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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)

#891

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Enforced by whom? What is the punishment if you break it? The government. We need a comprehensive set of media safety laws that prevent publication of these dangerous reports so they won't fall into the wrong hands.

In the United States, I highly doubt this would hold up in court. Forcing media to not publish about mass casualty events is antithetical to the First Amendment protection of free speech and press

You realize the government fines people for cursing on television right? That it also limits access to pornography? There is plenty of room for doing similar things with shooters.

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

#892
post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really isn't the shape of the policy debate in the US. Nobody is seriously talking about rewriting the constitution or banning guns outright. The fundamental issue is that there's a politically powerful minority that is able to block essentially all meaningful attempts at any kind of gun regulation and they do. That's it and it's not likely to change in the short term.

> Nobody is seriously talking about rewriting the constitution or banning guns outright. https://deadline.com/2022/05/michael-moore-repeal-second-ame... https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/texas-school-sho... https://newrepublic.com/article/166628/democrats-repeal-seco... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/27/opinion/john-paul-stevens... The final piece linked above is from a Supreme Court justice ! Meanwhile, i…

The qualifier was 'seriously'. As one of the sibling replies says, it's a fringe view. Retired (and sitting) Supreme Court justices can and do have fringe views.

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

#893

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some takeaways? Normally I can get a sense from reading summaries and reviews, but finding it hard in this case.

Here’s a larger list of the key takeaways, https://www.theviolenceproject.org/mass-shooter-database-3/k... . For me, the most surprising takeaway was how many shooters exhibit signs of trouble prior to the shooting and how difficult it is for teachers and law enforcement to do something about it.

There's likely a flip side to that -- how many people show similar signs of trouble and never end up as a shooter?

Clicking around one thing that stands out to me is a striking increase in assault rifle usage https://www.theviolenceproject.org/data-on-social-media/prev...

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

#894
post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People should safely store their fire-arms, but they don't and guns get stolen and sold illegally, or used by their teenage child. This is extraordinarily rare. >People shouldn't point a gun at someone unless their life is in danger and they're prepared to take a life, but they do and people get shot by accident, or road rage turns deadly. Brandishing weapons is illegal in every state and not pointing the muzzle of…

> There's no evidence to suggest that gun ownership causes higher levels of suicide. Literally 5 seconds to google: https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/06/handgun-owner... > Additionally, suicide isn't a crime. Why would that matter? Restricting access to guns is not aimed at reducing crime, but tragedies.

> men who owned handguns were eight times more likely to die of self-inflicted gunshot wounds, and women who owned handguns were more than 35 times more likely to kill themselves with a gun

Emphasis mine. This says nothing about suicide rates, just suicide by gun rates.

Yes, people who own guns are more likely to kill themselves with a gun. This is obvious.

People who own stairs are more likely to fall down the stairs. People who have a dog are more likely to be bitten by a dog. Etc, etc.

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

#895

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty well established that high rates of gun ownership and proliferation of firearms produce mass shootings. Anyone who tries to argue otherwise has their head stuck in the sand.

This isn't obviously the case (if you consider gun homicide, which is arguably more important since strictly more people are killed than just in mass shootings): https://hwfo.substack.com/p/everybodys-lying-about-the-link-... > Gun Murder Rate is not correlated with firearm ownership rate in the United States, on a state by state basis. Firearm Homicide Rate is not correlated with guns per capita globally. It’s not c…

I don't consider general gun homicide was being the same as mass shootings. So no that's not relevant to what we're talking about.

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

#896
post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am deeply supportive of the second amendment but liability insurance for guns seems like a fantastic idea to me. Love in rural Montana and own a long rifle for hunting? You insurance is quite cheap. Live in Brooklyn, are 17 years old, and own a handgun? Quite expensive. Unfortunately like automobiles all this would due is punish the honest people. The people who most should have this insurance just wouldn't buy it.

I know plenty of people driving around in CA without insurance. People may have issues with the NRA, but their basic stance - enforcing existing gun laws - seems like a reasonable start. We haven’t even met that threshold yet.

Taking the NRA at face value is absurd. When actually innocent gun owners get shot and killed by police for no reason, they are routinely silent.

They don't care about gun rights, they care about the stock price of arms manufacturers.

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

#897
Gun violence in the U.S. is a hobby interest of mine as a researcher. Skimming the discussion here, there are several things it would be good to keep in mind:

0) Gun murders in the U.S. are a very low percentage of deaths (0.39%) and preventable deaths (~1.1%, there's some disagreement about what's "preventable"). That's 0.0036% of the population per year gun-murdered. That this statistic is 3x some other country's is irrelevant because 3x a small number is still a small number. If your goal is to prevent untimely deaths, focus on boring things like falls, car accidents, and diabetes.

1) "Mass" shootings are a tiny fraction of all shootings. In the U.S., by firearm murders, it's about 3.5%. And that's using an extremely permissive definition of "mass shooting". Usually 3+ or 4+ people shot, not dead. When most people think about a mass shooting, a gangland shootout doesn't come to mind. The people coming up with these numbers do this on purpose ("advocacy numbers"), and you should be on guard. The distribution over # shot or # dead is telling.

2) Your kids are really safe, and worrying about a child getting shot, training for it, etc. does much more harm than good. We've managed to get child mortality from all causes to be very, very low. Worry about whether your kid is happy, has friends, is fat, has good mentors. This is pretty much exactly like "stranger danger" from the 1980s in the U.S. in a statistical sense, and I would say that contributed to the current regrettable situation where kids aren't allowed to roam free at all.

3) Stuff like the recent mass shootings in Buffalo and Texas makes it in to your minds because it's profitable for news media. Not because it's something you should actually think about or worry about, not because it's a real threat to you or anyone you know, but because it sells advertisements. Real risks to you as an adult reading this in the U.S.A. are traffic accidents, falls, and being too fat.

4) Ppl be like "We banned guns in Scotland and we haven't had a mass shooting since!". Great, but it's like saying I can't drown if I don't get in to the pool. Mostly true, but missing the point. The real number we're concerned with here is premature deaths, or perhaps an overall murder rate. Banning guns might result in a lower murder rate, but there's going to be some substitution (e.g. knives for guns, Glasgow being the "stab capital of Europe"...). Scotland is a very fat, very drunk country. Much more good would have been done for public health by banning Irn Bru and alcohol, but you haven't chosen to do that because people find them rewarding. People find owning guns rewarding too, it's just that the costs end up on the front page of the newspaper (mass shooting) rather than ignored because they're so quotidian (millions of years of life lost due to being comically unhealthy).

5) Don't focus on the type of gun. The fact that AR-15s are used in a lot of "mass" shootings reflects the fact that they're the Toyota Camry of guns. Good value for money, reliable, etc. If you saw a lot of a specific kind of traffic accident, and Toyota Camrys were frequently involved, would you start to scream "Ban the Camrys!"? It doesn't make any sense. The vast majority of gun murders in the U.S. are committed with cheap pistols. <2% are committed with "long arms" of any kind, including AR-15s.

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

#898
post #662
post #89

It's time we start legislating based on empirical evidence instead of lofty ideals. Yes, if everyone was responsible perhaps it would be OK for all of us to own firearms. But so many people are utterly irresponsible, and guns make that irresponsibility lethal. People should safely store their fire-arms, but they don't and guns get stolen and sold illegally, or used by their teenage child. People shouldn't point a gun…

> empirical evidence instead of lofty ideals The problem with a lot of anti-gun measures is that the proponents readily admit that they would not have stopped any particular shooter. For instance, people talk about background checks, but this shooter and many others did not have a history and were not known to police. They would have passes a background check. Often times the person acquiring the gun already broke a…

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

#899
More guns equate to more deaths... it's pretty simple to understand. As a veteran not that it matters, most people I've interacted with in terms of guns see them as toys and they really like their toys. If you were to make people do a week of range training like the military, well, I don't think most people would be gun owners.

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

#900

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of the gun issue, there’s a glaring issue that seems more obvious to me: mental health. The solution seems to be a much better mental health system and safety net. If we got rid of all the guns in the world, psychopaths would make pipe bombs, etc. Getting rid of guns would help, no doubt. It would add friction to the process of pulling off massacres. But the real, root problem seems to me that we have comp…

Gah! I can’t edit my comment, but evidently, this “mental health” thing is a Republican talking point. Let’s see if they put their money where their mouth is. (I doubt it.)

I don't know about you but I don't particularly care if my opinions happens to be talking points for one side or the other. This seems like a very [misguided] partisan concern.
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