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U.S. Navy was warned that Washington shooter 'heard voices'

Well, if background checks cost money and you don't have the money to pay, you're not doing the background checks. It doesn't seem all that complicated to me. Maybe a better question would be who decides what the budget for background checks is -- the military or Congress.

How expensive is a background check?

It seems that in the case of national security it may have taken priority over cowboy poetry contests in Nevada or some questionable foreign aid programs. Is there no room for cuts in the trillions of dollars spent annually? http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public...&File_id=77c257a6-adc8-4e38-87a5-85c86d7ed4a5
 
Is anyone actually surprised that all of these mass shootings are being committed by essentially the same person?
 
How could there have been such drastic budget cuts that they couldn't vet an employee in such a sensitive area? Certainly they might have looked at cutting in other areas first. This appears to be a rather poor excuse.

I don't buy the budget cut argument. The DOD allocates the money to the services and they determine how they're going to spend it. We all know there a lot of weapons systems and other things that each branch of the service continues to buy and maintain that are no longer necessary. I think the money is there. I think much of the problem is allocation.

As I mentioned in the post above, so much is classified unnecessarily these days. As long as Washington continues to advocate the war on terror and the war on drugs we're going to continue to have an issue with this. National paranoia is the major problem. NSA and US intelligence agencies are larger than they have ever been and they are insatiable. They collect information in a greater degree than we have ever seen and more than we know. Now we have Homeland Security. TSA is in every airport, every port, in the United States so they can play with your balls and look at your wife naked through body scanners. The greater the militarization of America the greater national paranoia and the greater the perceived need to classify everything. Over 90 Federal agencies have armed police units including the Library of Congress! Every little piss ant town America has a police department with SWAT teams, and God knows, all kinds of military armament equipment. These police departments all want the secret information from the feds. They want to be clued in to every possible piece of secret information that they can get from any federal agency. Hell, Texas even has armed police for the state agency that licenses dentists. Texas dental cops. LOL!

In the militarized state that is the United States of America today everybody wants to have everything classified and everybody wants to have access to the classification that everybody else has. To even hope to access that information, employees have to be vetted at some level so that any given agency can justify their ability to be secure and their need to know. it is insane. There is no way the FBI or other vetting entities can keep up with it all.

All this insanity and more represent budget increases over the last decade.
 
How expensive is a background check?

This isn't about how expensive a background check is, because the one check you do will almost never be the one you most needed -- Murphy's Law and all. This is about how expensive the total number of background checks required is, and how much security suffers in general when you cut the budget for it in general.

It seems that in the case of national security it may have taken priority over cowboy poetry contests in Nevada or some questionable foreign aid programs. Is there no room for cuts in the trillions of dollars spent annually? http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public...&File_id=77c257a6-adc8-4e38-87a5-85c86d7ed4a5

Just like all kinds of stupid bull**** has taken precedence over sensible budget concerns, or the stupid bull**** that takes precedence over delivering on our promises to our wounded warriors. What else is new?
 
It seems this tragedy could and should have been averted. There should be an investigation of who exactly received this info from the police and what they did with it. Unfortunately this will be another Benghazi, nobody will be held responsible.

Nobody will be held responsible? I really doubt that.

As always, lawful gun owners will be held responsible.
 
I don't buy the budget cut argument. The DOD allocates the money to the services and they determine how they're going to spend it. We all know there a lot of weapons systems and other things that each branch of the service continues to buy and maintain that are no longer necessary. I think the money is there. I think much of the problem is allocation.

As I mentioned in the post above, so much is classified unnecessarily these days. As long as Washington continues to advocate the war on terror and the war on drugs we're going to continue to have an issue with this. National paranoia is the major problem. NSA and US intelligence agencies are larger than they have ever been and they are insatiable. They collect information in a greater degree than we have ever seen and more than we know. Now we have Homeland Security. TSA is in every airport, every port, in the United States so they can play with your balls and look at your wife naked through body scanners. The greater the militarization of America the greater national paranoia and the greater the perceived need to classify everything. Over 90 Federal agencies have armed police units including the Library of Congress! Every little piss ant town America has a police department with SWAT teams, and God knows, all kinds of military armament equipment. These police departments all want the secret information from the feds. They want to be clued in to every possible piece of secret information that they can get from any federal agency. Hell, Texas even has armed police for the state agency that licenses dentists. Texas dental cops. LOL!

In the militarized state that is the United States of America today everybody wants to have everything classified and everybody wants to have access to the classification that everybody else has. To even hope to access that information, employees have to be vetted at some level so that any given agency can justify their ability to be secure and their need to know. it is insane. There is no way the FBI or other vetting entities can keep up with it all.

All this insanity and more represent budget increases over the last decade.

Apparently some terrorist groups, especially after Nidal Hasan, have similar confidence in the vetting process.

Experienced Applicants | National Review Online
 
This isn't about how expensive a background check is, because the one check you do will almost never be the one you most needed -- Murphy's Law and all. This is about how expensive the total number of background checks required is, and how much security suffers in general when you cut the budget for it in general.

Then who cut the budget for the vetting process? Shouldn't they be obliged to explain why there weren't other alternatives elsewhere rather than allowing clearly troubled individual into a high security area?

Just like all kinds of stupid bull**** has taken precedence over sensible budget concerns, or the stupid bull**** that takes precedence over delivering on our promises to our wounded warriors. What else is new?

Your own frustration is being felt throughout the country.
 
It sensationalizes mental illness all the freaking time. Why do you think New York has the SAFE act, and why do you think similar laws are popping up in all the wrong committees around the nation? People are afraid of mental illness, because they're constantly told over and over and over that mental illness = homicidal maniac.

The media can't possibly be shining a very bright light on any damn thing because we don't know anything useful yet. When we do, then that'll be a different story. Until then, we're being fed fragments and conjecture and nothing more.

Well, now we DO know something useful. Can't copy/paste. Here's the link: http://www.foxnews.com/us/interactive/2013/09/17/aaron-alexis-rhode-island-police-report/

In a nutshell, hearing voices coming through ceiling and walls of both his home and in the navy yard, three people following him (sent by a guy he'd had a disagreement with at the airport), using some kind of microwave machine that sends pulses through his body to keep him awake . . . Reported to naval security 6 weeks ago.
 
Then who cut the budget for the vetting process? Shouldn't they be obliged to explain why there weren't other alternatives elsewhere rather than allowing clearly troubled individual into a high security area?

Absolutely. I'm not saying we shouldn't demand answers, but people are asking "why," and I'm telling them "why." "Why" isn't "because people with mental illness are to be universally feared," even though that's what we're taught.
 
Well, now we DO know something useful. Can't copy/paste. Here's the link: http://www.foxnews.com/us/interactive/2013/09/17/aaron-alexis-rhode-island-police-report/

In a nutshell, hearing voices coming through ceiling and walls of both his home and in the navy yard, three people following him (sent by a guy he'd had a disagreement with at the airport), using some kind of microwave machine that sends pulses through his body to keep him awake . . . Reported to naval security 6 weeks ago.

The details of the man's illness are irrelevant at this point. What we don't know is how the warning was transmitted, to whom, and what was done about it. As I've already said, maybe the recipient of the notification was an idiot, or maybe he was over-worked, or maybe this was a failure in the chain of command, or maybe he tracked down and contacted whomever was treating this man who in turn said the man represented no threat.

We will probably never know what really happened. All I'm certain of is that this will be yet another opportunity for the media to sensationalize mental illness.
 
We will probably never know what really happened. All I'm certain of is that this will be yet another opportunity for the media to sensationalize mental illness.
Right, because the 24/7 cable news media is not know for sensationalizing nearly anything and everything. But somehow mental illness is your pet issue and woe is responsible news organization (is there one?) that sensationalizes that, instead of the other 99999 absurd things they try to make a story out of.

And how else are you going to get public attention on the need for better mental health awareness than in the news anyway? Good grief.
 
Right, because the 24/7 cable news media is not know for sensationalizing nearly anything and everything. But somehow mental illness is your pet issue and woe is responsible news organization (is there one?) that sensationalizes that, instead of the other 99999 absurd things they try to make a story out of.

Where did I even vaguely suggest anything you just said? If you're going to school me, you should stick to the things I actually say rather than putting words in my mouth.

And how else are you going to get public attention on the need for better mental health awareness than in the news anyway? Good grief.

Mental health doesn't need hysteria, it needs discussion. The media just feeds the hysteria, which doesn't help anything or anyone.
 
Where did I even vaguely suggest anything you just said? If you're going to school me, you should stick to the things I actually say rather than putting words in my mouth.
You apparently don't understand what I wrote. I'll slow it down for you. You appear to be outraged that the news media is once against sensationalizing mental illness in the wake of yet another potentially insane person using firearms to butcher a lot of people. I am informing you that is absurd, because the 24/7 news medias entire job, their entire mode of operation, is to sensationalize everything and anything, 24/7. Of things to be outraged at, given the volume of what the majority of cable news pushes as news, someone hearing voices gunning people down is probably going to end up on the "more appropriate to make a big deal of" range.

If you think that the news media is going to get proper distance and nuance about mental illness, you are in the category with the news media itself in being absurd, IMO.

Mental health doesn't need hysteria, it needs discussion. The media just feeds the hysteria, which doesn't help anything or anyone.
Bad publicity is still publicity that affords you, them, the opportunity to receive good publicity. Up to them to take advantage of it, or squander the opportunity. I haven't heard a lot of mental illness bashing, what I have heard sounded reasonable and appropriate.
 
Well, if background checks cost money and you don't have the money to pay, you're not doing the background checks. It doesn't seem all that complicated to me. Maybe a better question would be who decides what the budget for background checks is -- the military or Congress.

Well in this day and age felons are on data bases, it doesn't require teams of agents visiting your high school classmates. So why 52 felons slipped by seems difficult to put on budget cuts.

Now budget cuts reducing the investigative branch that handles the civilian LEA contacts would factor in. Though hindsight is 20/20 and I wonder just how many contacts the Navy Investigators received during that 6 week period.
 
Well in this day and age felons are on data bases, it doesn't require teams of agents visiting your high school classmates. So why 52 felons slipped by seems difficult to put on budget cuts.

Criminal background checks cost money, so I would assume that if you cut back the amount of money there is available for background checks, you do fewer of them.

Now budget cuts reducing the investigative branch that handles the civilian LEA contacts would factor in. Though hindsight is 20/20 and I wonder just how many contacts the Navy Investigators received during that 6 week period.

Honestly, it sounds like six of one and a half dozen of the other -- whether you're paying someone else to run a background check or you've got people on the payroll to run their own investigation, it still requires a budget, yes?
 
Criminal background checks cost money, so I would assume that if you cut back the amount of money there is available for background checks, you do fewer of them. Honestly, it sounds like six of one and a half dozen of the other -- whether you're paying someone else to run a background check or you've got people on the payroll to run their own investigation, it still requires a budget, yes?

It just sounds highly speculative to say budget cuts when the FFLs across our grand and Glorious Republic can call for back round checks. it is batch running a set of names and SS#'s through a computer- not sending agents out into the field when it comes to checking for felonies. Course these felons could have 'slipped through' from simple clerical error, mis entered SS#s. The total number of felons vs how many processed????

as far as checking out all LEA contacts this could be a long term problem far predating the budgets cuts and the spectacular failures are thankfully few and far between. Like many other systems- medical comes quickest to mind, the Investigators triage the caseload coming in. Violent crime reports go to the front of the line, then drinking and drugs, financial impropriety, maybe a few far away contacts of a more 'kooky' nature. So to the area the suspect works in- while secret clearance sounds 'important' it isn't much of a to-do. Those in highly sensitive areas get top priority.

It can just be a very simple case of a long term problem finally yielded a tragic result.
 
It just sounds highly speculative to say budget cuts when the FFLs across our grand and Glorious Republic can call for back round checks. it is batch running a set of names and SS#'s through a computer- not sending agents out into the field when it comes to checking for felonies. Course these felons could have 'slipped through' from simple clerical error, mis entered SS#s. The total number of felons vs how many processed????

The Navy pointed to budget cuts. Since I don't know enough the process and can only take an educated guess, I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and try to fill in the blanks so that their explanation made sense.

as far as checking out all LEA contacts this could be a long term problem far predating the budgets cuts and the spectacular failures are thankfully few and far between. Like many other systems- medical comes quickest to mind, the Investigators triage the caseload coming in. Violent crime reports go to the front of the line, then drinking and drugs, financial impropriety, maybe a few far away contacts of a more 'kooky' nature. So to the area the suspect works in- while secret clearance sounds 'important' it isn't much of a to-do. Those in highly sensitive areas get top priority.

It can just be a very simple case of a long term problem finally yielded a tragic result.

That makes plenty of sense.
 
I just don't know what to say about this except WTF????

" Rhode Island police warned the U.S. Navy last month that Washington Navy Yard gunman Aaron Alexis had reported "hearing voices," raising further questions about how he gained security clearance at the complex where he went on a shooting rampage."

U.S. Navy was warned that Washington shooter 'heard voices' | Reuters

Just 'hearing voices' is not enough to get a person a civil commitment. There has to be imminent danger to self or others. The voices have to be telling the person to harm himself or others before he can be hospitalized against his will if he refuses voluntary treatment. There are many people out there who hear voices continually, some even hear voices telling them to harm someone, but they have gained some understanding that the voices are auditory hallucinations, and they do not act on what they are told. You can be as psychotic and as delusional as you want to be, but no one can take away your liberty unless you pose an imminent danger to self or others.

Determining WHEN someone is a danger to self or others is something else altogether.
 
Just 'hearing voices' is not enough to get a person a civil commitment. There has to be imminent danger to self or others. The voices have to be telling the person to harm himself or others before he can be hospitalized against his will if he refuses voluntary treatment. There are many people out there who hear voices continually, some even hear voices telling them to harm someone, but they have gained some understanding that the voices are auditory hallucinations, and they do not act on what they are told. You can be as psychotic and as delusional as you want to be, but no one can take away your liberty unless you pose an imminent danger to self or others.

Sorry but I don't think a guy that is hearing voices should have top secret security clearance.
 
Sorry but I don't think a guy that is hearing voices should have top secret security clearance.

You might be surprised at some of the people who do, some are National Guard, some are Reservists, and some active duty. The psychiatric provider does not decide who is fit for duty or who is fit for security clearance. The Department of Defense decides that.
 
Criminal background checks cost money, so I would assume that if you cut back the amount of money there is available for background checks, you do fewer of them.



Honestly, it sounds like six of one and a half dozen of the other -- whether you're paying someone else to run a background check or you've got people on the payroll to run their own investigation, it still requires a budget, yes?

A criminal background check does not turn up psychiatric information because psychiatric charts are privileged.
 
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