Front Sight, Press

HOLLISTER, Calif. – The man who opened fire in front of the Pentagon had a history of mental illness and had become so erratic that his parents reached out to local authorities weeks ago with a warning that he was unstable and might have a gun, authorities said Friday.

It’s still unclear why John Patrick Bedell opened fire Thursday at the Pentagon entrance, wounding two police officers before he was fatally shot. The two officers were hospitalized briefly with minor injuries.

Bedell was diagnosed as bipolar, or manic depressive, and had been in and out of treatment programs for years. His psychiatrist, J. Michael Nelson, said Bedell tried to self-medicate with marijuana, inadvertently making his symptoms more pronounced.

"Without the stabilizing medication, the symptoms of his disinhibition, agitation and fearfullness complicated the lack of treatment," Nelson said.

So how’d he get the guns and ammo? I thought these kinds of folks were “prohibited persons.”

His parents reported him missing Jan. 4, a day after a Texas Highway Patrol officer stopped him for speeding in Texarkana. Bedell told the highway patrolman he was heading to the East Coast, and began acting strangely — sitting on his knees by the side of the highway and turning off his cell phone when it would ring.

Bedell said it was his mother calling, prompting the patrolman to answer the phone and talk briefly with her. Family friend Reb Monaco said Kaye Bedell asked the officer to take him to a mental health facility, but that the son refused.

The patrolman let Bedell go after issuing a speeding ticket and a citation for possession of drug paraphernalia, including a pipe and a green plastic box with marijuana residue.

Are you kidding me?

The next day, Kaye told deputies in California that her son had no reason to travel to the East Coast because he had no friends or family there and she and her husband were worried about his mental state, San Benito County Sheriff Curtis Hill said.

Hill also said Bedell’s parents found an e-mail from their son that indicated he had made a $600 purchase from a shooting range in the Sacramento area that could have been a gun or ammunition.

And what gave you the first clue, Holmes?

The 36-year-old Bedell returned to his parent’s home Jan. 18, telling them "not to ask any questions" about where he had been. But he left after that, and his parents didn’t know where he went.

I’ll ask questions in my own house of my own kids whenever I damned well please; thank you very much.

Little is known about his trip east, but authorities know he spent time in Reno, where Washoe County Sheriff Mike Haley said he was arrested on Feb. 1 with two ounces of marijuana in his car but no weapons.

The Bedell family put out a statement Friday saying they were "devastated as a family by the news."

"We may never know why he made this terrible decision," the statement said. "One thing is clear though — his actions were caused by an illness and not a defective character."

Well, duh. So who sold him the guns and why wasn’t his extensive history of mental illness in the NICS?

Bedell, the officials say, opened fire with a 9 mm handgun just five feet from the nearest officer, Marvin Carraway. Fellow officer Jeffery Amos ran out of a nearby guard booth to confront Bedell, as did a third, unidentified officer. All three officers gave chase and fired at Bedell, who was struck in the head and left arm.

Witness Dan Namisi said he had just emerged from the Metro station, headed for a bus home, when he heard a "pop." The Uganda native hit the ground, and the next thing he knew, officers swarmed over him and put handcuffs on him.

Yeah, great. Grab the black guy…

The assault at the very threshold of the Pentagon — the U.S. capital’s ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001 — came four months after a deadly attack on the Army’s Fort Hood, Texas, post allegedly by a U.S. Army psychiatrist with radical Islamic leanings.

Hatred of the government motivated a man in Texas last month to fly a small plane into a building housing Internal Revenue Service offices, killing an IRS employee and himself.

The shooting resembled one in January in which a gunman walked up to the security entrance of a Las Vegas courthouse and opened fire with a shotgun, killing one officer and wounding another before being gunned down in return fire.

Source: Yahoo News

So, what’s your point? Is there some kind of connection here beyond garden variety insanity?

In my more paranoid moments, I almost suspect that the powers that be want this kind of stuff to happen so they can further restrict gun ownership. With all of these warnings signs, why wasn’t this guy picked up? Why wasn’t his info in the NICS? Just like Cho at Virginia Tech, the signs were clear for anyone to see.

OK, I’ll say it: despite my near-fanatical devotion to the Second Amendment, there are some folks out there who have no business being in possession of any kind of firearm, and this guy is one of them. Democracy and equal rights under the law presupposes rational behavior. Those who are incapable of rational behavior give up some of their rights. There is nothing wrong with that. Epileptics are not allowed to pilot jet airliners because they could have a seizure at a critical moment and kill a lot of people. The same goes with guns. A person who has demonstrated acute mental instability forfeits their right to unrestricted firearms ownership. Life is not always fair. Get used to it.

And as for poor John Patrick Bedell, had the people around him – his parents and local law enforcement – acted like adults and done the hard work of reeling him in, he might be alive today and two Capitol City police officers wouldn’t be in the hospital.