The Revolving Door of Mental Health Struggles and Access to Guns
One woman's ongoing ordeal of getting guns away from a mother with severe mental illness
Kelli Caldwell, age 9, with her mother
A fellow advocate recently referred us to an amazing article by a gun violence survivor whom she originally became acquainted with through a community of children’s music makers.
The essay, “Mom’s Last Gun,” by Kelli Caldwell, was recently posted at the criminal justice journalism site, The Marshall Project. It lays out a sad, scary, but vital story of an adult daughter’s long discovery and dealings with her mother’s mental illness and dangerous fascination with firearms.
The article gives extremely frank insight into the familial and legal situations that arise when guns are brought into the life of a family beset by mental health issues. It’s the kind of story that could no doubt fill a book, so we caught up with Kelli Caldwell to find out more about her story and her attempts to inform others about the frustrating roadblocks to getting guns away from those who should not have them.
By: Eric Davidson
You mention in the article how in your early 30s you had to leave your publishing career in New York City to move back home in Oregon to watch over your mom. Where did you live in NYC at the time; and was gun violence something that was a big concern for you before the troubles with your mother?
In New York, from about 1999-2001, I lived in a series of rent-controlled sub-leases, mainly in the East Village. I worked in NOHO, so even though my rooms were the size of closets, it was nice to be able to walk to work.
I grew up in a small town in Oregon, with summer months spent in Ketchum, Idaho. Parents divorced. I probably saw guns on pickup trucks back then that were for hunting, but they weren’t part of my world. I had never given thought to guns until the day when I was 11 and my mom brought a black revolver out in a psychotic episode, planning a filicide/murder-suicide. I had not known there was a gun in our house.
Kelli Caldwell, age 11
After that incident — which involved Child Protective Services and my mom being hospitalized for a month or two — I thought she would never even consider getting another gun. She had cried and begged for forgiveness once she was stabilized. I didn’t know until many years later that at some point within the next two years, she got another gun somehow and shot at my stepdad.
When I was in college, I found out my mom had what I believe was a third gun. It was a small derringer that she’d bought from a friend she’d met through the Oregon Right to Life activist group. I was really shocked and upset that she would dare to bring another gun into our lives, especially because my little brother was there now too. But she brushed me off, saying that since she was on medication now it wasn’t a concern, things were “different.” And she pressed that such a small gun in her purse “wasn’t a big deal.” I felt really powerless to stop her. No one else in our family ever felt able to stop her, they were just afraid of her.
So by the time I was post-grad school and living in NYC, guns had become more of an ongoing issue for us. She’d been obsessed with the third gun during a recent psychotic episode, and gotten a fourth from my grandpa’s shed when he passed away. In 2000, I was suing for custody of my little brother on behalf of my stepdad. So the police called one day, concerned she was acting extra erratically and possibly suicidal. They asked if I could somehow remove my mom’s gun without her knowledge. I flew back over the next weekend to break in and steal that gun, which I was able to leave with the police for one year.
You make a point in the article to explain how it’s easy to blame family members for not getting a gun away from a troubled relative, but that there are laws that often prevent that — not to mention the personal, emotional entanglements of deciding to do that. Could you expound on any specific laws in Oregon that you faced at the time, and if any of those have changed? I know you mentioned a 2018 ERPO law in the state that you were unable to utilize.
I think one of the biggest impediments to getting help for my mom and other family members with severe mental illness (SMI) is HIPAA — and this directly impacts people being able to both understand what’s really going on with their relative, or know what signs and signals may indicate impending danger.
The communication about the person of concern is cut off, per the law, between those closest to them or on the front lines and those in positions of power to help — unless and until there’s an imminent threat or crime committed. And I can’t help but wonder if this is actually worse now that a lot of states have reduced the age at which a parent is given access to some medical information. Emerging psychosis can often start in the teens.
Kelli Caldwell and her brother, 1994
In the last incident where my brother and I ended up stealing a shotgun from our mom, I had been calling all the mental health agencies, hospitals, nurses, social workers, and other agencies that were supposed to be helping my mom, desperately trying to warn them about her history with guns and other weapons, basically pleading on the phone: “Please, we know about one gun, but there may be another one in her car right now. Please be careful!”
Because of HIPAA, they could not often confirm or deny whether they knew anything about her, and could barely even spend any time on the phone with me. The Adult Behavioral Health agency in my mom’s county, in particular, treated me like a complete annoyance — as if, because of HIPAA constraints, I was out of line for trying so hard to break through with this information. It was really bizarre, but this is the norm, not the exception.
Family members are not given room or any rights to share what they’ve seen going on in the home. So doctors or mental health agencies evaluating whether your SMI loved one is currently dangerous rely so much on what they are told by the patient. This is really absurd and broken much of the time because of two things: patient paranoia or anosognosia.
Paranoia is a constant with my mother, along with my other close family members who suffer from similar SMIs — even though they’ve not done anything dangerous to others, like my mom. On a good day, paranoia is present, and you never know what’s going to trigger or cause escalation in that. So maintaining trust with your loved one means always walking a fine line. You work very hard to stay in contact or stay safe to them, so they don’t get angry, mistrust, leave, or, in my mom’s case, erupt and possibly become dangerous.
And that paranoia can be even more heightened for the patient with doctors, agencies, or others trying to help them, because they are that much more removed in the trust department. So, they don’t always — or in the case of my mom, pretty much ever — tell the truth about their symptoms. Even if they want help, paranoia is a constant battle for them, and therefore a cloud in the process of getting or receiving help.
Anosognosia is a disorder that keeps people with different types of mental illness and on varying parts of the spectrum from recognizing their own illness. They think they’re fine, and that any concerns coming from others about their behavior is just not true. This is a biological issue, not the same as denial. This problem affects about 50% of folks with severe mental illness. So they do not seek treatment, and getting them to accept it can be very challenging.
I believe there needs to be a provision in the HIPAA laws to allow for family/caregiver input for diagnosis, and on some sort of ongoing basis, especially when there’s been a previous dangerous incident.
It is also especially important for those with emerging psychosis. Getting a proper diagnosis can take years or decades — and then people have to work to fine-tune medications, if needed. If family members were more involved in the process, they could paint a much more clear picture of the behaviors being exhibited outside of the doctor’s office that are really better indicators.
Regarding the ERPO process, I was only ever told about that option by the police the last time I was trying to remove a gun from my mom. I talked with a qualified attorney then, in 2020, but he wasn’t that familiar with the law, so he couldn’t help me. I know the ERPO is more utilized now, but more often by law enforcement than by family.
One of the big issues often with attempting legal processes like these is that there are certain thresholds that must be met to have something like an ERPO or restraining order granted. An attorney may be able to advise you which terms or words to write down to signal to the judge that your case does indeed meet the threshold. But if you can’t afford an attorney — or in my case, they aren’t experienced with that area of law or process — and you don’t know the right words to include, you may be denied, even if your case far and away exceeds the threshold.
Also in our 2020 experience, the police were the only agency that mentioned the ERPO to me as an option. None of the other agencies that were supposed to be trying to help mentioned I should try to get a judge to help us remove guns from my mom. And this was with all the begging I was doing to get them to hear that I was worried about their safety as well, because we knew she had one, maybe two guns.
I think lack of public education about ERPOs keeps people from seeking them, but also lack of education amongst professionals within the mental health field. I think one possible reason law enforcement is more successful in being granted ERPOs is because they know the right terms to write on the form.
You mentioned having to fly across country last minute when your mother was away from the home. Were there ever intense, self-debating moments during one of these windows to get a gun where you told yourself, “No, I just can’t do this?”
I should say first off: I’m not suggesting to anyone that they go steal guns from their family members or anyone. It is illegal, and I know in many cases it may escalate tensions long-term. This is something I was advised to do by law enforcement when other options weren’t available or quick enough. So that worked on some level with my mom, but it put me at risk.
In answer to your question, I don’t actually remember debating whether I could do it with myself at all. It’s odd when you ask it now, that it wasn’t a conscious part of my processing. I worried more about how to do it safely, the timing, steering clear of her, what to do with it after, how to do it without disrupting my work, and piling on more credit card debt back when I had to travel to do it. This stuff was on me for the most part. Others in the family might help on some level, but no one else was going to initiate things like this.
My dad left me with my mom when I was three, after her second major psychotic and dangerous break. I was then an only child living with her until I was almost 13, when my little brother was born. The time she almost killed me when I was 11 was the third time she came close, though previous were not with firearms, that I know of. I’d been in this my whole life.
When I was 13, my mom’s sister, who had often come to help me in times of crisis, called to tell me, “I can’t come help anymore, you’re on your own.” She’d recently had children herself and couldn’t take the risk anymore of getting involved. She’d been really helpful for years, so I remain very grateful for all she did. But I’d pretty much known since then that it was on me. The other adults around, including my stepdad — divorced shortly after marriage, but still in the picture — were too afraid of my mom, and rightly so.
Kelli Caldwell and her mother, 1994
Along with flying cross country to get that gun out of her house, the custody suit for my brother was ongoing, so she was really upset and acting out in a lot of ways. The police and I were in regular phone contact, sometimes them calling for advice on what she might be up to or how to handle something. Even though I loved my job in NYC working at Harper’s Magazine, I gave my notice. And when the publisher there encouraged me to stay and even offered to help me figure things out, I said: “I can’t let my mom become homeless, and I can’t let her continue to get guns. I have to go back.”
In the article, you fondly recall your mother’s talents, like her “wearable art” jackets.
Back when my mom was able to occasionally go into state mental hospitals for 1-2 months at time, as needed, she could get real help. She loved the mental hospital, said “That place was a God-send!” When she got out, she was a highly productive wearable artist. She’s always been extremely talented.
Her “wearable art” jackets were made entirely by hand, starting with raw white silk. She would illustrate or draw cartoons on the silk with fabric pens, then paint in the lines, and then stitch over all of those lines, creating a painting that was often witty or political in nature, on a piece of clothing. These jackets and other pieces she made with this method were one-of-a-kind and beyond anything you’d see on a red carpet. She sold to celebrities and socialites. Most of her pieces are out there in the world, and I’m hoping to recover them to preserve them, not to sell them. They’re too unique. I wore one of her jackets to the Harper’s Magazine 175th Anniversary gala in November 2025 actually, because my hope is to get them into museums. You can view a few of her pieces here.
You mention in the article, “The officers in our small town know her. Thick stacks of police reports document her acting badly or claiming people were after her.” Did they ever get frustrated with dealing with the back and forth with your mother — like in that recent Netflix film, The Perfect Neighbor?
That movie was so so enraging and beyond heartbreaking to watch. It’s a decent starting comparison, but from what was aired, the The Perfect Neighbor lady mainly stayed inside and acted passive-aggressively until shooting through the door. My mother was not passive. She harassed overtly, including people in the mayor’s office and local government with really obnoxious and disturbing stuff. She wasted police officers’ time regularly, wasted other people’s time, money, and resources, brought frivolous legal suits against people, the list goes on and on... So I would say my hometown police have been frustrated and taxed by my mom for 40+ years, though most of them remained patient and professional when dealing with her.
My mom wasn’t always such a problem for our community. Back when longer term mental hospitals were available, she voluntarily checked herself in, and it took doctors many weeks to get her into a better state. She was also always scared — see previous note about paranoia. She thought people were after her, even when she wasn’t acutely psychotic. She believed in things like demons and aliens. As mentioned in my essay, my mom often said, “The only place I’ve ever felt safe was in a hospital.”
Providing more safe places and care options for people like my mom directly impacts public safety. She kept getting guns because she was scared, and she’d never been able to get a high enough level of care to break through that at emergency rooms or regular hospital short-term psychiatric hospitals. She was stuck in a revolving door of insufficient care that has been the only option for decades now. It’s cruel, a huge burden on communities and taxpayers, and a direct reason in the many situations you hear about on the news that seem like senseless and “out-of-nowhere” violence.
There’s a bill up for consideration to repeal the IMD (Institutions for Mental Diseases) exclusion, bringing back more hospital beds for people with severe mental illness like my mom. It’s new as of 2025 and circulating, but one way to help folks like her and us would be to call your local congressperson and ask them to consider co-sponsoring HR 4022, or get it on their radar. There’s more about HR 4022 in this paper by the National Shattering Silence Coalition, an advocacy organization working to improve lives of people with severe mental illness/no-fault brain disease and their families.
You mentioned in the article, “Mom excels at ‘turning it on’ for 5-10 minutes, long enough to fool busy mental health evaluators into thinking she is OK for release.” Do you have a specific story of a time where she “turned it on?”
I have many stories. But one of them was particularly absurd and egregious. My mom was in a psychotic episode that caused her to drive up and down Interstate 5 that runs the length of the west coast, with my brother in tow. I was in graduate school up in Canada at the time, and my mom drove up there worried that bad men were chasing her. Even though she was psychotic, she was functional enough to recognize that the border patrol would ask about guns. So instead of bringing her gun through, she stashed it in the bushes in north Washington State.
By the time I was able to catch up with her, she was back in Oregon hiding out in a hotel with my brother. She had not picked up the gun when she crossed back into the U.S., probably afraid she’d be caught by border patrol or something. She wanted me to go get it. But I was entirely focused then on getting her into a hospital for treatment. Eventually she was involuntarily committed.
By day five in the psych ward of a regular hospital, my mom was stable just enough to know that, because she did not have any health insurance, the stay was costing her $1000 a day. She wasn’t yet psychologically stable enough, but she wanted out ASAP to avoid the huge cost. I was surviving on student loans, so I didn’t have money to help her either.
Right before the mental health evaluator came in, my mom said to me very sternly: “Do not tell them about the gun. Do not tell them I want to go get it, or they will lock me up and take your brother away.”
The evaluator came in, spent about five minutes asking my mom very simple questions. My mom “turned it on,” or got into her best behavior mode, and with a pleasant smile lied in answer to every question: “Do you have access to a gun? Do you have interest in guns?” and so on. The lady was satisfied with my mom’s answers, checked the boxes, and signed for her release from the hospital. Without skipping a beat, the minute the mental health evaluator left the room, my mom turned to me and said, “Now will you go get my gun at the Canadian border?”
Kelli Caldwell’s mother in one of her wearable art jackets
After that time period, I changed the way I dealt with situations like that. Even if I couldn’t afford it and I knew it was costing my mom money if I interfered, I would follow those appointments up by finding the person’s office and saying, “My mother just completely lied to you about the guns.” They would look shocked and start shuffling around papers. So frustrating.
This is another example of the HIPAA issue, though. I wasn’t supposed to do that, and they weren’t supposed to let me. They relied entirely on the ridiculous interview with my mom, who was stable enough to lie, but not enough to know she should never have a gun.
You say that she can’t legally buy guns but gets them in other ways, such as inheriting them. Is there a history of gun ownership in your family? Do you own a gun today?
My grandpa had a .22 rifle, I guess, because that’s the one my mom said she took when he died. Other than that, I don’t know if my grandpa had more guns or anyone else on that side of my family. I didn’t see or hear of any before the first time my mom brought out the revolver when I was 11.
My mom got that revolver that she almost killed me with from her boyfriend, who I call my stepdad. He has since passed away. He was an antiques dealer, and I think he may have had a few guns in his mini-storages that I always heard about, but never visited. At that point, my stepdad had been in the picture for two years. Mom had been in mental hospitals a few times by then, and had almost killed me and herself before in other ways, but he didn’t know about it. I hadn’t ever told anyone about those incidents.
Although my mom probably told him about her psychotic breaks and hospitalizations — and he clearly knew she was volatile, because she was violent and raging at him very early in their relationship — he had not yet experienced her breaks with reality. He didn’t understand the implications or possibilities of handing her a gun. But he also was not strong enough within their relationship to resist the kind of pressure she could put on a person. He’d come from a difficult home with an alcoholic father and domestic violence, so he was extremely co-dependent and unwise in a lot of situations.
My mom had always talked about guns and shooting with fondness. She’d recall how she was attracted to my dad in part because he was “a great shot... able to shoot a jackrabbit running across the desert.” I think she also made my stepdad feel powerful and attractive, because he was a good shot. He never apologized for giving my mom that first gun. And somehow she got another one that she took a shot at him with later, so... I don’t know how that happened, or if he really did not learn a lesson the first time.
I do not own guns. I have never held a real gun, other than when I’ve broken into my mom’s home to steal them. I’ve held nerf guns and toy guns at carnivals, but that’s it.
Sadly, it seems that our system only finally gets around to real help when a shooting tragedy or some related crime finally occurs. As per a line in your essay: “‘Too bad,” an officer said to me. ‘If we caught her in the act, we could’ve finally gotten her real help.’”
Yes, you run into this over and over. I’ve actually heard this said directly by someone working in juvenile detention: “It’s often a lot easier to get people set up with services once they’ve committed a crime.”
Our 2020 situation with my mom, the last time I stole a gun from her house, was so much more complicated that we could fit into The Marshall Project article. So much happened, so many road blocks, many police reports, and so many clear indicators that my mom was a danger to herself and others and needed serious long-term care to get stabilized. That one four-month-long situation could fill a book.
But in spite of everything — because the mental health agency didn’t consider her “within 48 to 72 hours of imminent death,” and possibly because we stole her gun, as well as swords and a pack of steak knives she had stashed in her car — our request for involuntary commitment was denied by a judge without any explanation to us.
The fact that simply figuring out a safe and legal way to get rid of her guns has been so hard for you is stunning. Our gun laws are so backward that I was actually thinking it might be dangerous for you to mention you still have her guns and are trying to get rid of them — that it’s actually more of a crime in our country to try to get rid of weapons than amass them.
Yes, it’s been truly nuts. The police back in 2000 were able to hold the gun I stole from my mom for one year, but they eventually called to say, “You have to come get it.” So I had to fly cross country again just to retrieve it. I was so poor then too, with my student loans, cost of living in NYC, eating lunch at Wendy’s most of the time, and the legal fees of trying to get custody of my brother. I went into real debt during that time.
And what happened to that gun? I managed to get it to my real dad, and I’m not sure where it ended up.
And yes, The Marshall Project legal department warned me about admitting to a crime in this article, the fact that I still have my mom’s last gun, illegally. But I decided to still say it out loud, because it’s ridiculous that a well-meaning and very responsible person — just trying to keep my mom from hurting people in acute psychosis, after decades of threatening people with guns — would be the law breaker. And I decided to take on the liability, because what else am I supposed to do? I can throw it in the river, I guess... but that’s not legal, and not good for the environment.
I talked with a sheriff in my own county about what I might do. He suggested I try the ERPO again. Maybe this time, since it’s been around longer, it will work.
Can you tell me about the children’s music community you’re involved with — as “Kelli Welli” — and if any of what you create in that connects to your gun violence prevention efforts?
I’ve been trying to tell the story about my mom and all the guns for a really long time, but I have run into roadblocks, primarily because of people’s fear of stigmatizing those with mental illness, and somewhat because of privacy concerns. So now that I’ve finally had this essay published — not without fear that I’m opening myself up to difficulties or push back in various ways — I’m beginning more concentrated efforts to advocate.
And truth be told, I’ve been concerned that sharing such dark and complex stories is so radically outside the realm of the children’s music I’ve been making now for the last decade, I risk alienating fans of my music or others in the children’s music community. But the independent children’s music community — affectionately called “kindie” for “kids independent” — is made up of such a unique set of individuals, and has a long history of advocacy. It’s not just anyone who dedicates their time, talent, and financial resources to writing music for kids and about kids. These folks really care about their work and really care about being there for kids and changing the world. So I’ve decided this tribe of folks will absolutely embrace me for who I am and the reality that brought me to this place.
I’ve been writing songs for a long time, but the reason I love writing songs for children and the people who love them is so tied to my experiences growing up as I did. In many ways, music was a friend to me when I felt alone in chaos. I didn’t realize it for a long time, but now that I look back, I can see it so clearly. I want to be one of those people providing music and joy for children wherever they are, and especially if they need stable grownups in their lives somewhere, somehow. I want them to feel seen and believed in. And I want them to feel loved through whatever they’re trying to rise up through. I wish it wasn’t true that there are other kids like I was out there, but I know there are.
Kelli Caldwell (photo: Alia Rose)
Eric Davidson is Senior Editor at Armed With Reason. His first book, We Never Learn, has been reissued in an Expanded Edition.
All photos courtesy of Kelli Caldwell.