res. 40: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, Vol. 163 (2017): Feb. 2, considered and passed House. Feb. 14, 15, considered and passed Senate. <all>
Nice deflection.
No, you didn't tell the truth...the truth is in the bill.
The truth is in the BILL, sad you can't/don't/won't see the truth in writing...
Deflection once again..can't speak to the TRUTH of the bill and what trump did with mental health and guns.
I just LOVE the ignore button!
Now yer getting it!
I so want to jump in with that comment about losing other rights... but you know the immediate response would be "but that's not designed to kill"... This is what causes those "common sense gun control laws" to fail, a lack of common sense in communications.
You can copy and paste the parts of the bill your so adamantly "Thinking" about, and put them right here for everyone to see.
Or you could actually follow the link in the article that you didn't read.
Which Article ?
You have been shown the truth, not everyone else's fault if you don't want to accept it.
If you want to comment on an article, reading the article would really help you out.
It's explains nothing about how Trump is letting the mentally Ill get guns.
Yea, because yahoo answers says so? I'll guess you did a search and that's what you came up with. No reputable source, laws or anything else. Just...yahoo answers. If this is where you are getting your "truth" from, I can understand why so much of this stuff is all lies to you.
'There are too many crazy people on the loose'
Including your 'president'
We know where the President is all the time, so the "Crazy" argument is out the window !
Now.....how 'bout those real crazy people. Where are they anyway ? Do you know ?
Maybe in one of those new "Block tents" in LA ?
How does knowing where he is at all times make his words and actions any less crazy? The man has always been crazy, but now he is going into full meltdown mode. Just hope he doesn't take the rest of us down with him.
I thought he already had ?
If not, I guess he's not as crazy as the media makes him out to be.
Pretty sure that Trump wants a war of his own.
He's shown no interest in stopping the ones we're already in.
One of the reasons I voted for President Trump was his commitment to not start any.
The impression I get is that he wants to end the war in Afghanistan. Our military generals say no.
I myself say bring them home.
Despite him trying to in Syria and NK? And who can forget his, "I love war!!!!" comments at his rallies.
He did? When was this.
Oh you mean when Syria used gas on people. I remember that. He wasn't starting a war.
But you have to admit he did what he said he was going to do unlike the Bitch ass Obama leading from behind drawing lines in the sand.
Trump Decision To Pull Troops Out Of Afghanistan Comes As 'A Big Shock'
So, would the Trump classify the El Paso shooter as insane because he killed people---or because he killed people for a specific reason?
I suspect the Trump ought to step away from this 'mental thing' because a bit of crap might stick to his shoes.
Well said.
A lot of crap should stick to his shoes....how many mass shootings have happened under his watch.....he is just paying lip service...when he does something meaningful then I will believe him....but this mental institution shit is just that...shit.
Mental illness isn't the actual problem, the free almost unlimited access to guns is.
Of course it is...but what do we do about it. I'm just in that type of mood where right now I could scream at assholes...but I'm trying to be nice.
the Trump will never do anything meaningful. He is an autocrat. Self protection at any cost. I do not understand his 'so called base'.
They are [deleted]....It's sad because I personal know some very intelligent people who like him...it's scary...
The mentally ill are usually the victims of violence, not the perpetrators.
True Tessy, I had forgotten that.
They are also more likely to be sexually assaulted, raped.
I'm also sick of the mentally ill being stigmatized by this scumlappingshitbag of a 'president' and his scumlappingshitbag enabling gop weasel spineless cowards.
[deleted]
And whoever it was that killed Pat Tillman.
Mental Illness doesn't have to mean strictly "Out of this World". Killing someone for the sake of Killing, Whether out of this world or in reality world, IS INSANE thinking all on it's own.
What does this have to do with the seeded content? Stick to the topic or leave.
Why was this deleted. It was a comment about killers, no matter their motives, as being "Insane". There was nothing in that comment about people here being insane.
Does anyone Comprehend anything that's written anymore ?
Read your own friggin article !
This narrative is in there:
"But others -- including those with more experience dealing with Washington Republicans -- have appeared skeptical."
Oh, and you might want to read the members comments I was responding to.....too !
INSANE:
in a state of mind which prevents normal perception, behavior, or social interaction;
shocking; outrageous.
If mental illness is the cause of the shootings, why is it that in other countries, (where the incidence of mental illness is the same), have no, or very few, mass shootings?
The rise of right wing ideology and the christian taliban?
Yes.
It's not just the mass shootings. A huge percentage of just ordinary crimes are related to mental health in some way. You want to talk about a broken system!
'A huge percentage of just ordinary crimes are related to mental health in some way.'
How so?
Jailing People With Mental Illness
Those are people who have been diagnosed with a serious condition. In my experience, and in talking to colleagues and judges, the numbers for general mental health issues are probably much higher than that. Many people are walking around with undiagnosed depression or anxiety disorder, or abusing alcohol or some other drug. This can contribute to all sorts of criminal behavior, from petty to extremely violent.
Those who have been around longer than me tend to place most of the blame on the drastic decrease in mental health options we have seen in the last few decades. One judge told me he felt about 2/3 to 3/4 of the people who appear in his court have some level of mental health issue.
What's False:
President Trump's action did not completely eliminate background checks for gun purchases (by the mentally ill or anyone else).
What's True: President Trump rescinded a rule that would have provided a new way to enforce existing background check restrictions on gun sales by allowing a transfer of information from one agency to another.
The claim that was made was that Trump rescinded the Obama regulation - which was denied by some of the righties. And that claim is true. Nobody claimed that Trump completely eliminated background checks that I'm aware of.
We don't need no stinkin' "New Way". We just need the "Old Way" enforced like it should be.
Besides, if regular someone's have no past "Paper Trail", no background check will show up on an individual as bad anyway.
Does anyone actually "think" these days ?
Does anyone actually "think" these days ?
[Deleted]
So much for "Encouraging" someone to actually succeed !
It is, and still people are dying in record numbers via gun violence.
Link ?
"and still people are dying in record numbers via gun violence."
I'll take my chances someone may have a gun when I go out, over the chance someone might run my ass over with a car (over 10,000 dead per year, 1,233 were children, because of "Impaired Drivers"). But cars shouldn't be "Banned"....right ?
I consider murdering shooters "Impaired" too.
There are more deaths from everyday life, than there are by any gun on this planet .
Your heart will kill you quicker, and kills more folks, than someone wielding a gun.
I'll take my chances with someone with a gun.
Every day could be a "Death" day just living the day !
Yes, I'm opposed !
"Assault" is an action, not an inanimate object !
Do you know what AR means in AR15 ?
The ONLY time an inanimate object becomes animate, is when it is USED by a person (in this matter)!
Bit I have seen some "Creepy" inanimate dolls come to life, all by themselves, in the movies.
I give myself a fighting chance, but, to this day, never been in any of those type situation. But Practice, Practice, Practice gives me some of a leg up if it should happen.
"as so too many of your fellow citizens have."
More like "Some" out of millions and millions anyway. "Car" deaths would be more in the "Many" department.
Is a car designed with the intention of using it to kill people, like a gun is? No. Apples and oranges, yet again.
So if guns aren't the problem, and people ARE the problem, why would you want "the problem" to have a gun?
Any one can just say "NO" to selling someone something, or at least it used to be okay to do that. Now it takes bucks and many court trips to get that allowed.
Discrimination and all that CRAP dontchyknow.
Thank the "Left" for that "Requirement" !
So I guess....it's actually the "Lefts" fault folks MUST sell things to other folks, no matter what !
THANKS !
The intended purpose of people having having guns is so that they may defend themselves, others, or their country. The intention is not to commit murder with those guns. Every time someone is murdered with a gun, the gun is not being used for its intended purpose.
And anyway, why is the intention of the design or use relevant? Why it it "ok" that cars kill 35,000 (or more) people every year just because they also have a non-lethal function?
Unintentional Consequences.
Think about it. Something that wasn't designed to kill, actually kills MORE than the object that was intended to kill in this country, yet you want to get rid of the "Lessor" of the 2 evils, because if you went after the "Bigger" evil, it may inconvenience you.
Great Thought !
The point is that cars are not designed with the purpose of shooting people. In your example, you mentioned using a gun for protection, self defense, defending the country, etc... Yes, that's true by shooting the enemy. So like I said, the purpose of a gun, is to shoot things; people, animals, targets, etc.. Cars are designed for transportation. You can no more shoot with a car than you can drive a gun to the store. They are not even remotely the same thing.
But that's denying them their constitutional rights. Thanks for admitting that.
There ya go.
Until someone is ...by Law ….. deemed mentally impaired/Ill/INSANE, ya Must "Sell" to them, no matter what it is.
So what was your argument about again ?
Very often, the mere threat of what a gun can do is enough and no one needs to be shot.
The whole point of that situation is that it's life or death potentially. It's a "him or me" scenario. Is your alternative suggestion that we should just let criminals have their way? I should just let thugs into the house so they can beat me to death and rape the women? Or should I be allowed to have a gun to defend us?
You know who else threw people in mental institutions?
The Soviet Union. They did that to a lot of dissidents.
Wasn't Reagan the one who closed a lot of institutions?
Yes he did.
True, this could be trump's attempt at creating a police state. He is on record more than once talking about being president for life, and/or canceling elections.
I can only imagine the outrage from the right had Obama said something like that.