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Thinking the unthinkable

anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com

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Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#51

Post by mailshanx »

GuiA wrote: post #16
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…

Story time! My brother (3 years younger) suffers from pretty much the same global disorder as described in the blog; the main difference is that we're in France (well, my family still is; I moved a few years ago). Throughout childhood, he presented a mix of pretty much every single psychological disorder possible- bipolar, paranoia, kleptomania, depression, etc. He was extremely manipulative, and knew how to be perfe…

Thats intriguing. It seems like he has somewhat adjusted over time. Did you witness a general improvement in his personality as he grew up? Did things especially improve in his late teens perhaps?

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#53

Post by smsm42 »

mpweiher wrote: post #17
antidoh wrote: post #11

Outlaw guns, knives and rocks, and wink them out of existence, and these people are still there. Treat them, and some of them will come back. Outlawing guns doesn't solve this problem. But outlawing guns is the kind of "solution" we like, because a) there's a clear, specific action to argue over, and b) we can focus on it long enough to get the law through and then fool ourselves into thinking we've done something.

Regulating guns ("outlawing" is a straw man) ameliorates the problem of how much damage a mentally disturbed person can do. A knife in the same situation is much less dangerous, as evidenced by the incident in China at the same time where people were hurt, but none so far killed. Degrees matter.

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 instituted these bans are still in power in those places, and they very well intend to put a good fight and make obtaining legal guns as difficult as is could be without running afoul of the law, and probably more difficult just to see if they can get away with it.

Regulation of guns would absolutely help nothing unless you ban possession of guns by healthy individuals without criminal record or any other problems - because you can not predict people going crazy, and you can not eliminate all sources of obtaining weapons by somebody very smart, very determined and having absolutely no moral problem to lie or commit any unethical or criminal behavior. In fact, even completely removing all guns from law-abiding citizens would not change that - criminals will still have guns. Only coordinated campaign of terror and totalitarian control from the state - something of Soviet or North Korean measures - can make guns relatively unavaliable to common person. If you doubt that, think about how much successful were governmental efforts to make illegal drugs unavailable.

Given that, I would rather live with relatively small threat of psychos than in a totalitarian state needed to get rid of the threat of psychos.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#54

Post by diminish »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #48
kcodey wrote: post #9

Thank god a post like this was brought up. This incident in CT has undoubtedly brought up a national debate about gun control, but I hope to God it sparks a debate about mental illness, the real cause behind all of these mass shootings.

Amen to that. Thanks for upvoting it (I assume), rather than flagging it. I had some doubts about posting this vis a vis the guidelines, but thought it was important, especially given the stridently political nature of all the discussion I've seen about the shooting in CT on here thus far.

Thanks for bringing this case which shows the complexity of the issue.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#55

Post by trylater »

mattmiller wrote: post #46
JohnLatter wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"When a child has demonstrable, repeated, unpredictable..." If its repeatable, its definitely predictable now. Thank you for the person who posted this method( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pivotal_response_therapy ), it was unknown to me before, but it seems to be what could be attempted in a majority of these situations. As far as anyone becoming more isolated...Why does a person have to be social in the first place…

You clearly have it figured out. You should call this woman have arrange to have the kid live with you for a few months. I'm sure he will be cured. Your last two comments may be the stupidest things I have ever heard. I would love to know more about you and know why you think you can fix such a complex problem in < 200 words.

> Damn! Do you guys even read the comments before typing out these pithy replies? The guy(LatterJohn) clearly said he is coming from the OPs son's perspective. That means he had the same issues OP's kid has. In my dictionary that means he has more knowledge about this stuff than you(unless you too are autistic). He is just telling what it's like being somebody with autism/aspy from his personal experience and you are calling it "stupid"? This is exactly what is wrong with "normal" people like you, who try to model "not-normal" people with your "normal" context of life!

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#56

Post by slyn »

pjscott wrote: post #39
javajosh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What were the environmental factors behind Lanza and Holmes (Aurora)? Both came from upper-middle class backgrounds. Both grew up in idyllic environments with "normal" parents with careers and health insurance. This is, of course, the crux of the matter. Clearly there is something in America's environment that makes us far more prone to this sort of thing than other places, with or without gun control. Identifying w…

Do we actually have statistics showing America to be worse about this than other places? It sounds like the kind of thing that people just assume after hearing about a sensational, attention-grabbing tragedy. Remember when there were huge epidemics of suicide and Satanic ritual abuse in the 80s? Or rather, people said there were. In reality, suicide rates remained mostly flat, even declining slightly overall, and the…

>15 of the 25 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States. In second place is Finland, with two entries.

That's a bit of a disparity.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/n...

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#58

Post by dbyrd »

GuiA wrote: post #16
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…

Story time! My brother (3 years younger) suffers from pretty much the same global disorder as described in the blog; the main difference is that we're in France (well, my family still is; I moved a few years ago). Throughout childhood, he presented a mix of pretty much every single psychological disorder possible- bipolar, paranoia, kleptomania, depression, etc. He was extremely manipulative, and knew how to be perfe…

Glad to hear your brother could end up somewhere happy. My younger brother fits the same archetype but is only 17.

Re: Thinking the unthinkable

#60

Post by mpweiher »

antidoh wrote: post #43
mpweiher wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulating guns ("outlawing" is a straw man) ameliorates the problem of how much damage a mentally disturbed person can do. A knife in the same situation is much less dangerous, as evidenced by the incident in China at the same time where people were hurt, but none so far killed. Degrees matter.

It wasn't meant as a straw man, it was meant as a way to identify a boundary. The most restrictive regulation possible would be a total ban, and only a total and successful ban would prevent people from using guns in massacres. So "regulation" while well intentioned is practically meaningless. Those people would still be mentally ill, and outlawing guns or some lesser regulation would not have addressed the actual pr…

Again, total prevention is a straw man. No-one is claiming that total prevention is an achievable goal. (Massive) reduction is.

I am a pilot. It is said the FARs (Federal Aviation Regulations) are written in blood. We still have fatal accidents from time to time, but they have been reduced by an almost incredible amount, especially considering how much air travel has increased.

Yeah, you could argue that the fundamental problem is that people want to travel and that the laws of physics are not favorable for the safety of air travel (gravity and all that). However, throwing your hands up in the air and saying we can't do anything without addressing the fundamentals is fundamentally and provably wrong.

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