Gun Legislation, Crime, and Events

[Edman85]

As if mental illness is stable and constant. People get the ****s and it goes away. Then they eat some tainted lettuce and get the ****s again.

[chasfh]

6 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

There is some truth to this, but the same people that make this claim anytime we see something like this, do nothing to try and help deal with mental illness.

They frame the issue as an either or: either it's the guns, or it's mental illness. It's not either or. It's both.

[pfife]

I could be wrong about this but my understanding is there's a popular theory on the right that the mental illness problem isn't that people have mental illnesses and need help... it's that anti-depressant meds are causing people to do these shootings.

[chasfh]

1 minute ago, pfife said:

I could be wrong about this but my understanding is there's a popular theory on the right that the mental illness problem isn't that people have mental illnesses and need help... it's that anti-depressant meds are causing people to do these shootings.

Not just meds, but meds forced on them by the fascist autocratic Democrat regime.

[oblong]

Like anti-semitism, distrust of the medical industry is something where the extremes on right and left meet up.  Look at RFK Jr for an example.  

 

[ewsieg]

46 minutes ago, pfife said:

I could be wrong about this but my understanding is there's a popular theory on the right that the mental illness problem isn't that people have mental illnesses and need help... it's that anti-depressant meds are causing people to do these shootings.

Honestly, go back 10 years ago and I would have said I thought this is a left wing view/issue on mental illness.  Prior to Covid it was my A2 liberals that I worked with that complained about Big Pharma and Docs too quick to put pills in kids and how just eating non processed foods would solve most issues.

There are definitely some on the GOP side that have this view now, but I believe most GOP'ers don't think it's anti-depressant's that are causing it, but that the little bit done for mental health is just docs handing out pills which doesn't help.  There is probably a some truth to that too.   

Edited October 26, 2023 by ewsieg

[Biff Mayhem]

51 minutes ago, pfife said:

I could be wrong about this but my understanding is there's a popular theory on the right that the mental illness problem isn't that people have mental illnesses and need help... it's that anti-depressant meds are causing people to do these shootings.

I've never heard anyone talking about the meds causing issues but have heard the "off the meds" theory. So maybe the cure isn't worse that the disease but there needs to be a clear understanding that mental health medication is forever and not just until the person feels better.

[Edman85]

56 minutes ago, pfife said:

I could be wrong about this but my understanding is there's a popular theory on the right that the mental illness problem isn't that people have mental illnesses and need help... it's that anti-depressant meds are causing people to do these shootings.

There is a golf author who I heard interviewed in a couple podcasts who had this great story about finding golf and traveling the world after his son committed suicide and how freeing it was, honoring his son. And the book he wrote on it. Very heartwarming.

Then he tarnished it by going on a screed blaming antidepressants for the suicide. 

[chasfh]

17 minutes ago, Biff Mayhem said:

I've never heard anyone talking about the meds causing issues but have heard the "off the meds" theory. So maybe the cure isn't worse that the disease but there needs to be a clear understanding that mental health medication is forever and not just until the person feels better.

You see a lot of this kind of argument on that thing that used to be called Twitter.

[chasfh]

11 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

"Trained firearms instructor"

Regardless, I don't see how the guy survives either a shootout or a "shootout" and makes it into the justice system. The next time a cop sees him, he's dead.

[gehringer_2]

4 minutes ago, Edman85 said:

There is a golf author who I heard interviewed in a couple podcasts who had this great story about finding golf and traveling the world after his son committed suicide and how freeing it was, honoring his son. And the book he wrote on it. Very heartwarming.

Then he tarnished it by going on a screed blaming antidepressants for the suicide. 

I believe it's possible/likely that there are cases where psycho-active meds make things worse for some patients, have personal experience with people who have been through treatment and told me that. I challenge anyone to make a serious claim the we understand enough about brain chemistry and more importantly, even the nature of consciousness and volition, to be able to predict the actions of psychiatric meds with any great precision. That reality does make for a bad fit in a medical system that drives toward minimal doctor-patient time --> pharmaceutical intervention without adequate in depth follow-up. All that said, all mental health arguments are poor excuses and a trivially small part of the real issue for a nation awash in the instrumentality of death.

[Biff Mayhem]

42 minutes ago, chasfh said:

You see a lot of this kind of argument on that thing that used to be called Twitter.

I rarely venture there or in this forum for the exact same reason 🙂

[ewsieg]

58 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

All that said, all mental health arguments are poor excuses and a trivially small part of the real issue for a nation awash in the instrumentality of death.

I think we're heading in the same direction, but I do take issue with this statement while I feel you were dead on with the rest of your post. 

I personally think mental health is a very large issue, not trivially small, for these shootings.  In fact I'd argue it's the heart of the issue.  There are other countries with access to guns that don't experience what we are currently experiencing.

How you deal with it is the question though.  If your kid breaks their arm, putting a splint on it does nothing to fix the issue, but it does prevent more damage from being done until it can be addressed by a doctor. 

The USA needs to figure out how to deal with mental illness, but in the mean time, some common sense restrictions on guns can help prevent more damage.

 

[Edman85]

You can't identify who is mentally ill or going to be mentally ill. It's just not possible. Mental illness varies in type, comes and goes, gets exacerbated by life events, and comes and goes from people who do have and manage it.

And I do think one of the first things that our politicians can do to help any public mental health problems would be to tone down the rhetoric, but that would require the public not rewarding them with donations when they do act all partisan and bombastic.

[chasfh]

48 minutes ago, Biff Mayhem said:

I rarely venture there or in this forum for the exact same reason 🙂

I don't spend much time on Politwitter, either. Just dip my toe in enough to see who saying what these days.

[chasfh]

7 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

I think we're heading in the same direction, but I do take issue with this statement while I feel you were dead on with the rest of your post. 

I personally think mental health is a very large issue, not trivially small, for these shootings.  In fact I'd argue it's the heart of the issue.  There are other countries with access to guns that don't experience what we are currently experiencing.

What other country has access to as many guns per capita, yielding the same lethality, that America has?

[ewsieg]

8 minutes ago, chasfh said:

What other country has access to as many guns per capita, yielding the same lethality, that America has?

No country has as many guns per capita as us, not even close.  But taking the US out of the equation and I'd venture to guess that the highest guns per capita to the least guns per capita countries don't see mass shooting issues at a scale close to us.

All that said, it's still not apples to apples as pretty much every other country have more regulation on firearms, which again can be the splint we need until we can address our mental health issues.  

[gehringer_2]

9 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

until we can address our mental health issues

A big problem is that identifiable mental illness won't get you there. The reason it's such a problem for this particular society to be highly armed is because it's not just mental illness, it's a level of alienation that has become endemic. We are a society where a low level sociopathy has become the behavioral standard. You don't have to stray far enough from that to generate a diagnosis before ending up a killer.

Edited October 26, 2023 by gehringer_2

[CMRivdogs]

Somewhat related.Im traveling so I can’t get into it too deeply 

. 

[1984Echoes]

16 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

... until we can address our mental health issues.  

6 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

A big problem is that identifiable mental illness won't get you there...

 

I think we first need to address our violent fascist White Trash Bigoted Hate-Everybody-And-Armed-Up in order to go on a Murder-Rampage problem.

[1984Echoes]

Let me rephrase that:

I think we need to address the F.U. Republican Party we-wanna-arm-every-Republican-to-the-teeth so we can intimidate non-whites and take over the country with our Fascist-designs Problem.

 

 

 

Edited October 26, 2023 by 1984Echoes

[Motor City Sonics]

Liam Kent, who appeared on NBC News, grew up in Bowdoin, Maine, where Card lived, and said Card and his family are “gun fanatics.”

“It’s known in the town to stay away from them and to not approach them,” Kent said. “If you see them, just turn around and walk away.”

 

 

[MIguy]

Breaking news that now there's an active shooter at what used to be Fort Dix.  

 

[Motor City Sonics]

3 hours ago, MIguy said:

Breaking news that now there's an active shooter at what used to be Fort Dix.  

 

where are you seeing this? 

[chasfh]

5 hours ago, ewsieg said:

No country has as many guns per capita as us, not even close.  But taking the US out of the equation and I'd venture to guess that the highest guns per capita to the least guns per capita countries don't see mass shooting issues at a scale close to us.

All that said, it's still not apples to apples as pretty much every other country have more regulation on firearms, which again can be the splint we need until we can address our mental health issues.  

I agree that it's something more than just the proliferation of guns leading to our mass shooting situation. Like of effective gun regulations is a big part of it, but I also think it's more.

Canada has one-fourth the guns-per-capita the US has, but they have far fewer than one-fourth the mass shootings we do, even on a per capita basis. Canada had four mass shootings in 2022 and have four this year so far; the US had 695 last year and have had over 500 so far this year. If the US and Canada both had the population of the US, Canada would have something more like 35 mass shootings a year, not nearly 700.

And it's more than the mental illness, a universal condition that occurs in literally every country on Earth, and quite probably with similar incidence rates. Again, if it were strictly the mental illness driving the mass shootings, wouldn't we see about one-fourth the shootings in Canada that we have in America, again on a per capita basis? Wouldn't there be more like 80 mass shootings a year in Canada, if all the mentally ill people there acted out with firearms the way they do here?

I think it also has to do with a few other things we have that other nations generally don't: the rhetoric around guns as a political and social right; the rhetoric around divisive politics leading to irrational hatreds of entire groups of people; the recent right of civilians to obtain and own firearms which are essentially tools of war. I think all of those factor into it.

But also, maybe, it has to do with a hypothesis I've noodled over the past several years: the sense of expectations people have about living in the US, with its seemingly unlimited freedom and liberty and wealth, instilled in them by the adults and society around them starting when they are little kids. The ideas that we can be millionaires, that we can be president of the United States, that basically we can control our own destiny in any way we want without having to regard anybody else along the way, if only we work hard enough at it. And, finally, the crushing disappointment and anger when all of that expectation evaporates and leaves people with nothing. Those are ideas embedded into the DNA of the American people starting back a couple of centuries, and which are unique to us (or as Agent Orange would say, US). Not everybody who's disappointed with their life is going to engage in a mass shooting. But too many people do.

I don't even want to seriously address the idea the fascist Democrats are purposely trying to stoke mass shootings by forcing certain medications onto the people, as a pretext to take away everyone's guns, because that's just to ignorant to give another second's thought to.