Project a-Scare

Who was the self-styled genius on President Obama's panel on gun violence who came up with this?

Buried deep in the docs for the new federal gun proposals is a program called Project AWARE. Project AWARE isn't a gun bill. Rather, it sounds like a weak mimeograph of Bush's failed TeenScreen that was rightly abolished not long ago.

The stated aim of Project a-Scare is to reach "mentally ill" young people and refer them to some form of "treatment." But there's no guarantee the type of "treatment" proffered will be evidence-based. Nothing in the description seems to rule out residential programs - which are failures. Nothing in it seems to rule out forced druggings - failures also.

We have a right to expect better from this administration. Project AWARE sounds like it was created to appease the NRA after they absurdly blamed "violent" video games for shootings. We also have a right to expect Congress not to fund Project AWARE. But trust me: They will - as long as Project a-Scare lives down to our expectations.

Involuntary commitment is unconstitutional. That's not hyperbole. There's a widely overlooked 1975 Supreme Court ruling called O'Connor v. Donaldson that says so. In fairness, Project AWARE doesn't appear to explicitly order involuntary commitment or any other specific action. But it seems to leave the door wide open for it.

In the court of public opinion, the pseudoscience of psychiatry had its day, and its glory days aren't coming back. End of discussion. Period. Full stop. But in practice, it still hangs over Americans' unsuspecting craniums, waiting to strike.