Sunday, March 18, 2018

Yes, Even the New York Times is Admitting It

MIAMI — On the day an 11th grader named Nikolas Cruz told another student that he had a gun at home and was thinking of using it, two guidance counselors and a sheriff’s deputy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., concluded that he should be forcibly committed for psychiatric evaluation, according to mental health records obtained on Sunday by The New York Times.
An involuntary commitment of that kind, under the authority of a Florida state law known as the Baker Act, could have kept Mr. Cruz from passing a background check required to buy a firearm.
But Mr. Cruz appears never to have been institutionalized despite making threats to himself and others, cutting his arms with a pencil sharpener and claiming he had drunk gasoline in a possible attempt to kill himself, all in a five-day period in September 2016.
The revelation that school officials considered trying to commit Mr. Cruz under the Baker Act in 2016 appeared to be another in a string of missed opportunities to deal with the troubled young man. He went on to commit one of the deadliest school massacres in American history last month, killing 17 people and wounding 17 more using a gun he bought legally.

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