This is the standard NRA line. It's not about guns, its about mental illness. But in fact its about the intersection of easy access to guns and mental illness. It's terrifically hard to screen for mental illness. It's stupidly easy to restrict access to guns.
Thinking the unthinkable
71–80 of 462 posts
Re: Thinking the unthinkable
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
>15 of the 25 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States. In second place is Finland, with two entries. That's a bit of a disparity. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/n...
The United States also has more than 50 times the population of Finland. Normalize!
Clearly you didn't take time to read the aforementioned article at all, or you would've seen the graph that puts the USA at roughly a bit more than triple the assault deaths per 100k vs an eyeball average of the other OECD nations (down from maybe 8-9 times as many in the 80s.)
I pulled the above statistic because of the specific context of mass shootings. But hey, at least you got a pithy retort out of it.
Re: Thinking the unthinkable
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
>What were the environmental factors behind Lanza and Holmes (Aurora)? Both came from upper-middle class backgrounds. Both grew up in idyllic environments with "normal" parents with careers and health insurance. This is, of course, the crux of the matter. Clearly there is something in America's environment that makes us far more prone to this sort of thing than other places, with or without gun control. Identifying w…
Have you considered that this might be a purely statistical phenomena? What I mean is, isn't it possible that such things occur in the US only because there are so many people in the US, and once the population gets large enough, the number of outliers get large enough, in absolute terms, to become noticeable? It's often forgotten that US has the 3rd largest population, after China and India (although admittedly far…
I'd certainly be curious to see statistics that adjust for population. The stat quoted by 'slyn above is that the next country for gun violence over the last 25 years would be Finland with 2 incidents, but Finland has 1/30th the population of the U.S. It would be more appropriate to look at the EU overall for comparison. Last year there was a shooting in Norway with 70+ dead and I believe one in southern France in a school.
Re: Thinking the unthinkable
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
>15 of the 25 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States. In second place is Finland, with two entries. That's a bit of a disparity. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/n...
The United States also has more than 50 times the population of Finland. Normalize!
Here is the list http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/20/the-worst-mass-shootings...
It certainly looks like Scandinavia and the UK might have a problem. Europe as a whole still has fewer than the US for a similar population but it is high. None for China, India or Brazil. So it is not just about normalisation...
Re: Thinking the unthinkable
#75Mental health care isn't that easy to obtain north of the border either, here in Canada. I had to wait nearly 1.5 years to get the help I needed. I've dealt with issues for over 25 years, and only recently have I identified them. I still struggle with them. During the last 1.5 years, I nearly failed out of my Master's program. Here's hoping I can finish it.
I have two family members that were bipolar. One lived in the US and was diagnosed and treated for decades. She received free care due to Medicaid and Medicare. She was always poor. Was it the best care? Perhaps not, but at least she could always get it when she acknowledged she needed it. The other lived in the UK and went undiagnosed for decades. When he finally met his mom and realized he was also bipolar, he had…
Thanks!
Yeah, I'm not sure where to place the blame on our system here. The great thing is that I don't have to pay for my care, which was definitely a concern for me at first. However, I had to go through 3 different avenues before I was finally allowed into a group CBT session. I even went through my university's counselling services, only to be put onto a several month waiting list and then forgotten about; they never put me on the list.
I only got help because I kept pushing for it. I'm sure many others would have given up sooner. Heck, I gave up a couple of times too.
Mental health issues can be difficult to diagnose. If you have "obvious" symptoms, you can typically get help fairly quickly.
In my case, the signs are not obvious at all. If you met me, you wouldn't suspect anything was wrong with me. I can mostly function in my daily life. I have a wonderful fiancee, and I've been fairly successful with a solid undergraduate engineering degree, and good in-roads in my business-related work.
You would never suspect that I was physically and mentally abused throughout my childhood and undergraduate. Or that I second-guess everything that I do, and that I worry about every mistake I've ever made. Or that I cannot take joy in any of my successes. Or that my father has his own mental health issues, and that my uncle/his brother lost his battle with alcoholism, and that their father was institutionalized several times in their home country.
I'm a relatively normal guy with great ambitions. But my mental health issues, while hidden, are there, and if left unchecked will contribute to my future failures.
As a society, we do need to pay more attention to mental health and start to have conversations about it.
(Actually, it's one area where I think a non-profit startup using web technologies could actually make a meaningful contribution.)
Re: Thinking the unthinkable
#76This is the standard NRA line. It's not about guns, its about mental illness. But in fact its about the intersection of easy access to guns and mental illness. It's terrifically hard to screen for mental illness. It's stupidly easy to restrict access to guns.
>It's stupidly easy to restrict access to guns.
Yeah, the founders of the United States wrote the 2nd Amendment for exactly that reason.
Re: Thinking the unthinkable
#77This woman is saying she both doesn't have the ability to handle her son, and is afraid of him. He's repeatedly threatened to kill her, and is old enough to be a credible threat.
I'm all for individual rights, families taking care of their own members, etc., but it sounds like society would be better if there were a way for her to give him to the state or some specialized institution, rather than just waiting for him to be the next spree killer (or just run of the mill killer, or even just suicide).
This clearly falls in the "public health" category of expenses even most libertarians would be fine with taxes and the state covering.
Re: Thinking the unthinkable
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
And they also become President of the United States: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
Bubba too. Unfortunately, the plural of anecdote is not data. Statistically, children of single moms fare poorly. I am curious as to the degree that it is different beween single fathers and single moms.
Mental disorders don't go away when you have two parents.
Re: Thinking the unthinkable
#79I feel for the parent who has written the article, and whereas I agree we must do more to address the needs of kids with mental illness, I disagree with the stated premise of the article, that it's easy to talk about guns.
It's actually not easy to talk about guns in this country, which has led to a lack of any serious gun control regulation. It borders on insanity when we look at the type of weaponry we allow our citizens to purchase, all in the name of an amendment written in a long gone era, where the survival of a fledgling democracy was still uncertain. Just as islamic extremists have hijacked the interpretation of their Koran to serve their purpose, so has the NRA hijacked our constitution to serve its own purpose. And so it's time to come and call out the NRA for exactly what it is - a terrorist organization.
Despite whatever mental illness may be afflicting these young unfortunate individuals - the answer to preventing what happened in Connecticut from happening again is extremely strong gun control regulation. To the point where even those few who are allowed access cannot keep weapons at home. I know this does not make the lives of families of people with mental illness any easier - but at least it prevents tragedies of this sort from occurring.
Re: Thinking the unthinkable
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regulating guns ("outlawing" is a straw man) ameliorates the problem of how much damage a mentally disturbed person can do. A knife in the same situation is much less dangerous, as evidenced by the incident in China at the same time where people were hurt, but none so far killed. Degrees matter.
> Regulating guns ... ameliorates the problem of how much damage a mentally disturbed person can do. No, it makes it much worse. We want the violent lunatics to have guns, because guns are not particularly fast or efficient at killing people. A lone gunman can kill at most a few hundred people before he is stopped. You know those nightclub fires that kill hundreds of people in ten minutes? We want our nutjobs to have…
So, i'm sure any minute now you'll post the statistics on how countries with tighter gun laws have huge numbers of stadium fires...
We don't need to talk hypotheticals here. There are many countries with tighter gun laws. Any "but regulation will make it worse" argument can be vetted based on real world observations.