Guns and Mental Disability

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Black silhouette of a pistol

I don’t think it should be easy for people with mental illness to get a gun. But then I don’t think it should be easy for anyone to get a gun.

When I first heard that President Obama’s new initiative on gun control would include measures to prevent people with “mental illness” from getting guns, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I know that statistics on actual shootings don’t justify focusing on mental illness. On the other hand, on an individual level, I find it hard not to think that that it might be much better if someone with mental illness couldn’t buy a gun. If nothing else, it might cut down on gun suicides. Or so the reasoning goes, I guess.

Then I saw some of the details and was reminded just how bad well-intentioned policy can be. The plan would link gun buying background checks with records of people on Social Security who have “representative payees.”

Representative payees, (referred to as “rep. payees”), are people who are given the legal authority and task of managing the finances of someone deemed incapable of handling their own money. This can include people with mental illness, but also people with intellectual disabilities, autism, or traumatic brain injury. A rep. payee will receive a person’s Social Security check, and disburse the money to pay the person’s bills. If done right, and in the right situations, it can be a very helpful service.

Not for nothing, but given peoples’ weird ideas about these conditions, rep. payees can also easily be misapplied to people who probably don’t really need it … people who would probably manage their money just fine, with a bit of training and some informal advice.

Either way, justified or not, the cognitive ability to understand and manage personal finances is a ridiculously imprecise marker for figuring out who shouldn’t be allowed to own a gun. Choosing that mechanism really seems like an idea thought up by a policy wonk who knows how data systems and bureaucracy works, but knows nothing about mental illness or other cognitive disabilities.

If I had it my way, buying and owning a gun would be at least as complex and demanding a process as owning and driving a car. You should have to train for it, pass a test, fill out a bunch of paperwork, maintain insurance, buy renewals, and periodically do all or most of it over again. And as with cognitive impairment and driving, any restrictions should be very individually determined, and based on actual risks, not prejudice.

But if that’s not going to happen, imposing gun restrictions on people with rep. payees is more than just an incremental measure. It’s bureaucratically sloppy, and conceptually it threatens to turn informal stigma against mentally ill and cognitively impaired people into official policy. That’s a terrible idea … ineffective on guns, and possibly very effective in making discrimination much worse for mentally ill and cognitively impaired people overall.

As usual, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network explains the issue with crystal clarity.

ASAN Opposes Proposal to Link Gun Purchases to SSA Rep Payee Database
Autistic Self Advocacy Network - January 5, 2016

What Would Mom & Dad Do?

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I have been thinking a lot about how parents of disabled children talk about, share, and interpret their experiences … and with whom. I am thinking partially about the #CrippingTheMighty thing, a clash a website about disability that has a distinctly parent-centered and traditional disability paradigm flavor, and adults with disabilities, most of them bloggers, and people who consider themselves disability activists and proud participants in disability culture. One of the biggest points of contention is whether it is responsible and ethical for parents to share intimate details about their disabled children, and whether it’s ever okay for parents to share negative stories about their kids, or publicly describe their own darker, more despairing feelings about their children’s disabilities.

Black silhouette of a father and mother with a child between them holding their hands

I find myself wondering whether my mother or father would have gone on social media or blogged about their feelings and experiences when they had a disabled child they named Andrew, if such technologies had been available to them 48 years ago. As it happened, I don’t think either Mom or Dad ever did anything to share their feelings or thoughts on disability publicly. They talked with close friends and family of course, thought I doubt they did even that very often. I know, or I was told, about an incident where one of my mother’s friends sharply delivered Mom a bit of a verbal smackdown when she was having a very low moment, a few months after my birth. It’s my mother herself who told me about it years later … how her friend said something like “Well, it sure would have been easier if he’d never been born, wouldn’t it?” probably in a very sarcastic and severe manner. Mom said this was a major turning point for her, shifting her abruptly from “Why me?” mode into the “Get on with it” mode she pretty much stayed in until the day she died … at least as far as me and my disabilities were concerned.

The point is she never made any of this public. I guess that’s what I am doing now. Mom died about ten years ago, but now I’m wondering anyway whether it's ethical for me to share this story about her. Mom never made a public issue of me or my disabilities, or her feelings about them. It’s not because she was ashamed, or to protect me from some perceived embarrassment. I think it’s because of some very old-fashioned, WWII-era, “Greatest Generation” old-time liberal, and WASP values. Don’t call attention to yourself. Don’t puff yourself up or brag. Don’t complain about things for yourself. Fight for social justice, but don’t make it personal. Don’t be selfish or narcissistic. Keep private things private. Don't share your feelings with strangers, just to share your feelings. Don't look to others for validation.

Mom and Dad imparted these values to me, and they have mostly served me well. Over time, I have had to revise some of them, most notably by loosening the unwritten taboos against self-advocacy. When you are, in fact, part of an oppressed minority … in my case disabled … self-advocacy is a necessity, not an indulgence. I have also come to appreciate the benefit and value of talking publicly about the disability experience, though I still mostly prefer philosophical and policy discussions over introspection.

I don’t think it would ever have occurred to my parents to share their deepest feelings about me and my disabilities in anything like social media, blogging, or essays published in something like “The Mighty” or the “Huffington Post.” On balance, I think that’s to their credit. On the other hand, if they had been persuaded to share, they might have done it really, really well, and I think they would have had all the necessary instincts of self-criticism to prevent them from making fools of themselves, or me, in the process. So maybe it's a loss that they never really had the opportunity.

Maybe what we should shoot for is for parents of disabled kids to feel a bit more free than my parents did to share their experiences, but with a bit more of their reticence and their discretion. Would that be so hard to achieve?

#365dayswithdisability

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Illustration of a cell phone camera lens

Two Thirds Of The Planet and the Disability Visibility Project are doing a participatory photo project this year called #365dayswithdisability. The idea is for people with disabilities to take photos of their everyday lives and post them using Instagram, with the #365dayswithdisability hashtag. At some point, they will all be displayed on the Two Thirds Of A Planet website.

I’m going to try to participate throughout the year. It’ll be an interesting exercise for me, because I’ve never gotten into the habit of taking photos, even despite years of owning a succession of iPhones. As for selfies … well, I feel like it’s a generational thing, and I sit right in the gap between selfie ubiquity and selfie hate. I think I understand the deeper layers of meaning selfies have for at least some of people who do them a lot, but personally, I can’t think of anything less exciting or meaningful for myself than taking photos of my own face. I’ll probably give it a try as part of this project, but I expect most of my photos will be of things I see in my everyday life. I’ll also probably stick to photos with some relation to disability … not just pictures my morning cup of tea or noontime tuna fish sandwiches.

Here is my first installment, from January 1, 2016:

Wake up view. #365dayswithdisability

A photo posted by Andrew Pulrang (@apulrang) on

This is the ventilator I use at night. The end of that hose attaches to the tracheostomy tube in my neck, and the machine breathes for me while I sleep. I don’t use it during the day, unless I’m sick or taking a nap. However, it is basically the kind of ventilator people use who use them 24/7, and crucially, the same kind of ventilator people are talking about when they speculate that they’d never want to live life “attached to a bunch of tubes.” I try not to make pronouncements about others peoples’ lives and decisions based on my own, but since I kind of love my ventilator, I’ll probably have more to say about “living on machines,” “pulling the plug,” and related matters.

My #365dayswithdisability photos will be posted on my Facebook Page, Instagram account, and here on the blog.

Weekly Reading List: "The Mighty" Edition

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Illustration of two shelves filled with books of assorted colors

This week's Weekly Reading List is devoted to the biggest thing happening in disability culture at the moment, #CrippingTheMighty.

Let’s Have a Conversation
Megan Griffo, The Mighty - December 22, 2015

“The Mighty” responds to criticism with a pretty standard, “Won’t you educate us?” that may or may not be an opening for sincere dialog.

#CrippingTheMighty: Our stories and labor have value
Alice Wong, Disability Visibility Project - December 26, 2015

A terrific hashtag that got me really fired up and produced a lot of practical advice to go with the anger.

The problems with The Mighty, and my suggestions for improvement
Carly Findlay - December 24, 2015

Carly hits the main points of contention in a way that suggests solutions, not just shame.

Two Ethical Futures For “The Mighty”
David Perry, How did we get into this mess? - December 22, 2015

David’s advice covers the ethical and business practices side of the controversy.

Cost of “our reality” posts
Sophie’s Trains, Respectfully Connected - January 3, 2015

An important exploration of one of the aspects of this controversy, the negative impact on disabled kids and adults when parents of disabled kids let their hair down and express how they really feel, in public.

I won’t apologize for writing about my daughter
Phoebe Holmes, Herding Cats - December 26, 2015

A parent objects, perhaps confusing criticism with censorship.

Ableism FUBARs and Constructive Recoveries
Shannon Des Roches Rosa, with Carol Greenburg, Patricia George, and Christine Langager, Thinking Person’s Guide To Autism - December 31, 2015

A respected site on autism sounds a cautionary note about what can happen when criticism gets rolling and people forget to dig deeper before condemning.

Speaking for my teen and adult children
Carrie Ann Lucas, Disability3 - January 2, 2016

An invaluable explanation on what it means … and doesn’t mean … for parents to advocate for their disabled children.

The Inspiration Porn Resolution
Alice Wong, Liz Jackson, and R. Larkin Taylor-Parker, Medium - January 3, 2016

A proposed pledge of sorts for people, especially parents and other non-disabled writers, who want to write publicly about disability.

I haven’t commented much so far because I don’t want to repeat points other people have made if I can help it. Now that we are probably close to the tail end of this particular thing, I have a couple of thoughts to add:

The movement against “The Mighty” is, I think, more intense than it might otherwise be because the website’s critics don’t just disapprove of it, they dislike it. “The Mighty” is sentimental about disability, especially about disabled children, and a great many disabled people are instinctively repelled by sentimentality … grossed out in a fundamental, non-intellectual, subjective way that can’t be logically explained or refuted. I, for one, just plain don’t like most of what “The Mighty” publishes and the vibe it gives off. I don’t like “The Mighty” the way I don’t like brussels sprouts or paintings of big eyed children … which is to say that my feelings and reactions are in part matters of personal taste, quite apart from any ethical considerations. I dislike “The Mighty’s” dominant tone and approach the way smart, nerdy kids dislike being bullied by their peers, and held up as public models of virtue by a tactless teacher. For me, concerns like confidentiality, Inspiration Porn, and whether it’s ever okay to satirize traumatic experiences are valid, but almost beside the point. It’s yucky, and I think that’s one of the stronger forces driving the #CrippingTheMighty backlash.

I am pretty sure that another important factor here is jealousy. “The Mighty” has millions of dollars and apparently high-profile supporters to catapult it to prominence and social media saturation. Meanwhile, we disability bloggers grind away at our blogs and hope for a few modest paying gigs, while writing about disability in ways we honestly think are better for the disability community. Jealousy isn’t an admirable emotion, but sometimes it’s understandable. Someone had exactly the kind of opportunity all of us dream of … to establish a widely-read disability-based website that’s a force not just for good, but for progress … and instead they gave us slicked-up versions of the same old stories we’ve seen for decades ... teary, uplifting. and reassuring for non-disabled readers ... alienating and demoralizing for us ... updated with click-bait headlines and top notch SEO or whatever. Sorry. Like I said, it’s not a noble feeling, but nobody should be surprised. Though I think we in the disability community should own up to these feelings, along with our logical arguments and appeals to social justice.

If there truly is anyone at “The Mighty” who really wants to understand what happened, they should come to grips with the fact that the backlash against their product isn’t entirely irrational, wasn’t unpredictable, and in fact could have been predicted from the start. I don’t think it’s their responsibility to make their site the site we in the disability community crave, but it doesn’t have to rely as much as it does on tear-jerking and two-faced depictions of hero / burden disabled people. “The Mighty” might try letting more of us introduce ourselves to its readers as people instead.

More Election Blogging

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Picture of a red white and blue campaign button reading "Election 2016"

Emily Munson and I have another pair of election-related blog posts at the Center for Disability Rights website:

Passing A Low Bar: Hillary Clinton a question about disability
Andrew Pulrang - January 4, 2016

Clinton on Autism
Emily Munson - January 4, 2016

I am really enjoying how our posts complement each other, with crucial differences and interesting similarities. Just so you know, we’re not consulting each other on our posts, though it sometimes seem like we must be.

Disability Blogger Link-Up

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Closeup photo of a computer keyboard, with center key marked with a red wheelchair symbol

Happy New Year, and welcome to the first Disability Blogger Linkup of 2016 … and to the brand-spanking-new Disability Thinking website!

To make the links easier to browse, in the “Your name” blank, please type the title of the article you are posting. In the "Your URL" blank, paste the URL address of the item. Like this:

Name = Title of your article.
Your URL = Link to your article.
Then click the "Enter" button. That's it!

A note about multiple posts:

If you have more than one item you want to post, please feel free. However, keep in mind that these linkups open every other weekend, so there’s no need to post all of your best, favorite stuff all at once.

Go ahead and post, read, and enjoy! This Link-Up will close at Midnight Eastern on Sunday. The next Disability Blogger Link-Up will start Friday, January 15, 2016.

Moving In

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Cartoon picture of the open back of a moving van with six stick figure type people unloading cardboard boxes

Welcome to the new Disability Thinking website. You will notice that all of the past Disability Thinking blog posts are still here. I've also moved all my favorite links to a separate Links page, and the soon to be rebooted Disability.TV Podcast will be posted here as well. I may add new features at some point, but I'm not out to build a giant site. My plan is to keep it all simple, clean, and tasteful.

The new address is: www.disabilitythinking.com.

Have a look around, leave comments, and come back to visit often!