The Louisville bank shooter apparently left not just a lone “manifesto,” but rather two “very extensive” notes expounding upon his reasons for murdering five colleagues and shooting a responding police officer in the head before police were able to end his killing spree.
As previously reported, one of the killer’s prime motives was to shine light on how easy it is to buy a gun in Kentucky. The other primary justification was to “raise awareness regarding mental health issues in America.” The killer actually livestreamed the slaughter via Instagram.
The newly reported notes, or second note, revealed the interweaving of these two factors, according to CNN. CNN reported that the shooter’s “goal was to show how easy it was in America for someone dealing with a serious mental illness to buy an assault-style weapon.”
The Western Journal examined these two factors — serious mental illness and the acquisition of guns — and how they intertwine.
First, The Western Journal walked through the known history of the killer’s mental illness. He was reported to have suffered from depression and to have taken medication for it. His family was aware of this, and of some possible anxiety, but were still shocked by the extreme violence. The killer’s mother even called 911 to frantically warn of Sturgeon’s possible approach of the bank with a firearm. She sounded shocked at the notion that her son might harm anyone, even as she faithfully sounded the alarm.
The killer, of course, lied on his background check, not reporting his mental health issues — even as he believed them to be serious. “Lying on a federal background check form is itself a federal crime. But this seems all too often to be the case in mass shootings,” according to The Western Journal.
The Western Journal then noted that “30 high-profile mass shooters going back to 2007 all passed background checks,” surmising from this fact that background checks seem not to be winning the war on mass shootings on their own, before pointing out that Democrats will zero in on background checks nonetheless. “Indeed, like clockwork and only hours after the crime in Louisville, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pushed President Joe Biden’s call for more background checks.”
“This nation is still suffering from a lack of proper care for mental illness, not a gun problem or a background check problem,” the Journal piece summarized.
Bill Maher recently drew attention with his call for a “media black out” on mass shooters, arguing that the attention that they and their “causes” receive serves as motivation for the future mass killers who succeed them. CNN’s Jim Scuitto was happy to take the baton from the deceased shooter’s hand, however, as the Journal reported, arguing that “particularly in a state such as Kentucky” it is easy for a mentally ill person to buy a gun.
Does killing people as a mentally ill person in order to point out the risk of killings by mentally ill people make particularly good sense? No — but this is a discussion of mental illness. In fairness to Scuitto, conservatives across the spectrum have long argued that mental illness should be more of a focus than guns, per se, even as the actions of the seriously mentally ill are used as justification for efforts to take guns from everyone.
The Western Journal focused on treatment of mental illness, but not as much on its intersection with background checks. “HIPAA” was passed into federal law in 1996 and quickly became a far-reaching behemoth, affecting policies everywhere.
Doctor’s and dentist’s offices even had to remodel to meet their far-reaching patient privacy-related dictates. It often is mistakenly believed that the “P” stands for “privacy,” when it stands for “portability.” The act also is commonly misspelled as “HIPPA” by people who naturally assume that the acronym must contain “privacy” somewhere.
As the Journal reported, the Louisville killer lied about his mental illness on his background check, and authorities had no way to know he was lying. The privacy, if not the “portability,” of his mental health records was ironclad and resolute.
The Journal reminded readers that the killer’s family is having his brain examined in search of evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, commonly known as CTE. Sturgeon reportedly suffered an unusually high number of concussions while playing sports.
As The Western Journal pointed out, undiagnosed mental illness cannot be documented regardless of the background check used. HIPAA does not impact that reality.
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