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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)

#191

Post by xvector »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #158
freediver wrote: post #2

I sincerely hope this does not descend into a flamewar. We can't have discussion about this in an intellectually stimulating way in congress, we can't have this discussion in the media, we obviously can't have this discussion on social media so HN is the last bastion of hope. It is a multi-faceted problem with a lot of complexity. The fact stands that USA has a school shooting problem [1] unlike any other country in…

Well no one has said it yet and I don’t have a precious study to trot out, but: My >80 year old friend has suggested to me that this kind of problem didn’t exist before we started handing out pharmaceutical drugs of the variety that ‘handle’ mental illness. Sidebar semi-related story time: my wife got her Masters in childhood education and went directly to work for a public high school after. She was a.. I forget, co…

Mental illness, mental healthcare and pharmaceutical treatments are a thing in Europe too. The US is not a special outlier when it comes to bullying and mental health.

But you don't see children being gunned down every other week in Europe.

The problem is guns.

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

#192

Post by Madmallard »

xvector wrote: post #183
maxerickson wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can an 18 year old Serbian walk into a store and buy whatever guns they want? Can they buy a large amount of ammunition? You hand wave away ease of access, but it probably matters. It certainly matters at the margin.

The problem is so obviously guns. It boggles my mind that people can ask questions like "what is the solution" and "we need a nuanced discussion" when the US is the only country in the world where schoolchildren get gunned down every other week. It is plainly obvious to any US citizen that has spent a significant amount of time outside the US, that the problem is guns.

easy to get guns in other countries that don’t have mass shooting problems

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

#193

Post by robofanatic »

tpmoney wrote: post #122
bitwize wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia has had three mass shootings since 1996. The USA has had 52 mass shootings in April of 2021 alone. If it's such a "complicated issue", why did the frequency of mass shootings in Australia drop to negligible levels after they took the simple step of enacting a comprehensive gun ban? Ban. The. Guns. It's that simple.

>If it's such a "complicated issue", why did the frequency of mass shootings in Australia drop to negligible levels after they took the simple step of enacting a comprehensive gun ban? It appears largely because the gun ban simply changed the method by which massacres occurred. Using the list from here ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Australia ), using the Port Arthur shootings as the pivot point…

> If the end goal is to stop people dying by firearm, then fair enough

we are not talking about 1 or 2 people dying here, these are dozens of helpless lives gone in a matter of minutes!!

Those maniacs (first Sandy hook and now Rob elementary) wouldn't be able to kill dozens of innocent kids so easily if they didn't have access to firearm.

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

#194

Post by colechristensen »

greatwhitenorth wrote: post #76

India has 4 times the population of US and I've never heard or read about a school shooting or a mass shooting. There is way worse poverty, mental illness, lawlessness, corruption at every level in India. The only difference is easy access to guns. Not sure why it's so difficult for gun worshippers in US to understand this.

India:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_India

China, with knives:

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/06/09/china/china-knife-attacks...

These things happen everywhere, aren’t necessarily reported in the same way.

One part of why they are so prevalent in America is how each event becomes such a cultural focus, half of what I’ve seen on social media has been people posting about this event. Perpetuating the idea by giving it such attention must be part of the cause that people go out and do these things.

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

#195

Post by MajorBee »

mberning wrote: post #62
KerrAvon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a multi-faceted problem with a lot of complexity It really is not. There are too many guns available, too easily obtained, to too many citizens who have not been properly indoctrinated with a sense of civic responsibility, let alone trained in the proper ways to handle a gun. The answer isn't to throw more guns at the problem or to blame inadequate mental health facilities. It is to reduce gun availability. A…

That’s like saying food availability is a core component in the obesity epidemic. I suppose there is some truth in that, but the solution it suggests is wholly inadequate.

The availability of cheap, unhealthy junk food is very high, and that combined with the force multiplier that is poverty is a core component in the obesity epidemic. If you are to draw a parellel to the topic at hand, availability of cheap, easy to use (?) guns combined with the force multiplier of mental illness…

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

#196

Post by lend000 »

freediver wrote: post #2

I sincerely hope this does not descend into a flamewar. We can't have discussion about this in an intellectually stimulating way in congress, we can't have this discussion in the media, we obviously can't have this discussion on social media so HN is the last bastion of hope. It is a multi-faceted problem with a lot of complexity. The fact stands that USA has a school shooting problem [1] unlike any other country in…

The worst part is that even if we addressed the myriad cultural issues that lead to so many socially broken young people who may want to do such a thing, we now have a "school shooting culture," propagated by the media, inspiring copycats.

The only way to break the positive feedback loop would be to significantly ban most reporting of these incidents, which violates the first amendment, while the other band-aid solution violates the second. And neither of these address the cultural problems creating a fearful culture with so many socially isolated people who may want to get attention by doing the things our culture teaches us to fear.

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

#197

Post by greatwhitenorth »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #162
greatwhitenorth wrote: post #76

India has 4 times the population of US and I've never heard or read about a school shooting or a mass shooting. There is way worse poverty, mental illness, lawlessness, corruption at every level in India. The only difference is easy access to guns. Not sure why it's so difficult for gun worshippers in US to understand this.

Why would you claim India is almost identical to the USA except for this one variable (which seems like a laughable simplification anyway), and not, say, El Salvador or Serbia? Seems like a classic case of searching for data that confirms your opinion.

Seems like you're incapable of comprehension and searching for something that I never said.

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

#198

Post by [deleted] »

akomtu wrote: post #77
bitwize wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia has had three mass shootings since 1996. The USA has had 52 mass shootings in April of 2021 alone. If it's such a "complicated issue", why did the frequency of mass shootings in Australia drop to negligible levels after they took the simple step of enacting a comprehensive gun ban? Ban. The. Guns. It's that simple.

If we give up a right every time someone commits a crime using this right, soon we'll be left without rights. The next obvious target is speech: it's often used to incite violence at scale, and strict speech control would prevent that. But I'd rather live in a free country and accept the risks.

[deleted]

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

#199

Post by coffeecat »

coding123 wrote: post #157
onesafari wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The root cause may be bullying and ostracization combined with the media contagion effect. This is a repeating pattern. Bullying: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/25/uvalde-texa... The gunman in Tuesday’s elementary school massacre was a lonely 18-year-old who was bullied over a childhood speech impediment, suffered from a fraught home life and lashed out violently against peers and strangers recently an…

Bullying doesn't even describe half of it. There are many people who feel abandoned by everyone. It's extremely lonely for some people, especially in today's age where the default is NOT to go hang out in person with friends. The default is staring down at your phone and getting hooked on messaging and media tunnels.

I think this is the correct answer. Guns enable these incidents, but they're of course not the root cause. Bullying is a common motivation, but I don't think it's exactly the root cause either. It can be seen as a mental health issue, but I don't think that's the most instructive analytical lens.

The problem is our lack of social fabric. Kids don't have enough friends. They spend too much time looking at screens, and they can't imagine positive futures that they'd like to live out. They don't have enough guidance from parents and other adults to put them on a more positive path.

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

#200

Post by wfme »

tpmoney wrote: post #122
bitwize wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia has had three mass shootings since 1996. The USA has had 52 mass shootings in April of 2021 alone. If it's such a "complicated issue", why did the frequency of mass shootings in Australia drop to negligible levels after they took the simple step of enacting a comprehensive gun ban? Ban. The. Guns. It's that simple.

>If it's such a "complicated issue", why did the frequency of mass shootings in Australia drop to negligible levels after they took the simple step of enacting a comprehensive gun ban? It appears largely because the gun ban simply changed the method by which massacres occurred. Using the list from here ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Australia ), using the Port Arthur shootings as the pivot point…

My take away from those numbers is the drop in deaths per incident: from about 5.5 to 3.9. A 30% drop in deaths per incident seems like a big win to me.

Sure there were more incidents, but the population also grew considerably from an average of 15.6m over the first period, to 22.1m over the second - a 41% increase. Applying that increase to the 16 incidents gives us 22.5, almost exactly the actual number (23). So even though the number of incidents per capita didn't drop, the deaths per incident fell 30%.

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