Before we hung up, the manager told me I\u2019d have to trust the system. But it was Thanksgiving weekend. I stressed about the hundreds of thousands of gun purchases being background checked while the checkers would be understaffed, until the store manager called back \u2014 God love him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Again, he wouldn\u2019t give me any information, but he said, \u201cThat thing you were worried about \u2014 I can only tell you, you don\u2019t have to worry anymore. Now go enjoy your weekend.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
I did not enjoy my weekend, but I did get some much-needed sleep. Until the following Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when my oldest son, then back in Chicago, started posting about a gun belonging to a friend. When he couldn\u2019t reach his girlfriend one night, he texted that he intended to shoot himself with this gun. Using screenshots of this threat, my husband convinced Chicago police to visit his apartment and conduct a wellness check. CPD broke down his door, but my son wasn\u2019t there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His online threats to harm himself and others continued. Things got scarier when he doxxed a drug supplier on social media. I kept calling law enforcement in Chicago and telling them my son was going to shoot someone, get shot or shoot himself. By then, he\u2019d cleared out of his apartment. There wasn\u2019t much police could do.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My husband and I retained a lawyer in Illinois. We flew to Chicago the first week of December to appear before a judge and request a court order to have our son hospitalized \u2014 the only way to get someone with a mental illness hospitalized in Illinois. The process wasn\u2019t guaranteed because Illinois won\u2019t compel someone addicted to drugs into treatment, even if they exhibit symptoms of serious mental illness. After flipping through my son\u2019s dossier of threats, the judge granted our request, and the police went to pick up our son.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t at his apartment.<\/p>\n
My husband and I spent the entire next day staking out his building from a rental car. When our son showed up to grab some things, we ducked and called 911. Twenty minutes later, too spent and wired to feel anything, I watched officers fold him into a squad car and drive him to a hospital.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a mother in fear for her son\u2019s life, there was no way I was going to trust some bureaucratic \u201csystem\u201d to protect him or anyone he might have harmed when he was unwell. Thankfully, I had the time and the resources to keep at it. It\u2019s a good thing since there was no system. Until a person is deemed a live threat, it\u2019s up to friends, family and concerned citizens like the outdoor store manager to try to manage them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My experiences with my son, the uptick in mental illness in the young, their access to weapons, general misunderstandings about what mental illnesses actually are \u2014 all of these issues are too thorny, too snarled, too painful to untangle in a thousand-plus words. Four years in, I\u2019m sure of only one thing: Even families as resourced as mine need more help.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I took it for granted that law enforcement would want to keep a firearm away from my son when he was ill \u2014 especially once he threatened members of our family. I knew police officers would be the ones who\u2019d have to deal with him if things went south. I was terrified he\u2019d shoot an officer, or one would shoot him. Or both.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Equally as terrifying, my son repeatedly threatened to take his own life. For 30 years, suicides have made up the majority of U.S. firearm deaths. My heart misses a beat every time I remember that an American dies by suicide with a gun about every 20 minutes<\/a>. I knew my son was far more likely to take his own life than someone else\u2019s. And yet, in order to protect him, protect those around him and protect law enforcement, his dad and I had to spend thousands of dollars and appear before a judge 1,200 miles from our home to beg the courts to decree his hospitalization.\u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m not challenging the Second Amendment here, only stating the obvious: No American family should have to work that hard to keep its members safe from a gun.<\/p>\n If near-weekly mass shooting tragedies and shamefully high gun death rates aren\u2019t enough to move lawmakers to insist on common-sense gun policies to protect our citizens, there\u2019s something they can do right now to keep people safe from harm. Much like nationwide requirements for child abuse reporting<\/a>, lawmakers could require school administrators, teachers, social workers, law enforcement and health care providers to report if they hear, or suspect, that someone poses a threat. The person in question could be investigated, monitored, and, if need be, hospitalized \u2014 with their privacy and rights intact.\u00a0<\/p>\n