Tragedy vs. Privacy
I live in Northern Virginia and people here are still reeling from the shootings at Virginia Tech this week. The inevitable circus maximus of the media is in full twirl looking for someone to blame. In America these days we always have to have someone to blame.
I have a good friend who is liberal and doesn't like guns. She wanted to know why the licensing people didn't have access to psychiatric records and why the gun owner background check was limited solely to criminal records.
I thought about this and realized that I didn't want anyone to have the kind of data base that would be necessary to do this kind of check. Catching this kind of case would require a fairly comprehensive record of people that have ever been institutionalized and maybe even every taking psychiatric medication or even a list of those who are seeing therapists.
From a privacy perspective, berserker incidents may be unavoidable from a societal viewpoint because the cost of intrusion into our personal lives would be unacceptable. That doesn't excuse the obligation of the individuals to recognize problems and do something about it locally.
Posted on April 20, 2007