Could We Have Avoided Navy Yard?

Twelve dead, one crazy shooter, the same questions. Aaron Alexis, the perpetrator of the Sept. 17 carnage within the Navy Yard, administrative offices of the U.S. Marines in Washington, had been hearing voices for years and had complained to police, during a stay at a hotel one month prior, of mysterious tormentors that “[were] sending vibrations into his body” via the microwave in his room. He was discharged from the military reserves in 2011 after numerous incidents. However, his record, expurgated following an appeal, revealed no problem, which allowed him to pursue a career as a civil contractor in the armed forces. Alexis, responsible for two incidents with firearms, committed himself to a psychiatric hospital twice. His schizophrenia, however, was never the object of follow-up. For Professor E. Fuller Torrey, psychiatrist of military hospitals, the drama might illustrate “fifty years of failing America’s mentally ill.”* But could we have forcibly detained the patient? Nothing was tried when he shot the tire of a badly parked car near his home in Seattle or when he accidentally — according to him — shot through the roof of a neighbor’s apartment.

All the same, what about gun control? If this individual had been declared mentally ill, he would not have been able to acquire a weapon so easily. The armorer in Virginia had elsewhere scrupulously followed the regulation by earlier refusing to immediately reissue an AR-15 assault rifle, by reason of Alexis’ residence in another state. That did not prevent him from purchasing a shotgun and buckshot (the size of ball bearings) to tinker with and make deadly. For the moment, the Navy Yard shooting has not raised any comment from the National Rifle Association — the lobby for the right to carry arms, much maligned during the Newtown massacre — and the U.S. media have been guarded on this subject, content with showing moving eulogies for the 12 victims.

* Editor’s Note: This is the title of a book by E. Fuller Torrey.