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Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

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Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#21
Interesting. So you can't reasonably turn mental health diagnosticians into detectives. Fair enough.

I buy it. The range of normal childhood behavior is quite wide and often only seems damning post-hoc.

When I was young, I made a CS map of my school (not very accurate) with one bomb site in the headmaster's office. Clearly mentally ill. Or maybe just having some fun.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#22
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kids that find a gun and shoot their siblings, parents or themselves are mentally ill?

That's not a crime, it's an accident.

No, kids being able to access a gun and ammunition is in fact a crime. But nice try - we do the same thing with car crashes, the 2nd prominent killer of adolescents, and predictably we do nothing beyond calling them accidents.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#23
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.salon.com/2022/05/25/you-are-doing-nothing-erupt... "These massacres are not natural disasters, acts of God, or random. They are totally predictable, direct consequences of the choices made by Greg Abbott and the majority of those in the Texas legislature," O'Rourke wrote to supporters in a Wednesday email.

Something can be random and also preventable.

Its true.

Texas had a plan in to spruce up school safety, they just didn't go forward with it, its pretty sad. I read through it, it looked like it would be very effective.

Luckily first responders neutralized the shooter otherwise more kids would've died.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#24
Let's see what happens when you apply critical analysis and derive conclusions from data instead of rhetoric:

Real Talk about School Shootings – where show how school shooting numbers are a terrible thing around which to craft policy. https://hwfo.substack.com/p/real-talk-about-school-shootings>

The Gun Solution - where we fix the entire gun problem. https://hwfo.substack.com/p/the-gun-solution>

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#25

I sincerely hope this does not descend into a flamewar. We can't have discussion about this in an intellectually stimulating way in congress, we can't have this discussion in the media, we obviously can't have this discussion on social media so HN is the last bastion of hope. It is a multi-faceted problem with a lot of complexity. The fact stands that USA has a school shooting problem [1] unlike any other country in…

In a country of 330,000,000, people who have shot up schools may be around 330 or 0.0001%.

It is impossible to assign any single causality to events that have such low occurrences unless you have billions of examples.

(Yes, the rest of the world data can provide counterfactual data, but it is still mathematically impossible because there are 100s of variables at play)

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#26
post #10

I sincerely hope this does not descend into a flamewar. We can't have discussion about this in an intellectually stimulating way in congress, we can't have this discussion in the media, we obviously can't have this discussion on social media so HN is the last bastion of hope. It is a multi-faceted problem with a lot of complexity. The fact stands that USA has a school shooting problem [1] unlike any other country in…

It likely will for a variety of reasons. People will make up all kinds of reasons why "this doesn't happen anywhere else", they'll completely ignore the actual cause of the violence (a person), they'll make excuses, bring up solutions that are illegal, entirely ignore cultural issues, ignore that psychopaths are looking to be famous, point at more laws which won't do anything because the existing ones didn't work/etc…

> the actual cause of the violence (a person)

Are you saying that other countries with less gun violence per capita just have better people?

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#27
post #4

For context: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently attributed all gun crime to mental illness, saying at a press conference that "anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health problem, period."

He's not wrong.

Sure, people who are mentally stable don't usually tend to kill other people, but where else in the world (or modern world) can people with mental illnesses easily acquire guns? Ah, only in the Land of the Free!(TM)

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#28

I sincerely hope this does not descend into a flamewar. We can't have discussion about this in an intellectually stimulating way in congress, we can't have this discussion in the media, we obviously can't have this discussion on social media so HN is the last bastion of hope. It is a multi-faceted problem with a lot of complexity. The fact stands that USA has a school shooting problem [1] unlike any other country in…

Take social media activity into account during background checks. Increase the age to purchase to 21. 1 month waiting period.

I'm a gun owner btw.

I also wonder what interesting things would happen if in order to own a gun you must drill with a militia.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#29
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It likely will for a variety of reasons. People will make up all kinds of reasons why "this doesn't happen anywhere else", they'll completely ignore the actual cause of the violence (a person), they'll make excuses, bring up solutions that are illegal, entirely ignore cultural issues, ignore that psychopaths are looking to be famous, point at more laws which won't do anything because the existing ones didn't work/etc…

I mean, I overheard my coworkers discussing pretty awful talking points. Ex: saying that gun control won't work because we'll just be killing each other with swords. Which ignores the fact that its a lot harder to kill 18-children + 1 teacher with a sword, than it is to kill the same number with a gun. -------- There's also the discussion point where "background checks won't have any effect", except we know that this…

There is already a federal background check process on every purchase from a store or gun dealer; both the Texas and Buffalo shooters passed their background check. To stop these guys you have to get working process to get them into the "can't purchase" list.

Re: Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

#30
post #10

I sincerely hope this does not descend into a flamewar. We can't have discussion about this in an intellectually stimulating way in congress, we can't have this discussion in the media, we obviously can't have this discussion on social media so HN is the last bastion of hope. It is a multi-faceted problem with a lot of complexity. The fact stands that USA has a school shooting problem [1] unlike any other country in…

It likely will for a variety of reasons. People will make up all kinds of reasons why "this doesn't happen anywhere else", they'll completely ignore the actual cause of the violence (a person), they'll make excuses, bring up solutions that are illegal, entirely ignore cultural issues, ignore that psychopaths are looking to be famous, point at more laws which won't do anything because the existing ones didn't work/etc…

You replied to a comment hopeful that this will not dissolve into a flame war with a comment directly inciting a flame war. Good job.
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