Just crazy enough, it seems

Kim Severson and Robbie Brown have an article in The New York Times about crazy people and gubs:

The gentle pace of life on the campus of Ashley Hall (photo), South Carolina’s only all-girls preparatory school, appeared to be back: parents lined up in the shade of the live oaks to pick up their children, and a luncheon for alumnae of the school, which was founded in 1909, went on as planned.
Still, police officers patrolled the iron fence that surrounds the school, and teachers remained on edge, trying to grasp how a woman with a public history of mental illness had managed to buy a gun a week earlier, and amazed that the gun, when pointed at administrators who confronted her in front of the school, did not fire.
Alice Boland, 28, who was charged in 2005 with threatening to assassinate President George W. Bush and members of Congress, is again charged with plotting a violent attack. After pacing in front of the school gates during car pool and visibly swinging a gun, she tried to shoot two faculty members: the director of the high school, Mary Schweers, and an English teacher, Chris Hughes.
The police charged Boland with attempted murder and unlawful carrying of a firearm. The only thing that stopped her, they said, was that she did not realize the gun was locked.
“We were very fortunate she did not know how to take the lock off, or this could have been a tragedy,” said Earl Woodham, a spokesman in Charlotte for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The authorities are investigating whether Boland was required to disclose her history of mental illness when she bought the gun. A small firearms store in Walterboro, fifty miles from Charleston, sold her the Taurus PT-22 pistol on 1 February. She filled out a federal background check form, and was approved.
She appeared to have bought the gun legally, Woodham said. Gun buyers nationwide are required to disclose mental illnesses only if they have been committed to an institution or found “mentally defective” by a judge, he said. “Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who are mentally unstable but who would not technically be declared mentally defective,” he said.
Boland’s 2005 brush with law enforcement came when she became upset with the slow process of getting through Customs in Montreal, Canada. “I am going to kill President Bush with a gun,” she said, according to Federal court papers. “Just give me a gun. I am going to come back and shoot you all.” The Federal charges were dropped after she pleaded not guilty by reason of mental incompetence.
In an interview, her parents, who live in nearby Beaufort, South Carolina, said she continued to struggle with mental illness. Boland is being held on $900,000 bond at a detention center in North Charleston.
Just before noon, as parents waited to pick up their children at the school, the tragedy averted remained the topic of the day. Here in the heart of historic Charleston, at a school that graduated Barbara Bush, the former first lady, and the feminist author Nancy Friday, the threat of gun violence had seemed like a concern for some other city. Parents were grateful for the quick action by administrators, who used a well-rehearsed emergency plan to secure the campus and stalled Boland at the gate. Two weeks ago, in response to the Newtown, Connecticut massacre, the police met with school officials to rehearse the protocol for a school shooting.
The mayor of Charleston, Joseph P. Riley Jr., said that the incident was a “wake-up call” and that he would encourage South Carolina legislators to tighten restrictions on background checks for mental illness. “If you threaten to kill a President of the United States, so many alarm bells should sound when you go to buy a gun,” he said. “We could easily be talking about a homicide or multiple homicide. It’s a miracle we’re not.”

Rico says it'll be interesting to see the paperwork on this one...