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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)

#291

Post by BobbyJo »

katbyte wrote: post #270
BobbyJo wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't see this as a symptom of that. Economic and tax base problems, where our best knowledge can point to us doing the "wrong" thing, or at least not doing the "right" thing, sure. Those objective things that we mess up are indicative of systemic issues. Some people just aren't scared of guns, or of a world where everyone has one, regardless of the real risk such a world would entail. Differences within t…

Scared of guns or not, they seem to be willing to put "guns" before lives. children's lives. Unwilling to make even the smallest compromise to prevent mass shootings like so many other countries have.

1000 kids a year die because of cars, are you putting cars before kids lives by not outlawing them?

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

#292

Post by pkphilip »

blounderdoo wrote: post #247
artificialLimbs wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sorry, no. Precisely nobody employed by a school district is getting involved in medication nor diagnosis for children. Nobody. Not even in Texas, and especially not a new grad with “assistant” in their title. Nurses might dispense prescriptions as prescribed but that is a firm end to the involvement in a child’s medical situation. Your wife’s master’s degree does not permit diagnosis of mental health and suggestion…

Whoever is involved, it is true that antidepressant use among children in the US is much higher than in the rest of the world.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/21/children-who...

Quoting the article:

"According to America’s Centers for Disease Control, 11% of four- to 17-year-olds in the US have been diagnosed with ADHD, a label for those who are disruptive in class and unable to concentrate; just over 6% are taking medication."

"In the UK, meanwhile, about 3% of children are diagnosed with ADHD; just 1% are on medication. American children can go through six or seven different drugs quite early in their lives; in the UK, children are usually sent for cognitive behaviour therapy first, in line with guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence."

"It is now generally accepted, says David Healy, professor of psychiatry at Bangor University, that 20%-25% of students at most universities in the US are on medication, often on multiple prescriptions"

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

#293

Post by refurb »

a_square_peg wrote: post #221

Maybe slightly off-topic, but I think this is a part of a larger trend of a declining empire - its inability to solve problems that have already become non-issues in other societies. From big issues like healthcare to small stuff like getting rid of pennies, I'm amazed at how the US is beholden to special interest groups under the guise of democracy and freedom, as well as its exceptionalism. One can see this in dysf…

This kind of comment screams of lack of perspective.

In the 1960's the US had multiple race riots where dozens died and cities were burnt down. It was bogged down in a war in SE Asia and had constant protests. Radical groups were killing policemen and sending bombs to politicians. Political leaders were being assassinated on a regular basis. The economy was in shambles.

Things are way better than then, but for some reason people think the end is near.

Time to take a break from social media I think!

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

#294

Post by ryantgtg »

Spooky23 wrote: post #185
bediger4000 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an amazing amount of "anti-bullying" education that goes on. I've got 4 kids and they all got many hours of anti-bullying. The issue there is that the solution is (at least in Denver Public Schools) that the burden is put squarely on the students. The message is that only students can prevent bullying. My experience is that teachers and administrators absolutely will not intervene. One of those 4 kids was get…

I was mercilessly bullied in 2nd and 3rd grade. My tormentors would tease me, ambush me and manipulate things to get me in trouble. I wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t violent. I dreaded going to lunch, then school in general. At one point I didn’t want to leave my house. You know what stopped it? Mr. Alexander, a NYC schools science teacher who let me eat lunch in his room, saved me the Tuesday Science NY Times section a…

When I got bullied in junior high I immediately went to the vice principal. That was my understanding of what you were supposed to do. And she set up a meeting with me and the bully, and the bullying stopped after that. (Though I remember when I walked into the office the bully looked at me and realized what the meeting was about and he said, “oh give me a break.” He has definitely expected us to settle it ourselves.)

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

#295

Post by paulryanrogers »

gruez wrote: post #226
WhompingWindows wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it be a right that we are bound to as modern citizens? I didn't sign off on the 2nd amendment, it was signed off on 250 years ago by a small group of pre-modern colonial elites. It originally was considered useful because colonists and local militias needed to be able to defend themselves from the British, and to not lose their means to hunt or protect themselves before police. These days, we have autonomy…

> Why should it be a right that we are bound to as modern citizens? I didn't sign off on the 2nd amendment, it was signed off on 250 years ago by a small group of pre-modern colonial elites. It originally was considered useful because colonists and local militias needed to be able to defend themselves from the British, and to not lose their means to hunt or protect themselves before police. Did you sign up for the 1s…

2A says militias were the reason for guns. Now we have the national guard. Private gun ownership is much less useful than it once was. England is doing reasonably well without them. Worth a try here IMO.

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

#296

Post by wombat-man »

softcactus wrote: post #219
bifrost wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are suggesting is illegal. Its illegal to license a right. We shouldn't penalize the hundreds of millions of legal gun owners in the US because we're unable to catch psychopaths before they kill people.

This is part of why a sensible discussion cannot be had. "Shall not be infringed" has become axiomatic to many gun owners. Disclaimer: I am a gun owner. I like guns very much. Here's the 2A in full: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." I am not a historian but I believe that this quote from James Madison in…

Not sure I agree that that's what the Civil War decided, since it ended with the federal government asserting its power.

I am not a constitutional law expert, but the way the second amendment has been interpreted has become its meaning. At this point, I think what would have to happen is the 2nd amendment would need to be replaced with another amendment that better describes the limits on individuals rights to bear arms.

Until then, these events will continue indefinitely. I simply do not believe that any SCOTUS would make a different decision.

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

#297

Post by qball »

Pxtl wrote: post #281
rvr_ wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

School shooting is a memetic behavior, on the classical sense disseminated by R. Dawkins, not Internet's one. Can we rephrase the problem as: how do a society gets rid of a bad meme?

Memes are international. American cultural hegemony is global. Evidence: I'm a Canadian and can name all members of the US supreme Court from memory and zero members of the Canadian one. Memes do not stop at borders, and yet the hot zone for the school shooting plague is localized within the USA. It's the cheap plentiful, underregulated firearms.

>I'm a Canadian and can name all members of the US supreme Court from memory and zero members of the Canadian one.

To be fair, the Canadian Supreme Court rarely does anything of everyday relevance to Canadians, much like all aspects of the political system except for which party happens to be in power (the exact identity of the PM is similarly irrelevant, though everyone knows who that is).

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

#298

Post by dsizzle »

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…

To the extent that school shooting are, statistically, a "tail" event, you would expect that to change more sensitively than the "average" (guns per capita). So a tripling of the average gun measure (going from Serbia to US), might correspond to a much larger change in these extreme events. I doubt it's a simple statistical consequence, but it also doesn't follow that amount of guns would be (linearly) proportional to extreme events.

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

#299

Post by danielmarkbruce »

settrans wrote: post #24

Let's see what happens when you apply critical analysis and derive conclusions from data instead of rhetoric: Real Talk about School Shootings – where show how school shooting numbers are a terrible thing around which to craft policy. https://hwfo.substack.com/p/real-talk-about-school-shootings > The Gun Solution - where we fix the entire gun problem. https://hwfo.substack.com/p/the-gun-solution >

It's not a terrible thing to craft policy around if you want to stop school shootings.

Looking at raw death numbers is dumb. Not all deaths are considered equal. At my grandfathers funeral people told nice stories and laughed at jokes. Despite it being sad for us no one thought it tragic - he died at 90, had lived a fun life, and was a respected and loved man. For all time the death of innocent children has been viewed as tragic. It is. It's worse than death of 40 yos, whose deaths are worse than a 90 yos(all else equal). Similarly, few were upset by Bernie Madoff's death, nor Epsein's (bad people).

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

#300

Post by philistine »

Spooky23 wrote: post #185
bediger4000 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an amazing amount of "anti-bullying" education that goes on. I've got 4 kids and they all got many hours of anti-bullying. The issue there is that the solution is (at least in Denver Public Schools) that the burden is put squarely on the students. The message is that only students can prevent bullying. My experience is that teachers and administrators absolutely will not intervene. One of those 4 kids was get…

I was mercilessly bullied in 2nd and 3rd grade. My tormentors would tease me, ambush me and manipulate things to get me in trouble. I wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t violent. I dreaded going to lunch, then school in general. At one point I didn’t want to leave my house. You know what stopped it? Mr. Alexander, a NYC schools science teacher who let me eat lunch in his room, saved me the Tuesday Science NY Times section a…

I studied to be a teacher. Every teacher knows that the kids we help will usually not reach out to us once they're adults, and that's a part of the job we're fine with.

Mr. Alexander knew he changed your life, and expected nothing in return. Teaching was his reward.

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