The Palm Beach Post, Fla., Frank Cerabino column

Aug. 02--Florida ranks near the bottom of the states when it comes to funding services for the mentally ill, but at the top for handing out concealed weapons permits.

Only Texas spends less per capita than Florida for mental health services, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Florida's per-capita spending on mental health services is about a third of the national average.

As for guns, though, we're No. 1. Florida hands out more concealed weapons permits than any other state, even Texas. That's because Florida essentially treats guns like a crop worth growing, which explains why the permitting process is handled by the Department of Agriculture instead of the state's law-enforcement agency.

I mention these two facets of Florida living because they intersect.

How much? Who knows? State legislators sealed gun-permit registration information after media outlets started reporting on the frequency that lawful gun permits were in the hands of criminals and people with documented mental health problems.

So we just have stories that trickle out, like the one about Tommie Lanier, a 66-year-old Lakeland man who wounded a city police officer during a sidewalk gun battle this summer.

Lanier has been one of Florida's concealed weapons permit holders despite some compelling evidence of his severe mental illness.

In 2009, his neighbors called police to say they were worried about their safety with Lanier, who they knew to be both mentally unstable and heavily armed.

So the Lakeland Police Department dispatched an officer to visit Lanier's home and write an incident report.

"As I spoke with Lanier he indicated that the neighbors were 'shooting me with laser drugs,' " officer Rick Dubose wrote in his report. "He further indicated the subject living in apartment B worked for the CIA as well as being employed by his own family."

Lanier told the officer that he couldn't get a job because the CIA kept interfering with potential employers and that another neighbor was pumping poison into his apartment through the air conditioning.

"When asked about seeking medical attention for the 'laser poisoning', he indicated he had been to the hospital before and that they tried to trick him and lock him up for being crazy," the officer wrote.

At the time, Lanier owned six handguns and a valid Florida permit to carry them concealed in his clothing when he ventured outside his home.

"He advised that he had the 'wrong type of guns' and that he needed to get an automatic," the officer noted in the report.

In a better world, Lanier would have received immediate emergency treatment for his mental-health problems before he shot himself or someone else. But in Florida, those public services were already too stretched thin and subject to long waiting lists, and Lanier had yet to act out in a way that jeopardized his good standing as a Florida gun owner.

"There was no reason at that point for us to take him into custody (for) any type of mental health evaluation," Lakeland police spokesman Sgt. Gary Gross explained recently to a local television station.

Police encountered Lanier again this summer on a Lakeland sidewalk.

He had four of his guns and 67 rounds of ammunition on him at the time.

Officers were in search of another man who had threatened his family with a gun that day, and incorrectly thought that man might be Lanier.

When two officers stopped Lanier on his walk, he shot one of the officers in the arm, and was shot three times in return.

Lanier had two more guns, eight holsters and 356 rounds of ammunition at his home, police said.

If Lanier survives his life-threatening injuries, he will go on trial for attempted murder and face spending the rest of his life in prison.

All thanks to state lawmakers who fetishize guns while spending more money to lock up the mentally ill instead of treating them before they commit crimes.

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