Can security and freedom coexist?

Security. Safety. And Freedom. Can they coexist? Can you be safe in a free country? For that matter can you be safe in a totalitarian country?

I was distressed by the bashing the police got after the tragedy on Monday. Why didn’t they know, why didn’t they evacuate the campus or lock it down or something beforehand? Why couldn’t they have been there when it started? Why didn’t they notify all the students right after the first incident? How could they have failed so completely to avoid the “worst tragedy on a campus in U.S. history?” We don’t live in a police state, and we don’t want to. So how could the police, who give us our freedom to come and go, to live our lives, possibly have done other than they did?

Why wasn’t he in a mental hospital somewhere? People knew he was disturbed. This is a bigger question. Our laws protect all kinds of privacies. Information about us is at one level supposedly protected to the Nth degree, as in our medical history. Parents, spouses, children, cannot obtain medical information on a mental patient over 18 without his written consent. I have been in that situation and found it impossible. We struggle to maintain our privacy in other arenas such as credit—ha ha ha--. Does it make sense that my credit report is available to anyone who wants to see it and pay a little fee? My salary and work history are public information? My property, including whether I put in another bathroom, are matters of public record. So are the terms of my divorce. My comings and goings are routinely logged by the airlines, the traffic cameras, parking police, everyone. But my serious mental illness cannot be discussed with the people who might be able to help me, who might care enough to help monitor it, or at least be in a position to see the warning signs if they only knew what they were? The way things work a person has to do something that endangers himself or others—kill a couple of people, try to commit suicide—before any intervention is possible. And yet, and yet. The loss of control more ope n information could impose on people regarding their medical issues is the other side of that coin. Is

We leap to implement measures to insure against a repeat of this kind of tragedy. Yesterday somebody got past the security measures at NASA—we assume NASA is as secure as other federal institutions? He traumatized one person, killed one and killed himself. Every time something happens, we implement another measure of security. We take away another freedom—the freedom to keep your shoes on at the airport after one isolated incident—the freedom to carry toothpaste in your carry on after one incident. Has it helped prevent another shoe bomber? Has it helped prevent a mid-air explosion? I don’t know. Has it cost a great deal of money in terms of security personnel, time and inconvenience for all passengers, and more mechanisms for screening? I suspect it has.

So what shall we do now—how will we react to this terrible, terrifying and tragic event? Give our campus security guards guns? Well, frankly, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me to have security guards who can’t do anything. Will one of them run amuck and be the next shooter? Doubtful. Will this cost schools a lot more? Yes. Will it guarantee against another killing? No. Is it a reasonable measure? Perhaps. But reasonable measures should not be implemented as knee-jerk reactions. Public leaders are required to do something. If they just say what I’m saying, they are quickly discredited. They have to do something in response to a tragedy of this magnitude. The problem is that each something done in response to an event, even a horrific one like this, piles on top of other measures, creating an uncoordinated junk pile of measures, some of which work, some of which don’t. And still there’s no way to know what might have happened.

Every time I go to the airport they tell me that the security level has been raised to orange. Am I glad we have security measures in place at airports? Yes. Do I think they will guarantee against another tragedy like 9/11? No. There are no guarantees.

The fact is there are no absolute guarantees of safety. No one is safe in Baghdad, or Palestine in spite of all the measures people are trying to take to make them safe. Am I safe in my home? If someone wants to come in here and kill me, my guess is that they’ll get the job done whether or not the doors are locked. I rely on the general goodness of my neighbors, the protection of my guardian angel, and luck. And I know that I am not safe. Bad things can happen.

I think to guard against what happened in Virginia, the laws regarding privacy where severe mental illness is concerned should be changed. I think families should be allowed and encouraged to know what’s going on, so they can support, protect, and when necessary warn others about, their loved ones. The level of serious mental illness that should come under this heading needs to be carefully evaluated, but if a person is known to lose control of the illness if he stops taking medication, it seems to me that is serious enough.