More Troubling News About the Potentially Deadly Intersection of Guns and Mental Illness

While the worst news from the Connecticut school shooting was seeping out this morning, the Portland Police Bureau sent out a surreal news release about an arrest involving a disturbing number of guns. It ought not be overlooked—in terms of how it went down, and how it might have.

Not that we need any reminders after today's tragedy, or after Tuesday's at Clackamas Town Center, but guns and untreated mental illness, and that deadly place where they intersect—sometimes just quietly, one victim, just as tragic, but never remembered—deserve our attention. Even today. Especially today.

On Friday December 14, 2012, at 1:54 a.m., Portland Police officers assigned to East Precinct responded to a residence in the 3300 block of Southeast 84th Avenue on the report of an armed man hallucinating and that he'd fired a gun approximately 30 minutes prior to police being called by roommates. As officers were enroute, they received additional information that the 34-year-old man had a shotgun and possibly two handguns.

At approximately 4:00 a.m., officers saw the man run out of the house to a house across the street. Residents of that house called 9-1-1 to report that the man told them that intruders were inside his home.

Officers recovered five (5) rifles, two (2) handguns and one (1) shotgun from the residence along with a significant quantity of ammunition.

Hit the jump for the whole thing.