Make help more available to avert mass shootings

Like many Americans, I am horrified by the plague of mass (and individual) shootings in our country. My training as a psychologist, and past service as a corrections and police instructor and special deputy, leads me to make two suggestions that may help bend downward the curve of gun-related murders.

Most people who commit these crimes will never show up on a background check for mental illness issues because they were never treated in a facility that is required to report them. Many are people with fairly sudden onset rage due to marital strife, being bullied or fired, or feel estranged and angry about the world around them, and then they snap into madness. When they seek help, they are told the waiting list for psychologists or psychiatrists are often months long and going to the emergency room risks involuntary hospitalization.

My first suggestion is to offer confidential and anonymous walk-in mental health centers in local hospitals where people suffering unrelenting stress and are near the breaking point can go without having to identify themselves. Trained therapists can often calm and keep them engaged until the crisis passes.

My second suggestion is to develop, at the federal level, a model graduated licensing and registration law that could be adopted by local authorities who govern such licenses. This model law would place both handguns and long guns into a hierarchy of public risk categories. The more dangerous a weapon is to the public, the more stringent the training and background checking requirements a potential owner would have to meet.

I think this is as far as we can go with respect to gun safety. Any proposed laws even suggesting outlawing or confiscating certain weapons would have no chance of serious consideration. Lawrence A. Dana Saratoga Springs