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Thinking the unthinkable

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Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#161

Post by bambax »

gyardley wrote: post #150
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…

I know HN frowns upon any kind of "political" discussion, so I'll won't elaborate too much, but can someone please explain why a school teacher would have three guns in her house, one of them a Glock semi-automatic pistol?? She liked to go shooting? It's a lot of fun to do. I cannot understand for the life of me why the focus here is on guns. Americans have had ready access to guns throughout America's history, but m…

> She liked to go shooting? It's a lot of fun to do.

She liked to go shooting with a Glock?? And she needed to keep the gun (and ammunition) in her home?

It isn't true that "Americans have had ready access to guns throughout America's history"; talking about the "Second Amendment" makes it seem that nothing has changed since the 18th century, but the truth is the current situation started no earlier than the 1960s.

And about media reporting:

1/ Media reporting abroad is nothing compared to the US -- as with most news, big events are talked about a lot in the country of origin, and are just a topic among others in all other nations; right now the five first articles on the front page of Slate is about this, for example, whereas here in France, it's hardly a topic of conversation (it did make the front page of Le Monde on paper, but not on the web where all news are in a section called "Americas")

2/ Where things happen matter a lot. If it happens in a distant country it will not influence you the same way as if it happens in your own neighborhood (or somewhere perceived as such).

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#162

Post by kamaal »

elpachuco wrote: post #148
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,…

> “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. I wonder if a nice beating would have done you any good. I have one anecdotal story. My older brother was uncontrollable at the age of 9…

In Urdu we have a proverb it translates to English as - "Treat your teachers beating, as a garland you could receive in the future".

I agree corporal punishment is cruelty. But some minimal beating must be allowed to put things in order. My mom is a teacher, and back here in the past and to some extent now. Beating kids in school in India was the norm. She tells me many parents would come ask the teachers to not beat their kids, some would come and ask teachers to be ask strict as they can.

Its all in the ideology. But my mom says, on an average my mom says a kid who has been corrected by beating has gone to do a lot well than the ones that hasn't.

Haven't you heard of the proverb- "Spare the stick and spoil the child"

Some times you have to get strict.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#163

Post by shirederby »

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…

> yet only in the US do kids shoot other kids with automatic weapons.

I'm getting very tired of this. If you want to have an informed discussion about gun violence you need to acquire at least a modicum of information about firearms, especially but not limited to different actions, e.g., single-action, semi-automatic, and automatic.

Virginia Tech? 2 semi-automatic pistols. Sandy Hook? 1 semi-automatic rifle and 2 semi-automatic pistols. UT Austin? 1 semi-automatic shotgun, 2 bolt-action rifles, 1 pump-action rifle, 2 semi-automatic pistols, 1 revolver, 1 semi-automatic carbine Columbine? 1 pump-action shotgun, 1 break-action shotgun, 1 semi-automatic carbine, 1 semi-automatic pistol.

What do those have in common? No automatic weapons.

Almost no crimes are committed with legally owned automatic weapons. There are very few of them available and many are quite old, so those owned by non-LEAs are very expensive and largely collectors' items. And even with illegally owned automatic weapons, crimes committed with them barely even register. [1]

If you want to argue that semi-automatic weapons are "bad enough," fine. But please have some idea what you are talking about.

[1] http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcfullau.html

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#164

Post by [deleted] »

gyardley wrote: post #150
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…

I know HN frowns upon any kind of "political" discussion, so I'll won't elaborate too much, but can someone please explain why a school teacher would have three guns in her house, one of them a Glock semi-automatic pistol?? She liked to go shooting? It's a lot of fun to do. I cannot understand for the life of me why the focus here is on guns. Americans have had ready access to guns throughout America's history, but m…

[deleted]

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#165

Post by konstruktor »

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,…

If a sudden moment of clarity would be a repeatable cure for mental illness, we would not need mental healthcare. Please read up on confirmation bias.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#166

Post by shirederby »

shirederby wrote: post #163
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…

> yet only in the US do kids shoot other kids with automatic weapons. I'm getting very tired of this. If you want to have an informed discussion about gun violence you need to acquire at least a modicum of information about firearms, especially but not limited to different actions, e.g. , single-action, semi-automatic, and automatic. Virginia Tech? 2 semi-automatic pistols. Sandy Hook? 1 semi-automatic rifle and 2 se…

Wrote this before I saw InclinedPlane's comment.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#167

Post by amorphid »

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,…

I'd love to see you change your handle from "unimpressive" to something like "awesomelikeyou".

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#168

Post by EliRivers »

justincormack wrote: post #74
pjscott wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The UK did take some action after theirs; after Hungerford, all semi-automatic rifles (centre-ammunition) and shotguns taking four or more rounds were banned, and after Dunblane all cartridge ammunition handguns were banned within Great Britain (except .22 single-shot, which were then banned about 5 years later).

The most recent UK shooting of note, Derrick Bird, used a double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun and a .22 (bolt-action) rifle. Would it have been worse if he'd had handguns and semi-automatic rifles? We'll never know, but he did try to acquire another firearm mid-rampage so he clearly felt like he needed more firepower.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#170

Post by edj »

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…

The West tried institutions (poorhouses, asylums). But forced institutionalization just isn't compatible with basic human rights. It was also expensive and failed to provide a venue for effective treatments.

Starting in the 1970s the West deinstitutionalized[1]. But at least in the US we never sufficiently funded community care, which was supposed to replace mental institutions. So the severely mentally ill end up living on the street (where they're often the victims of violence[2]) or in jails and prisons (which if you squint sort of resemble mental institutions, though without the emphasis on medical care).

Whatever we as a society try next, we need to recognize that with our current medical knowledge there are no cures for mental illnesses, only management. So our approaches need to be both humane and long-term. Returning full-circle to institutionalization in jails and prisons utterly fails those tests, offering brutal conditions, short-term containment, and usually insufficient medical care. We can do better.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prognosis_of_schizophrenia#Viol...

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