We had a patient in acute psychosis arrive on the unit with a gun in their bag. Like, so psychotic they were saying they were seeing demons and were interacting with those demons more than they were able to interact with us. The ED had metal detectors that should have caught it and had them down there for 8 hours with that bag in the room with them. They had all the American hospital bedside essentials, call bell, pitcher, gun, and TV remote! The ED was really lucky they didn’t get someone shot.
They were willing to take some Haldol and got pretty lucid pretty quickly, and when the cops showed up to collect the firearm they were able to at least give a statement regarding its lack of registration (I don’t remember exactly but I do remember thinking it sounded… less than completely factual). They got charged with the same thing though iirc. I think they probably knew more about the legality of their obtaining a gun than they were letting on, but that also doesn’t discount the role of psychosis in this; the paranoia alone could’ve caused them to feel even illicitly obtaining a gun was necessary.
None of these things would even remotely justify boiling someone alive.
On the front page earlier today was an account of somebody who carried a gun; in two separate instances, people from his neighborhood ambushed him and shot him (and in one instance it was verified on security footage that he defended himself with it after he’d been shot, and would have been killed without having the gun on him). In both cases he got charged with unlawful possession and imprisoned for the gun that saved his life.
We had a patient in acute psychosis arrive on the unit with a gun in their bag. Like, so psychotic they were saying they were seeing demons and were interacting with those demons more than they were able to interact with us. The ED had metal detectors that should have caught it and had them down there for 8 hours with that bag in the room with them. They had all the American hospital bedside essentials, call bell, pitcher, gun, and TV remote! The ED was really lucky they didn’t get someone shot.
They were willing to take some Haldol and got pretty lucid pretty quickly, and when the cops showed up to collect the firearm they were able to at least give a statement regarding its lack of registration (I don’t remember exactly but I do remember thinking it sounded… less than completely factual). They got charged with the same thing though iirc. I think they probably knew more about the legality of their obtaining a gun than they were letting on, but that also doesn’t discount the role of psychosis in this; the paranoia alone could’ve caused them to feel even illicitly obtaining a gun was necessary.
None of these things would even remotely justify boiling someone alive.
On the front page earlier today was an account of somebody who carried a gun; in two separate instances, people from his neighborhood ambushed him and shot him (and in one instance it was verified on security footage that he defended himself with it after he’d been shot, and would have been killed without having the gun on him). In both cases he got charged with unlawful possession and imprisoned for the gun that saved his life.