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You don't discharge him, obviously.
So I continue to hold him in the hospital against his will even though he is no longer a threat to himself or others? (he is only a threat after he goes home and stops taking his medicine).
That seems more rights destroying than preventing gun access, no?
Furthermore - who pays for this? Indefinite hospital stay is expensive as hell. What about the other people who need that bed?
If the only thing keeping you from killing someone is an unsupervised medication schedule you're not being forced to take, observed while talking, or guarded while taking, you are not in fact safe.
Normal people aren't one or two med cycles away from murder. This man is not safe at all, and does not deserve freedom.
Fair point, I'm down with just killing the rabid ones.
I mean this is the point, their exists a class of people in society who are not safe to themselves or others due to a mental illness (this is different from the class of people who are this way due to personality structure, life experience, genetics, racism, whatever - we call these criminals).
For many mental illnesses denial of the mental illness, denial of symptoms, denial of need for medications - all these things are frequent parts of the pathology (sniff test to make it make sense: if you are delusional of course you are going to think you don't have delusions).
People who acknowledge they have problems end up with a voluntary admission not an involuntary one "man you nearly killed yourself dude, you think being in the hospital for a few days would be good for you?"
In any case you come in, take meds, stabilize, get discharged. Then you go home and forget to take your beds, have medical stuff that happens that makes the meds don't work, decide not to take them "because it went away" whatever. Then you get sick again and dangerous.
Rights restriction (such involuntary outpatient commitment, forced medications, jail time, indefinite hospital stays) is usually the way - harm reduction approaches such as banning firearm access are both cheaper and much less disruptive to the patient.
This is why I want Nybbler to come up with an alternative plan because realistically the problem is often "jail and no guns" or "no jail and no guns" (even if it is just fancy jail with extra steps).
This is not an argument against guns, it's an argument against freedom for crazy people. The right move is to kill or permanently house them away from the general population, because they're actively detrimental to polite society.
It's an argument about giving crazy people guns.
We make an effort to restrict people's rights to the minimum we can, even if it results in bad outcomes sometimes. Locking away someone indefinitely (or like, killing them) is extremely restrictive.
Giving them some rope with which to metaphorically hang themselves but not too much preserves autonomy as much as we can.
We also give the crazy people guns, cars, and their bare hands.
If someone is unsafe, the correct move is to imprison them. Full stop, end of the line. The goal is not to maximize the autonomy of dangerous people, and that you think it is confuses me. If you're, again, one med cycle away from cold blooded fucking murder of an innocent person, you are not safe, you are a sedated predator. We should no more let you walk around than we would a grizzly bear.
Lets list some of the categories of patients this kinda thing applies to.
Someone has a brief psychotic episode, has interest in killing someone but doesn't manage to do so. They have a 30% chance of not progressing into having any further episodes of psychosis.
Someone uses drugs or alcohol. While under the influence of drugs or alcohol they become homicidal or suicidal.
Someone has a medical problem like a brain tumor, dementia, or more reversible things like autoimmune encephalitis or hyperthyroidism. While medically unwell they become psychiatrically unwell.
A totally normal person has a first time manic episode with threatened or actual HI/SI. Outside the manic episode they are totally normal. They take their medication but still have a risk of problems. Maybe they have a kid and end up with sleep deprivation. Maybe the run a 5k and become dehydrated and their lithium metabolism is altered.
Schizophrenic guy who knows he is schizophrenic, takes a long acting injectable medication to make sure he doesn't forget. Symptoms are well controlled. Sometime over the course of his life his metabolism of the medicine changes and he ends up sick again (and dangerous).
You really want to lock up all of these people indefinitely?
Medicine and the legal system don't know with surety who will offend and who will be dangerous. So we try and be judicious in how much we violate rights. Summarily executing someone for being diagnosed with schizophrenia is a bit of an overshot. Locking people up indefinitely (especially when they have periods of healthy functioning that might even last decades) is also likely overshooting it.
It's also hideously expensive and drains resources that could be best used elsewhere.
They won't have guns anyway while locked up.
Why not start with less restrictive measures?
If individual autonomy isn't important to you (it certainly is to Nybbler) then the expense should certainly factor into it. How much extra in taxes do you want to pay to do this?
"70% chance of further psychosis" is a crazy way to describe a person you think is safe.
Bluntly, yeah, all those people you mentioned I'm cool with indefinitely restraining and/or killing depending on how cooperative they are with restraint. These aren't normal people. Not even the one you call normal. I won't put a price on it, as these costs aren't fixed. The death penalty can be done very cheaply, for instance. We just don't do it that way.
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