Trump pushes bump stock ban

President Trump announced Tuesday that he is banning “bump stock” accessories for semi-automatic firearms in the wake of last week’s school shooting in Florida. Mr. Trump said he signed a directive ordering Attorney General Jeff Sessions to craft regulations banning “bump stocks” and other devices that turn semi-automatic firearms into automatic weapons. He said the new… Read the rest of this entry »

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The Right to Treatment Protects All of Us

Twenty years after the closing of Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital, thoughts on Parkland, Florida.

By Stuart J. Moskovitz

In 1966, Chief Judge Bazelon of the D.C. Appellate Court reviewed a lower court decision where the judge had said, “My jurisdiction is limited to determining whether [the patient] has recovered his sanity. I don’t think I have a right to consider whether he is getting enough treatment.”

Chief Judge Bazelon stated, “Absent treatment, the hospital is transformed into a penitentiary where one could be held indefinitely for no convicted offense.”

He then went on to note that in 1964 Congress had passed the Hospitalization of the Mentally Ill Act which provides, in part, “A person hospitalized in a public hospital for a mental illness shall, during his hospitalization, be entitled to medical and psychiatric care and treatment.”

He defined that requisite care by saying, “According to leading experts ‘psychiatric care and treatment’ includes not only the contacts with psychiatrists but also activities and contacts with the hospital staff designed to cure or improve the patient.”

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