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Thinking the unthinkable

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Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#111

Post by edanm »

bambax wrote: post #107

> Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. There are crazy people in every country on earth, many (most) of which have worse "health care" systems than the US; yet only in the US do kids shoot other kids with automatic weapons. I very much doubt it has anything to do with mental health (nowhere else in the world are young children medicated for being kids to such…

"Also, if I had had a "soccer mom" that told me I couldn't wear a this or that color of trousers when I was 13 (13!!), I would have called her names, too."

Just an fyi, many countries have different levels of school uniforms. When I studied in England, I was wearing a full school uniform - button shirt, tie, trouses, sweater, etc. This from the first day of school, basically.

Here in Israel, some schools have a "school shirt" policy, some don't have anything.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#113

Post by ownagefool »

stretchwithme wrote: post #27
HorizonXP wrote: post #8

Mental 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…

"It seems universal care sacrifices everybody's quality".

I don't think thats quite the case. I live in the UK and can't comment on the US system from personal experience, however what I hear most about over the pond is the many people who get screwed from not having health care or not actually having significant cover when the need arises. Its said that having a life threatening illness will pretty much bankrupt the majority of people.

Obviously if thats true, then all those people who aren't getting great service for whatever the reason would be better off with the UK system, but even with universal health care, I've had additional private health care for most of my working life, so theres nothing stopping you from getting the best care available despite the fact they'll send you to the same doctors and get you the same treatment in the vast majority of cases.

Personally I think our national health service is fantastic. The system isn't perfect and there are some advantages to private, like for non life threatening issues you can often get seen a lot sooner, and we should always be trying to strife to improve our situation. I'd never trade it for the American system though.

We also don't have a lot of massacres, but I'd wager thats a much more complicated discussion.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#114

Post by f1codz »

> In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.

I think it becomes all the more important to talk about weapons when you have a mentally inflicted person in your family.

> methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me

This is exactly what i'm talking about.

> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9...

This is an article i just read after reading this post. According to it: Lanza's mother was a big fan of guns. And taught her son how to shoot. And they had lot of weaponry at home.

I do not know of mental history of Lanza. Assuming if there was a bad side to it, it is obviously very inconsiderate to have such a child being introduced or even be in periphery of any kind of weaponry.

> God help me. God help Michael. God help us all.

Amen. Also, in retrospect, it is really important to regulate access to weapons, especially in a case where there is a bad mental history.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#115

Post by mpweiher »

Firehed wrote: post #108
mpweiher wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gladly! Firearm related death rate, per 100K of population. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-re... US: 9.0 Switzerland: 6.4 Finland: 3.64 Germany: 1.1 UK: 0.25 ...

Why are we limiting to firearm-related deaths? Within hours of the event in CT, there was another mass attack at a school in China - that one by knife, wounding twenty or so. While guns may have increased the severity of the damage, the lack of a gun did little to stop a similar event from taking place. People that want to do harm to others will find a way, and while there's something to be said for trying to lessen…

Precisely: the attack in china wounded twenty. As of this writing none were killed. The "severity of the damage" is a highly relevant measure, not something to dismiss.

"...poor attempt at treating the symptom rather than the disease". Sorry, the symptoms (i.e. lots of people dead) are the problem here.

My data pull was primarily for the countries mentioned earlier, I added some others I find relevant because I have experience living there (never been to Finland). I did not imply the US was #1, the extract was obviously a very short one.

The Wikipedia page you cite tells essentially the same story as the Washington Post article: of the OECD countries, the US is by far the most violent, more than 4x more than Germany, for example. Take a look at the countries surrounding the US in the statistic! If you're not embarrassed, you're not paying attention.

The "would not have been possible without a gun" argument is specious, as is "anyone sufficiently determined" argument for suicides: you are assuming that anyone with a suicide attempt is sufficiently determined, as is someone wanting to kill someone. This is a fallacy, both logically and from what the data show.

Not being able to stop everyone is no excuse for not even trying to stop those that can be stopped (or reducing the damage...heck if no-one gut hurt, would the "rampage" even be a problem??)

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#116

Post by tjaerv »

mpweiher wrote: post #64
smsm42 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outlawing - at least if you are not police officer or soldier - is not a straw man at all. Only recently we got a SCOTUS decision that proclaimed US citizens have right to own guns, and that was a close one too. Before that, many places existed where private ownership of guns was essentially banned, and many still exist now, even though with the new decision they will be eventually phased out. However, people that in…

Outlawing is a straw man in that it is not the only option for regulation that would help. These things are not booleans! Countries with much tighter gun regulations than the US don't outlaw guns. They also don't prevent 100% gun violence. They just have less of it. A LOT less. So "Regulation of guns would absolutely help nothing" is just plain false. It would help some , as the numbers clearly state. It would not pr…

Correlation doesn't imply causation.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#118

Post by [deleted] »

joonix wrote: post #12
forrestthewoods wrote: post #7

Post like this terrify me. What if there isn't anything that can be done? It seems like there are some people that are just born broken or at some point they break. Men who experience schizophrenia it often stars in their late teens or early 20s, and late 20s/early 30s for women [1]. I had a friend in high school who was completely normal in every way. During his first year in college he literally just went crazy. It…

This may be politically incorrect to say right now, but I think the genes associated with mental illnesses that have a tendency to lead to violence will be phased out by a future generation sometime within this century and the next. We'll soon enough try gun control. That won't stop mass killings. Then we'll try increased mental healthcare access. That won't do much because we'll struggle with the Constitutionality o…

[deleted]

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#120

Post by jalada »

edanm wrote: post #111
bambax wrote: post #107

> Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. There are crazy people in every country on earth, many (most) of which have worse "health care" systems than the US; yet only in the US do kids shoot other kids with automatic weapons. I very much doubt it has anything to do with mental health (nowhere else in the world are young children medicated for being kids to such…

"Also, if I had had a "soccer mom" that told me I couldn't wear a this or that color of trousers when I was 13 (13!!), I would have called her names, too." Just an fyi, many countries have different levels of school uniforms. When I studied in England, I was wearing a full school uniform - button shirt, tie, trouses, sweater, etc. This from the first day of school, basically. Here in Israel, some schools have a "scho…

Adding to this. Many secondary (high) schools in England have a strict uniform policy. Dark blue trousers when black is the rule would get you sent home.
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