Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | November 29, 2015 | 132 Comments

Aloof. Angry. Alienated. Robert Lewis Dear Jr. was a dangerous kook, who inspired fear among his neighbors in North Carolina:

“He was the kind of person you had to watch out for,” one neighbor said. “He was a very weird individual. It’s hard to explain, but he had a weird look in his eye most of the time.” . . .
In Anderson Acres, neighbors said they recognized Dear from television news coverage of Friday’s shootings, in which police said he killed three people, including a police officer, and wounded nine others. They said he looked more beaten down than the last time they had seen him, and that his beard was new — but that he was the same aloof, angry man they remembered. . . .
“He complained about everything,” said another neighbor who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying that he feared for his security. “He said he worked with the government, and everybody was out to get him, and he knew the secrets of the U.S.A. He said, ‘Nobody touch me, because I’ve got enough information to put the whole U.S. of A in danger.’ It was very crazy.” . . .
“He was weird. Everyone kept an eye on him.” . . .
“He was really tightly wound. You could see that from the stress on his face, from the way he acted.”

The paranoid weirdo had a record of frightening behavior:

He had a history of run-ins with neighbors and police, including arrests for alleged cruelty to animals and allegedly being a “peeping Tom.” He was not convicted in either case.
Pamela Ross . . . was married to Dear nearly 20 years ago. . . .
Dear’s problems with the law date to 1997, when his then-wife reported to police that Dear had assaulted her, according to reports filed with the sheriff’s office in Colleton County, S.C., where Dear lived at the time. She declined to file charges against him but told police she reported the incident because she “wanted something on record.”
Colleton County police released reports of at least seven other episodes in which Dear . . . had disputes or physical altercations with neighbors or other residents. . . .
In May 2002, a woman who lived next door to Dear in Walterboro, in Colleton County, complained to police that Dear had been “making unwanted advancements” toward her since she and her husband had moved in a year earlier.
The woman told police that she had seen Dear hiding in the bushes next to their house at 5:30 a.m. She “heard her guard dog barking and saw Mr. Dear looking into her house.” . . .
[In North Carolina, another] neighbor said that Dear would carry a stick as he rode his trail bike, and he would slow down and try to bait dogs in the area. He also said that Dear swung the stick at his dog several times.
The neighbors said that Dear’s behavior seemed to change last year, and he seemed angrier.
“The last time I saw him, I waved and smiled. He just stared and glared back at me. It was disconcerting,” one said.

Cruelty to animals, incidentally, indicates a high risk of psychopathic disorder. So, how did this scary nutjob — who had so frequently come to the attention of law enforcement in South Carolina and North Carolina — make his way to Colorado?

Dear moved to Colorado last year, when he bought a five-acre plot of land in Hartsel, about 40 miles west of Colorado Springs, according to Jim Anderson, the real estate agent who brokered the deal. The previous owner said that Dear paid $6,000 for the vacant land.
“He said he wanted a cheap piece of land to put a camper on,” Anderson said. . . .
Anderson also said that Dear arrived with a woman, but he did not know her name. Colorado records show that Stephanie Michelle Bragg was registered to vote at the same address earlier this year.
Her ex-husband, Michael Bragg, said she moved to Colorado with Dear about a year ago. Michael Bragg said he had two daughters, ages 19 and 15, with Stephanie Bragg, who had worked as a waitress at a Waffle House. Bragg said he believed that his ex-wife met Dear online.

Great. A divorced Waffle House waitress goes online looking for love and finds this weirdo loner. This connection somehow leads him to Colorado and now three people are dead. How many times have I warned against “online dating”? Not often enough maybe. But I have repeatedly warned that Crazy People Are Dangerous:

You let enough kooks run around loose — as has been the policy in this country since we de-institutionalized the mentally ill in the 1970s — and people adjust their expectations. People become accustomed to encountering weirdos, freaks and lunatics, jabbering madness to themselves on street corners or posting deranged nonsense on Tumblr blogs. You’re not even supposed to notice there is anything strange about these wild-eyed nutjobs roaming around with facial piercings, tattoos and purple hair.

That was my warning in July after Tyrelle Shaw, a/k/a “Mr. Talented,” was arrested for a series of attacks on Asian women. I issued similar warnings in connection with Dallas shooter James Boulware, mass murderer Aaron Alexis, psychotic professor Deborah Frisch, notorious stalker Diana Napolis (a/k/a “Curio Jones) and many other similar cases. Our society has been persuaded by liberals that the demented and deranged should never be criticized because criticism might hurt their feelings. Wackos and lunatics are very sensitive people, we are required to believe, and deserve our sympathy. We should never be afraid of these psychotic misfits, according to liberals who are eager to convince us that maladjusted loners are perfectly harmless.

Liberals tell us it is heartless and “mean-spirited” to suggest that public safety would be best served if mentally ill people with histories of dangerous behavior were locked up in psychiatric wards. Americans are told that it’s OK to let delusional and antisocial freaks roam around free in our society, because what could possibly go wrong?

When one of these dangerous kooks who roam among us finally commits an act of crazy violence, however, liberals quickly rush to tell us that his insane actions have some kind of political significance and that the proper response to this atrocity is — wait for it — more liberalism. Another crazy killer, therefore, vote Democrat!

Liberalism would be laughable, if it were not so deadly.

Reminder: Crazy people are dangerous. https://t.co/OnsyWqSIHl

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) November 28, 2015

Islam is a religion of peace, but Rush Limbaugh causes violence. @instapundit https://t.co/jQfcTQtb5n

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) November 29, 2015

Category: Abortion, Crime, Planned Parenthood

Comments

132 Responses to “Crazy People Are Dangerous”

Fail Burton
November 30th, 2015 @ 1:37 am

One problem that is little discussed is the fact we have 120 million more people than in 1960. So there are a third again more crazy people even more likely to get lost in the cracks. At a present population of 320 million one can make an argument a certain number is unwieldy to govern, slams our ecology and stresses our commuter systems if not our sanity.

I have long argued we should fix our population at 200 million by law and work to achieve that goal. With the trillions we throw at nothing we could weather the storm of the social security deficit which would result. Pensions would have to be made reasonable and we would have to learn to be productive rather than merely import more people and call it GDP.
RKae
November 30th, 2015 @ 2:27 am

As always: Will we ever be told what psych pharmaceutical he was on?

People who have very simple “blues”; people who simply need to cowboy up get treated to meds that completely screw up their ability to discern reality.

I had a friend who lost his business, so a doc put him on an anti-depressant. THAT’S what we’re dealing with: doctors who think you need an anti-depressant when you have a perfectly logical reason to be depressed! (Follow the damned money!)

After a week of taking the pills he said the whole world looked like theater and he could have easily shot someone or jumped off of a bridge himself.

These goddamned drugs are not “scientific progress”; they are not “a godsend for mental illness.” THEY ARE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE!
RKae
November 30th, 2015 @ 2:30 am

This is because welfare is squandered on the able-bodied who simply aren’t interested in working.

We’d be far better off if we had a system that was based on the idea “We’re only going to give assistance to the truly unfortunate, so let’s be diligent about finding them.”

Root out the damned loafers!
RKae
November 30th, 2015 @ 2:32 am

I hate that damned phrase “self-medicating.”

As if they every really tried to live without drugs!
RKae
November 30th, 2015 @ 2:34 am

“Marching orders”?

No one hands out marching orders to politicians like pharmaceutical pushers, and they are the cause of all this.
mole
November 30th, 2015 @ 2:43 am

I do think some of them took drugs which they thought “helped” moderate their conditions. But trusting crazy people to pick what they think helps probably isnt best medical practice. Anyway my point was more w”which came first, the psychosis or the drugs”.
I know a lot of druggies (from my old job) and they all know someone who “took some drugs/smoked some pot” that was supposedly laced with something that sent them mad. Never any possibility it could have been the preceding 5-10 years of being a mindless drug hoover finally catching up to them.
mole
November 30th, 2015 @ 2:46 am

Then it seems our 2 countries are very different in that respect. A lot of blaming goes on here about the lack of crisis psychiatric accommodation.

All short term stuff, but apparently there isnt enough of it.

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/australia-in-the-middle-of-mental-health-crisis-with-unnecessary-deaths-escalating-20150916-gjnqpd.html
Eye on the Republic
November 30th, 2015 @ 8:05 am

“Great. A divorced Waffle House waitress goes online looking for love and finds this weirdo loner.”

Um, not everyone, who is a loner-type person, is someone who would go out and do this sort of a thing. My grandfather was a loner, as I am, to an extent; and I’ve never did anything like this at all.

Just an FYI…
DeadMessenger
November 30th, 2015 @ 9:32 am

Nah. It makes no sense. If that were true about Cristian pro-lifers, there’d be no progs left. They couldn’t possibly be that stup…oh, never mind.
Jeanette Victoria
November 30th, 2015 @ 10:06 am

But they are paying taxes as a lot of these loonies end up in jail. And jail is far more expensive
Steve Skubinna
November 30th, 2015 @ 11:55 am

She is aware that you are typing stupid things. And don’t expect me to waste time debunking them because they have been debunked many many times and wannabe totalitarians such as yourself keep spouting them.
Steve Skubinna
November 30th, 2015 @ 11:57 am

Now you’re just being redundant.
Art Deco
November 30th, 2015 @ 12:04 pm

I have long argued we should fix our population at 200 million by law

You’re insane.
Art Deco
November 30th, 2015 @ 12:08 pm

This is because welfare is squandered on the able-bodied who simply aren’t interested in working.

Again, the TANF census is around about 4 million. The AFDC census in 1995 was 3x that.

The boundary conditions for ‘disability’ have been relaxed in recent decades, so you have a great many late-middle aged people who might have been working in 1970 and are not at this time.

The vast bulk of welfare expenditure in this country is for the benefit of the elderly and disabled or for primary and secondary schooling.
Art Deco
November 30th, 2015 @ 12:10 pm

No, 24 hour care is 24 hour care. That aside, the notion you have a vast census of lunatics in jail is a myth. You do have a mass of people who’ve had episodes of one sort or another in their life, not terribly surprising in a population shot through with drug users.
Art Deco
November 30th, 2015 @ 12:16 pm

I think your friend had an eccentric reaction. The problem you get with anti-depressant medications is that they tend to rob you of much of an emotional life at all. They are prescribed much more freely than they were 35 years ago. The thing is, that’s in part an artifact of a general loss in faith in talk therapies. In fairness to medical practitioners, the prescriptions are generally a great deal cheaper than weekly sessions with an insight oriented psychiatrist.

And, again, RS McCain is referring to a latent asylum population. That would be a schizophrenic population, who are not made crazy by medications.
NeoWayland
November 30th, 2015 @ 12:17 pm

Who decides who lives and who dies?

What if you are selected to die? Will you go willingly?

Who is going to clean up 120 million bodies?

Who gets their stuff?
Art Deco
November 30th, 2015 @ 12:19 pm

He’s completely confounded problems which result from the age distribution of the population (and exaggerated those) with problems which might result from the dimensions of the total population (which are non-existent at this point).
NeoWayland
November 30th, 2015 @ 12:22 pm

I just think there comes a time to get practical.
Quartermaster
November 30th, 2015 @ 1:08 pm

If we were still institutionalizing the loonies, I wonder how many of them would be there as a result of drug use. Most, I’m sure, would be DemoKKKrap voters.
Quartermaster
November 30th, 2015 @ 1:14 pm

We can’t ignore the reality that many people once placed on certain drugs end up doing crazy things. The numbers of such people may be small, but they are a red flag that should cause practitioners to exercise more caution than they do.
Quartermaster
November 30th, 2015 @ 1:16 pm

Most of the loony bins I knew of have been closed. While the numbers are smaller, I’ve had more than on Psychiatrist wish they could confine a number of their patients because they won’t stay on their meds and end up causing trouble for everyone around them.
Quartermaster
November 30th, 2015 @ 1:20 pm

We don’t have a shooting problem. We have a criminal problem the left refuses to deal with.
Ronald J. Ward
November 30th, 2015 @ 3:53 pm

Allow me to clarify a few things for you and your cohorts. I am both pro-life and pro-gun.

I don’t disagree that a sane and rational citizen bearing arms is an actual deterrent to criminal activity. Accordingly, I support background checks in order to keep guns out of the hands of those that are not of mind or have a criminal history.

What you and your cohorts seem to be advocating is that the laws are just fine and no states or gun dealers have deviated from the spirit of those laws, that no loopholes exist and that no problem exist. You even go as far as to discourage any conversation of that.

I’m not sure if you’re just wrapped in the Fox News/Limbaugh cocoon, induced in the “either with us or against us” koolaid of toady’s so-called conservatives purity test, or you just can’t stand the thought of acknowledging an Obama or Liberal argument but we have a serious problem today and the laws need tweaking. This is not some kowtowing to some conspiracy theory of the government coming after everyone’s guns or whatever it is that has nurtured the scales over your eyes.
Ronald J. Ward
November 30th, 2015 @ 3:57 pm

Actually, the left has put much more effort into dealing with it while the right seems less interested in criminals with guns.
Art Deco
November 30th, 2015 @ 4:56 pm

What you and your cohorts seem to be advocating is that the laws are
just fine and no states or gun dealers have deviated from the spirit of
those laws, that no loopholes exist and that no problem exist.

What I’m pointing out is obvious (and I do not think anyone here would object), but you don’t listen. I’ll say it once more as explicitly as it can be put.

1. There are diminishing returns to any set of policy measures.

2. There are social costs to any set of policy measures.

3. You’ve pretty much hit that wall with regard to regulations on gun ownership. There might be some beneficial tweaks, but you’re not going to get important or contextually significant benefits out of additional restrictions, except perhaps through…

4. Mass confiscation of guns. Encoded in the President’s demagogy on this question is a hankering after that. Except that..

5. In so doing, you violate people’s property rights, interfere with legitimate recreation, and trade one set of problems for another (noting here that home invasion burglaries are vastly more common in the British countryside than they are here).

And the notion that mass confiscation will be all that helpful, net is conjectural.

I’m not sure if you’re just wrapped in the Fox News/Limbaugh cocoon,

Here we go again. You people cannot help yourself. There is no liberal politics anymore, just adolescent status games built around tastes and affiliations (e.g. a distaste for firearms or a liking of grown men who act like teenage girls).

(And I don’t get much news from Fox and none at all from Limbaugh. Commentary’s their business).
Art Deco
November 30th, 2015 @ 5:01 pm

“Dealing” with what? The most capable and effective practitioners of crime control have been Rudolph Giuliani and William Bratton and their crew. Bratton’s a police professional and Giuliani’s a combative heterodox Republican. Neither one qualifies as part of the left.

The only things the left knows how to do is turn public agencies into vote farms in the process of building patron-client relationships. The left in action is Detroit and Baltimore.
Quartermaster
November 30th, 2015 @ 5:41 pm

The left is interested in guns. The left is utterly uninterested in dealing with criminals, unless it’s passing more laws to make more criminals.
Ronald J. Ward
November 30th, 2015 @ 6:02 pm

I realize the great divide here. You buy into this massive gun round up conspiracy that if you so much as give an inch to further prevent ex-cons, folks on the FBI’s terrorist list, and the coo-for-coco-puffs from acquiring a quick AK47 , that equates to etched in stone legislation that somehow gives big bad guvmint an out for abiding by the 2nd amendment? And such tweaking the law also somehow provides them with the resources and functionality to carry such home invasive confiscations out?

Aside from my obvious rhetoric and coloring, your argument is still illogical and it’s what makes the streets unsafe.
DrGreatCham
November 30th, 2015 @ 8:51 pm

The left fails to enforce the gun laws that it calls for if the targets are “politically correct.” Chicago is notorious for this.
DrGreatCham
November 30th, 2015 @ 8:55 pm

Those darn red-state gun grabbers!:

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/03/28/chicago-los-angeles-new-york-prosecuted-fewest-federal-gun-crimes

…and their evil NRA-loving allies at the New York Times!:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/us/29cncguns.html
Art Deco
November 30th, 2015 @ 10:31 pm

I realize the great divide here.
You realize nothing. You do not intelligently process what is said to you. You respond to your own caricatures. Complete waste of time.
theoldsargesays
November 30th, 2015 @ 10:53 pm

“He was the kind of person you had to watch out for,” one neighbor said. “He was a very weird individual. It’s hard to explain, but he had a weird look in his eye most of the time.” . . .

Sounds like he’d fit in well on a college campus nowadays.
theoldsargesays
November 30th, 2015 @ 11:03 pm

…the only reason to carry a gun is to kill random innocent people.

Since the only reason for having Planned Parenthood is to kill random innocent people so there shouldn’t be a problem between them.
theoldsargesays
November 30th, 2015 @ 11:06 pm

Hey Matt, I’ve got some beachfront property for sale- how do you feel about moving to Iowa?
theoldsargesays
December 1st, 2015 @ 12:07 am

The “loophole” to which you are referring is the transfer of a firearm between two private citizens.
It is not a loophole at all.
Now if you and those who believe as you do want to place restrictions on the transfer of firearms between two private individuals you should just come out and say so instead of playing word games and attempting to sway the opinions of the uninformed with your lies.
You remind me of those who refer to abortions as “women’s health issues”.
Liars lie.
theoldsargesays
December 1st, 2015 @ 12:09 am

You’d probably get a solid 47% who’d think any way to get free ice cream is okay with them.
theoldsargesays
December 1st, 2015 @ 12:16 am

The NRA simply reflects the position and will of it’s dues paying members.
Public sector unions supposedly do the same but their dues come from our tax dollars.
Politicians also listen to their constituencies a great number of whom are bought and paid for through government programs.

Why shouldn’t an organization of pro-Second Amendment citizens have their voice heard, especially since their own money is driving their lobbying for something they believe in and many that they may not?
theoldsargesays
December 1st, 2015 @ 12:23 am

Oz…..that explains it.
In an previous posting you used the word secondment – I wondered if you were a Brit.
🙂
theoldsargesays
December 1st, 2015 @ 12:28 am

If you ever listen to the list of possible side effects of drugs advertised on tv these days it’s scary.
I always say I’d rather live with or die by whatever the condition is rather than risk taking the drug.
theoldsargesays
December 1st, 2015 @ 12:36 am

He said “…weirdo loner.” though.That doesn’t lump us all together
The difference being that neither you nor your grandfather nor I (like yourself, I am to some extent) are “weirdo’s”.
Ronald J. Ward
December 1st, 2015 @ 10:36 am

The rubber/glue game of today’s so-called conservatives would be amusing if they weren’t so destructive and deadly.
NeoWayland
December 1st, 2015 @ 11:24 am

I’m not a conservative.

Gun control is a very bad idea.

I loathe guns. If I could, I would not only destroy all existing guns but I would eradicate the memory of anything associated with guns. Even though I am a Red-Blooded American Male® and I like watching things go boom, I despise guns with a burning hate that I can’t even begin to describe.

But aside from some people feeling threatened by the mere presence of guns, there are two and only two groups that benefit from an unarmed but law-abiding populace.

The first are criminals. The second are politicos and the law-enforcement officers that act against freedom.

That’s it. Try as I might, I can’t find any other groups that benefit from an unarmed populace.
Almost the last advocate
Ronald J. Ward
December 1st, 2015 @ 12:22 pm

You seem to follow the mindset here that the only other side of the argument is an unarmed populace and accordingly, that’s the ultimate goal of anyone on the left or anyone that wants to engage in dialog of problems we’re dealing with today.

To be very very clear, the very argument I engage in was in response to Evil Bloggerlady pertaining to “I am all for keeping guns from ISIS and insane people.”

Once again, I am a strong advocate of protecting the 2nd amendment as well as pro-life. I do support laws keeping guns out of the hands of insane people, people with violent crime history, terrorist, and people who clearly are a threat to society.

I also believe that having a conversation and having and enforcing laws to keep guns out of the hands of proven dangerous people is not in violation of the 2nd amendment, is a responsibility of our elected representatives, and is not some conspiracy theory that will result in some mass gun confiscations.

But today’s so-called conservatives are so unhinged, so infected with an Obama Derangement Syndrome, and so ideologically bigoted (not to be confused with racism) that their eyes are too swelled shut from festered hatred to allow them to engage in adult conversation.
NeoWayland
December 1st, 2015 @ 12:34 pm

Here’s the problem.

Who decides?

By any chance have you read The Racist Roots of Gun Control?

For me personally, it didn’t start with Obama. It started with Bush.

Politicos can’t be trusted. Even when they promise you that they can.
Ronald J. Ward
December 1st, 2015 @ 12:42 pm

People elect representatives to, well, represent them.

When you have huge money influence (which has gotten much worse due to a GWB plutocratic SCOTUS Citizen United V Fed)

As argued above, the electorate in huge numbers supported improving the background check process but were rejected thanks to the NRA, a mega political influence.

It would seem that the obvious fix would be to reject those that flipped the electorate the bird while kowtowing to their donor bosses.
NeoWayland
December 1st, 2015 @ 12:55 pm

Now now. Money in elections is a completely different issue.

The electorate doesn’t have the power to inflict gun control, any more than they have the power to ban religion.
Ronald J. Ward
December 1st, 2015 @ 1:06 pm

Freedom of religion as a right is much more defined than right to bear arms.

Everyone should have a right to worship as they chose whereas not everyone (the insane, criminals, etc) should be allowed to carry a gun or have arms that could take a jet liner out of the sky.

And yes, the electorate does have the power if they so chose and don’t indulge in the koolade.
NeoWayland
December 1st, 2015 @ 1:15 pm

People don’t realize that without a bunch of angry people and the 2nd Amendment, there is absolutely no reason for government to honor the other amendments, or even the Constitution.

It’s not a matter of which right is “better defined.” As I mentioned earlier in this thread, some people treat gun ownership as proof of insanity.

As for “criminals,” over the last few decades the government has outlawed high flow toilets, high wattage bulbs, keeping too much money in your bank account, and not enrolling in Obamacare. What does any of that have to do with worthiness to own a gun?
NeoWayland
December 1st, 2015 @ 1:17 pm

Who decides?

It’s a simple question.

Why?

That’s the important question.