Kentucky teens attempt suicide more often than those in all U.S.

In a 2011 update of a study done four years ago, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Adolescent Health (OAH) surveyed America's teenagers about their physical health and potentially risky behaviors. Broken down state-by-state, the study presents a picture of what ails us, if we are willing to pay attention.

In Kentucky, the numbers read as not terribly surprising. Our kids are a little more fat than the national average. They smoke and chew more tobacco. They have a little more sex while in high school. But one statistic is startling: Kentucky's teenagers are trying to kill themselves more frequently than other teenagers nationwide.

According to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month, 11 percent of Kentucky youth have attempted suicide, compared to 8 percent nationally. Moreover, 5 percent of Kentucky's teenagers have had a suicide attempt result in an injury, poisoning or overdose that had to be treated by a doctor or nurse during the 12-month period before the survey was conducted. That compares to only 2 percent nationwide for kids responding who required the same treatment during the same duration.

If there is good news for Kentucky in the survey, it's this: The state's teenagers are in reasonably good health, but are not getting the physical exercise that the rest of the nation's teens are getting (39 percent vs. 49 percent) and they are playing fewer team sports (46 percent vs. 58 percent). They are heavier (16 percent vs. 13 percent) than the average American teen and more likely (36 percent to 28 percent) to drink a can, bottle or glass of soda or pop one or more times a day.

They are less likely to have never tried smoking (41 percent  to 55 percent) than other American teens, to have smoked on a least one day of the last 30 (24 percent to 18 percent), bought their own cigarettes (21 percent to 14 percent) and used chewing tobacco (17 percent to 8 percent). Eight percent of Kentucky teenagers report using pain relievers for non-medical reasons in the last 12 months. That's a bit higher than the national average of 6 percent of U.S. teens who report doing the same.

Kentucky's teenagers are also a bit more likely to have had sexual intercourse while in high school (52 to 47 percent) than the national average, more likely to carried a weapon on a least one day (23 percent o 17 percent), carried a gun (9 percent to 5 percent), though less likely to have been in a physical fight (29 to 33 percent).

To find each of these topics, go here. Look for the heading (physical health, mental health, substance abuse, healthy relationships), then go to the Kentucky site page. A more complete data picture will emerge.

Darryl Issa's Contemptible Actions

DonkeyHotey

Darryl Issa, a California Congressman, made his fortune manufacturing car alarms and used his wealth to fund the recall of California Governor Gray Davis, who was succeeded by Arnold Schwarzenegger.  (Issa reportedly intended to place himself on the ballot before Schwarzenegger jumped in.)

As chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Darryl Issa has called President Obama "one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times."  He declared he would hold "hundreds of hearings" to uncover wrongdoing in the Obama Administration.  But, as Alex Seitz--Wald details, Issa "often ended up shooting blanks."

His investigations into WikiLeaks, Fannie and Freddie, the FDA, and countless others have failed to expose any massive wrongdoing by the administration and after a year and half, he has little to show for them. . . .

Other investigations bordered on fringe absurdism, like when he asked the Department of Justice to investigate ACORN more than a year after it went extinct. There was also the hearing he held probing the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate, which famously included a panel featuring zero women.

But yesterday, as Seitz-Wald reports, Issa "finally got his big trophy and moment in the cable news sun today when his committee voted to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, following nearly seven hours of testimony on the ATF’s botched “Fast and Furious” gun scandal."

Meteor Blades at Daily Kos has the background:

The issue that spurred the committee's vote is Holder's unwillingness to release documents and internal communications at the Department of Justice regarding the operation known as "Fast and Furious." That operation, run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed guns bought in the United States to cross into Mexico. The idea was to nail straw purchasers of weapons in United States and also high-level members of Mexican drug gangs that obtained the weapons.

According to the 2011 report Fueling Cartel Violence prepared for Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), hundreds of firearms made their way into the arsenals of three of the largest drug cartels: Sinaloa, El Teo and La Familia.

Mexican authorities have claimed that as many as 150 people have been killed by these firearms in an ongoing war that has taken the lives of more than 50,000 people since 2006. Some 2,000-plus firearms are said to have made their way into Mexico as a result of "Fast and Furious." A U.S. Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, was also killed with one of the weapons, an AK47-style firearm. Among the weapons allowed to leave the states were .50 caliber sniper rifles that may have made the difference in battles between cartel members and Mexican police.

As Jeremy Leaming at American Constitution Society explains:

U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) told The Times the administration was forced into invoking privilege because of the Issa-led committee’s “unreasonable insistence on pressing forward with contempt despite the attorney general’s good faith offer.”

The Department of Justice has provided Issa’s committee nearly 8,000 documents for the congressional investigation into the tactics used in the federal government’s efforts to stop violence related to drug smuggling along the southern border.

But Issa and other Republican members on the committee have feigned disbelief, arguing that much more is needed to complete their work.

I'm not particularly comfortable defending this -- or any -- Administration's invocation of executive privilege but Issa's relentless pursuit of the president, culminating in this investigation of a trumped-up scandal is nothing more than cynical political theater.

As Kevin Drum notes, this is a "fairly ridiculous invented controversy that Republicans care about only because (a) it involves guns, and (b) it involves the Obama administration."  Indeed, Issa "more or less admitted the fever swamp origins of tea party outrage over Fast & Furious when he told Sean Hannity that Obama was using the program to 'somehow take away or limit people's Second Amendment rights.''  This mad notion was seconded by Newt Gingrich on on CNBC last night.  According to Steve Benen, Gingrich "argued, with a straight face, that the so-called "Fast and Furious" controversy was part of an elaborate ploy to enact gun control."

Crazy, right?  "And yet," as Benen sums it up, "this nuttiness has been fully embraced by many House Republicans, many Senate Republicans, Fox News, Newt Gingrich, the NRA, and some deeply strange folks on far-right blogs and talk radio. To put it mildly, it's disconcerting."

 With the contempt citation going to the full House next week, you can take action by calling (202-224-3121) or emailing your representatives and urging them to oppose this politically motivated witch hunt.

George Zimmerman Had More Legal Authority To Shoot And Kill Than Do Our Troops At War

By Jon Soltz, founder and chairman of VoteVets.org.

The Trayvon Martin case has gripped the nation, and forced the country to re-examine our gun laws. But the horrible affair has struck me in another way, because of my two tours in Iraq. One fact stands out in my mind: The "Stand Your Ground" law in Florida, which may let George Zimmerman off the hook for the killing of Martin, gives more leeway to shooters than our own military gives to soldiers in war.

VoteVets.org has more than 105,000 members who take a wide array of views on gun control and the 2nd Amendment, but the Trayvon Martin case is less about the right to bear arms than it is the "use of force." It's impossible to ignore the legal protection George Zimmerman enjoys in suburban Florida vs. the Rules of Engagement that outline when one of our troops can shoot while in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The U.S. military issues Rules of Engagement (ROE) for every conflict to guide servicemembers' ability to protect themselves from deadly threats while responding only with the necessary and proportionate level of force in a dangerous situation. The Rules of Engagement for Operation Iraqi Freedom laid out a clear set of steps that U.S. forces must take, up to and including deadly force if necessary, when responding to a threat or hostile act.

A key component of the ROE used during the height of violence in Iraq in 2007 was the requirement to use "Graduated Force" when time and circumstances permit. Section 3.G.(1) states that if an individual "commit[s] a hostile act or demonstrat[es] hostile intent" - meaning he or she attacks U.S. or designated allied forces, nationals, or property, or threatens the imminent use of force against any of them - U.S. Force "may use force, up to and including deadly force, to eliminate the threat." However, the rule also explicitly instructs forces, "when time and circumstances permit," to use the following "graduated measures of force" when responding to hostile act or hostile intent:

3.G.(1)(A) (U) Shout verbal warnings to halt;
3.G.(1)(B) (U) Show your weapon and demonstrate intent to use it;
3.G.(1)(C) (U) Physically restrain, block access, or detain;
3.G.(1)(D) (U) Fire a warning shot (if authorized);
3.G.(1)(E) (U) Shoot to eliminate the threat.

This rule laid out a code of conduct that troops in Iraq adopted and employed in high-risk hostile situations. We were trained to respond to a threat by quickly assessing its level and urgency and, where time and circumstances permit, to "Shout - Show - Shove - Shoot." As the shorthand makes clear, we approached threats with a clear set of steps to take before firing a weapon. The bottom line goal was always to minimize unnecessary deaths.

These rules are enforced: using deadly force after failing to follow this procedure leads you open to charges of manslaughter and a court-martial.


In fact, Richard Allen Smith, the vice chairman of VoteVets.org, recently told me a story he had heard during his time in Afghanistan, which illustrates this point.

The Scout Platoon leader for Richard's Battalion was in a situation in 2007 where they detained someone, but he managed to get out of their truck and flee. While he was running away, the Platoon Leader fired at him and caught him in the thigh. They called for a medevac, but he bled out before the bird could get there.

Under military law and rules of engagement, the Platoon Leader was clearly in the wrong: he pursued an unarmed guy who wasn't posing a threat to U.S. Forces and shot him to death. He was charged (although he was never tried because he was injured a few days later when his truck was hit by an IED and he was deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial).

Of course, comparing the Trayvon Martin case to a war situation is neither fair nor clean, and we still don't know all of the facts surrounding Trayvon's death. But insofar as what I've read about the case, it sounds to me that if Trayvon had been an Iraqi soldier, and George Zimmerman had been a U.S. Soldier, there would have been an immediate investigation, and most likely a manslaughter charge, and victim's family financially compensated for wrongful death.

But Zimmerman is a civilian in Florida where, as the country now knows, a shooter is often immune from criminal prosecution and civil liability if he believed he had been threatened with deadly force. One of the striking components of Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law - or, more appropriately, "Shoot First" law - is that it eliminated the "duty to retreat" embedded in centuries of common law about self-defense. Traditionally, a person had the duty to retreat from dangerous situations if they could, and the use of deadly force was justifiable self-defense only if a person could not have otherwise safely gotten away.

In this way, the common law shared the underlying values of the Rules of Engagement: it is always preferable to de-escalate potentially violent situations before someone is killed. Florida's "Shoot First" law - and the 24 other states that passed similar laws since 2005 - abandons that core de-escalation principle and allows an individual not only to "shoot first," but to shoot faster than a member of the U.S. military would in a war zone.

If a soldier or marine faces an imminent threat, he or she must take the procedural steps of employing Graduated Force, and if they don't, they may be criminally liable. By eliminating both the duty to retreat and by providing blanket immunity for a shooter who claims he felt reasonably threatened, Florida's "Shoot First" law seems to me to be exponentially more lax than the law that guides our troops in a war.

In a war zone, troops are surrounded by potential threats, and it's easy to misread a situation or jump to conclusions. But the military doesn't let one of our troops just say, "I thought someone was threatening," as an excuse for shooting someone to death outside of a firefight. The presumption remains that, if time and circumstances allowed, they should have taken preliminary steps to avoid a deadly confrontation. A deadly shooting still calls for an investigation, and if the evidence suggests that the shooter did not employ Graduated Force and that a reasonable person would not have resulted to deadly force, the shooter will be taken to a court martial. Even the presence of a weapon in many cases since AK47s are readily available isn't enough alone to justify deadly force without the intent to use the weapon with hostile intent.

Even in a war zone, Americans operate according to rules that seek to minimize deadly violence, and Americans who seem to deviate from those rules are subject to fact-finding and accountability in our military justice system. Our troops are trained on the escalation of force but our contractors weren't validated by our military training, causing huge legal issues for our country with the Iraqi government.

I was shocked to learn what goes for the military and half the states in America is no longer the case in Florida and the two dozen other states with new "Shoot First" laws. Zimmerman has so far avoided arrest by simply claiming that he felt threatened by Trayvon, regardless of whether that was an objectively reasonable response to the situation or if he took steps to avoid a deadly confrontation.

As an Iraq veteran watching this national story unfold, I am finding it hard not to conclude that Florida's law gives people much more leeway to shoot someone than our own military gives to our troops in war. That is something worth thinking about as this case moves forward.

Originally published at ThinkProgress

Bill filed to keep guns from those judged to be mentally ill

Keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill is the aim of House Bill 308, which was filed last week by Rep. Bob Damron, D-Nicholasville.

"We want only the right folks to be able to buy a firearm," said Damron, right. "That does not include the mentally ill. I think most gun owners would stand behind that." Damron is an ally of the National Rifle Association.

The bill covers a loophole in state law. Though the federal Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 requires background checks when someone buys a gun and prohibits the sale of guns to people "adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution," Kentucky does not require courts to give their mental health records to the FBI, The Lexington Herald-Leader's John Cheves reports. Since 1998, Kentucky has only submitted four records.

Damron's proposal would require state courts to inform the Kentucky State Police when someone is adjudged mentally incompetent or sent to a mental institution. The KSP would then notify the FBI, which in turn would add the names to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The names would only be those of mentally ill people who have been documented by the courts. Those who voluntarily commit themselves to a mental institution or who are treated for mental health issues would be protected by privacy laws.

The gap in the law, which exists in many states, went under a national microscope when Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and himself on the Virginia Tech campus in 2007. More than a year before the shooting, a judge had deemed Cho dangerously mentally ill following a stalking incident. When Jared Loughner killed six people and injured many others, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, in Tucson, Ariz., the gap again gained national attention. However, Loughner is not known to have been a patient in an institution, so it is not clear if his mental health issues were documented. (Read more)