Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 1001 posts

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

#501

Post by dragonwriter »

itsyaboi wrote: post #352
dragonwriter wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A solution narrowly focussed on school shootings (changes to how schools are constructed, changing policing in schools, etc.) is bad for that reason. OTOH, school shootings as a vivid call for action on policy that address the drivers of firearms injuries (generally or among children specifically) — currently the leading cause of death in children in the US — do not become less valid because school shootings are them…

I'm having trouble parsing your second paragraph. Are you saying that the #1 cause of firearm related deaths for children in the US are school shootings? Can you share a source?

> Are you saying that the #1 cause of firearm related deaths for children in the US are school shootings?

No, I am saying that school shootings, which are themselves a small share of deaths of children, are the high visibility tip of the iceberg on deaths of children by firearms injuries, which is the leading cause of death of children.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2201761

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

#502

Post by guerrilla »

null0pointer wrote: post #171
bifrost wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're going to talk numbers - most gun deaths involve gang/drug activities. The real numbers once you remove suicide and gangs all point to mental illness and DV/Violent individuals.

False. Most, approximately 60% of the total, gun deaths in the United States are suicide.

They said after you remove suicude.

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

#503

Post by _moof »

HomeGear wrote: post #487
beloch wrote: post #83

Canada is the U.S.'s neighbour and is probably closer, culturally, than any other nation. Gun ownership is also high in Canada. In terms of guns per capita, the U.S. is #1 by a long shot, but Canada is #7 [1]. In Canada, guns owned per capita is one third of what it is in the U.S.. Canada also has mass shootings. The annual deaths from mass shootings per capita in Canada is 0.032, which is about one third that of the…

Now run the numbers on gun deaths. Chicago has 30+ a weekend at times.

Why'd you pick Chicago? Nine other cities in the U.S. have higher homicide rates.

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

#504

Post by cypress66 »

la6472 wrote: post #422
beloch wrote: post #83

Canada is the U.S.'s neighbour and is probably closer, culturally, than any other nation. Gun ownership is also high in Canada. In terms of guns per capita, the U.S. is #1 by a long shot, but Canada is #7 [1]. In Canada, guns owned per capita is one third of what it is in the U.S.. Canada also has mass shootings. The annual deaths from mass shootings per capita in Canada is 0.032, which is about one third that of the…

Right now it is hard to look at our kids faces and not feel the impact of this tragedy. I don’t know about everyone but for most people their kids lives are way more important than their right to bear military grade guns. If there is no perfect solution we have to live with a less than perfect solution. If the solution is to legally make it harder for people to access such guns then so be it.

As tragic as these events may be, the probability of your kids dying to a school shooting is still incredibly low, and a few orders of magnitude less than car accidents.

Doing some quick math, it seems like it's around 100 to 1000 times more likely that some kid dies to some accident than a mass shooting. But people don't seem to worry 1000 times more about these accidents than school shootings. And it would actually be much easier to reduce the accident number than the shooting number.

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

#505

Post by vmurthy »

karmelapple wrote: post #170
librish wrote: post #89

It's time we start legislating based on empirical evidence instead of lofty ideals. Yes, if everyone was responsible perhaps it would be OK for all of us to own firearms. But so many people are utterly irresponsible, and guns make that irresponsibility lethal. People should safely store their fire-arms, but they don't and guns get stolen and sold illegally, or used by their teenage child. People shouldn't point a gun…

Here’s a roadmap for policymakers that I think is steeped in evidence: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/claireboine/files/policy.b... There are 3 recommended policy changes in there.

Quite a quick read and sounds somewhat better than knee-jerk reactions people might have

The 3 policy changes in the paper :

``` Evidence suggests that three priority policies would have the greatest impact in reducing overall firearm homicide rates:

• Universal background checks;

• Prohibition of gun possession by people with a history of any violent misdemeanor, threatened violence, or serious alcohol-related crime or subject to a domestic violence restraining order. This must be accompanied by: (1) a requirement that firearms already in their possession be surrendered; (2) a procedure for confiscating guns if they are not relinquished voluntarily; and (3) procedures for confiscating guns in situations where a person becomes prohibited from owning firearms after having passed an earlier background check;

• Extreme risk protection order laws that allow removal of firearms from an individual who, after due process, is deemed to represent a threat to themselves or others

```

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

#506

Post by guerrilla »

Zak wrote: post #92
jasonhansel wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Being a violent criminal" is not a mental disorder; most people who commit acts of violence do not have any diagnosable mental health issues. Only a small minority (3-5%) of acts of violence are attributable to mental illness: https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2015/10/1/18000532/gun-viol... edit: Even most mass shooters are not mentally ill: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/most-mass-shooters-aren...

This may be a problem with our current categories of mental illness. It is my opinion that if someone murders another person for most of the common reasons (robbery, relatively minor interpersonal disputes, nonsensical rage, etc...) something is wrong with the murderer . Perhaps the wrongness is that the murderer is simply evil . I don't have a framework for helping evil people nor positively identifying them before…

> This may be a problem with our current categories of mental illness. It is my opinion that if someone murders another person for most of the common reasons (robbery, relatively minor interpersonal disputes, nonsensical rage, etc...) something is wrong with the murderer.

Even if they do it because they'll die of starvation otherwise?

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

#507

Post by cowmoo728 »

yardstick wrote: post #266
bifrost wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its because buying a gun is a civil right. Smoking is not. That said, the 21yo requirement may be unconstitutional as well.

What limits, if any, does the 2nd amendment or the rest of the constitution place on the type of arms? Eg should you be allowed to use - pistols? - rifles? - machine guns? - explosive / armour piercing bullets? - grenades? - nuclear bombs? - chemical weapons? - biological weapons? Basically I’m asking where is the line drawn. Because I don’t think the constitution sets such limits, no distinction for weapons of mass…

Given the current makeup of the Supreme Court, and how they have been deciding cases recently, no one is exactly sure how to answer this question anymore. It will likely depend on how John Roberts and Amy Barrett are feeling when they hear upcoming 2a cases.

Prior to 2008, case law was pretty clear that all of these could be heavily restricted or regulated at the discretion of the state or the federal government, if they ever chose to. Prior decisions effectively gave states enough power to ban all guns if they chose to; DC's near-total gun ban was in effect from 1976-2008.

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

#508

Post by trzy »

glogla wrote: post #493
eyelidlessness wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former gun rights advocate who is now in favor of basically eliminating guns except for hunting… > I think gun owners would be much more receptive to regulation if they felt people were genuinely trying to separate narrow and effective laws from broad infringements that annoy many and accomplish little. From both positions, I’d favor regulation that explicitly aims to limit gun possession as much as legally poss…

According to wikipedia, Mexico, Belgium, Czech Republic, Afghanistan and Somalia have basically the same amount of guns per person. Yet some of these are among the safest countries in the world and in some of these you are very likely to get shot basically any time. Just looking at the number of guns is very shortsighted and makes it sound you're focusing on "punishing sinful people" instead of making reasoned policy…

Good point. This is a problem with Anglo culture specifically (note the poster who pointed out that Canada’s gun crime per capita closely tracks the US). Anglo culture is not sufficiently developed to support widespread gun ownership and therefore access to guns here must be curtailed.

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

#509

Post by smiddereens »

twayt wrote: post #282

How about having a mandatory committee that seriously investigates {physical, social, cyber, etc.}-bullying more instead of just ignoring it? We can both work on stringent gun laws and take the mental health of children/teenagers more seriously. There is a clear pattern of which demographic of people consistently commit such crimes. Using this subset of gun owners to dictate gun ownership policies is going to be a ho…

No post body was provided.

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

#510

Post by ekam »

hikingsimulator wrote: post #488
Gatsky wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have learned that some Americans consider it crucial to arm themselves in case there is a tyrannical government in the future. This seems nuts to almost everyone else in a first world country, and probably many other Americans. But these people, who are not in fact nuts or cretinous, actually believe this and consider it of paramount importance. In one sense, the point can't be argued. My view: If the US population…

Quoted post unavailable.

No post body was provided.
Post reply on HN