Thinking the unthinkable • Hacker News Board

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#241

Post by ralish » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 7:25 PM UTC

alvaromuir wrote: post #205

I'm sorry. Im a parent. This lady needs to control her kid. Vote it down if you want, but when 'Michael' snaps and shoots up a school then everyone will say shouldve couldve woudldve. She is clearly ALLOWING this behavior. Funny, no mention of a father. From experience, mothers are way more tolerant of out of control kids. This is a tragedy waiting to happen.

Considering she explains in detail how she has had to take him to hospital multiple times with the assistance of police to restrain him, and further admits that pressing charges against him is perhaps the only last remaining option (which she indicates she is understandably reluctant to do), I'm having a hard time seeing what she isn't doing?

Could you perhaps elaborate as to what you would do to control a mentally ill child such as her own?

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#242

Post by pmorici » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 7:25 PM UTC

ojbyrne wrote: post #71

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.

Yeah, like with a locked cabinet. They shouldn't restrict gun rights they should hold people accountable who fail to reasonably secure their weapons as if they had committed the crime themselves. Kind of like the father in this post put all his knives in a container and kept them safe.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#243

Post by pmorici » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 7:27 PM UTC

"And it’s impossible to predict what will set him off."

If I had to go to a school that had such ridiculous rules as having to wear black or tan pants I would probably be pretty ticked off too on a regular basis.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#244

Post by Daniel_Newby » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 7:28 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #80

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It is not a matter of statistics. You can smugly measure water for 10 years and learn nothing about ice. No amount of data on Swiss shootings has any bearing on whether Joe Gun-Controlled will back a gasoline tanker up to a high school basketball stadium.

To predict unknown unknowns, you have to do RAND Corporation-style operations research and hypothetical projections. This has been done, and it turns out that mass killing is easy. Really easy. As in, the 9-11 attackers were a bunch of pikers.

That's why after 9-11 security for prominent targets shifted to a strange combination of bollards and guard patrols. Metal detectors and gun screening do not affect safety much. Intercepting truck size weapons does.

I'm flabbergasted that my comment was voted down and justified by "what matters is the past, not your ridiculous hypotheticals". It reads like the Microsoft buffer overflow manual circa 1998.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#245

Post by Daniel_Newby » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 7:35 PM UTC

ArnoVanLumig wrote: post #81

Daniel_Newby wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

These "more efficient" methods are also available without gun regulation, so why doesn't this happen already? Apparently there's something about guns that makes them an attractive weapon for these people. Another thing here is that gun regulation alone is not sufficient. In the Netherlands guns are heavily regulated, but we still had the incident in Alphen a/d Rijn [1] last year. The shooter was a member of a shootin…

> Apparently there's something about guns that makes them an attractive weapon for these people.

Thousands of exciting movies and TV shows about guns as a tool for "justice".

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#246

Post by ForrestN » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 7:35 PM UTC

elpachuco wrote: post #239

ForrestN wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Outcome: The problem was fixed. He became more subdued and never threatened to run away." What other goal would there be? The idea of corporal punishment is that child fears getting hit enough that they will stop acting on the motives they have which conflict with those of the parents. In other words, they will submit to the motives of the parents. Common sense aside, the fact that beating doesn't produce good outco…

>>What other goal would there be? The goal for the drastic measures my mom took was to not loose her child. That he stopped being such a big brat was a bonus. He was still strong tempered, but at least he would no longer test my mother. And the threat of a beating kept the rest of us in line. We knew not to test her. All of my brothers and sisters grew up to be decent human beings. In case you are wondering, my broth…

I'm not saying that beating your children will necessarily ruin their lives, or that children who are beaten can't grow up to be functional adults. But two things are true, to the best of my knowledge:

- Beating does a worse job of correcting behavioral problems than more humane methods

- Beating contributes negatively to how your children feel, in general

Again, this doesn't mean that beating makes you sick, or that it never corrects a specific behavior. Only that it's not a good idea, and, however mildly on a case-by-case basis, it probably means you're mistreating your kids.

I wouldn't suggest it to anyone regardless of whether or not you consider violently threatening to kill yourself and your parents, to the point that they are afraid for their lives, to be evidence of mental health issues.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#247

Post by e12e » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 7:41 PM UTC

confusedNRA wrote: post #213

dr_ wrote: post #79

I 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 ci…

"It borders on insanity when we look at the type of weaponry we allow our citizens to purchase..." "The nra is a terrorist organization." Wow. Just plain wow. It's probably pointless to respond to your post, considering the emotions you are displaying regarding this topic, you probably won't even listen to a single thing, no matter, at least others who see this reply might understand just how perturbed you really are…

> It is a founding principal of america for individuals to maintain and own weapons.

Are you referring to the second amendment? Because as far as I can tell, that is about state militia as opposed to a standing federal army - and after the Canadians burned down the white house that whole concept got scrapped in favour of a federal army.

Much as I sympathize with the idea of a People on the same footing as the government - you would have to be hopelessly naive to think that the right to own a semiautomatic hand gun will significantly help your fight against the current US Army -.should that be needed.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#248

Post by ampersandy » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 7:54 PM UTC

ForrestN wrote: post #235

ampersandy wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you assume that submission is the goal of the beating? Or that you know the best way to raise children?

"Outcome: The problem was fixed. He became more subdued and never threatened to run away." What other goal would there be? The idea of corporal punishment is that child fears getting hit enough that they will stop acting on the motives they have which conflict with those of the parents. In other words, they will submit to the motives of the parents. Common sense aside, the fact that beating doesn't produce good outco…

Beating your children isn't to manipulate them into becoming little slaves, it's to punish them for going against society's expected behaviour (which one might argue is its own form of slavery).

Can you back up your claim that beatings produce poor outcomes for children in "highly educated societies?" Or that 'less educated societies" are inferior because they don't have qualms about spanking their kids when they misbehave?

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#249

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 7:55 PM UTC

unimpressive wrote: post #99

> “Then I’m going to kill myself,” he said. I remember doing that. > He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work. I remember that. > A few weeks ago, Michael..threatened to kill me I did that too. She forgot to mention the time(s) he threatened to run away. (I'd be surprised if he didn't.) After a marathon of transfers, expulsions,…

[deleted]

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#250

Post by dhimes » Sun, Dec 16, 2012, 7:57 PM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #126

dhimes wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2010 a similar attack occurred in China, and over twenty were killed.

Do you mean this series of attacks? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China_(2010–2... If Wikipedia is correct, this was a whole series of attacks, sometimes with multiple assailants, with each attack having far fewer fatalities, so the point about reducing the damage stands. Still awful.

Yes- point taken. Also here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/world/asia/14china.html