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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)

#811

Post by xtracto »

axilmar wrote: post #573

One side of the issue is gun availability. The other side is that the American culture has a toxic side which can drive lonely young men to perform despicable acts. Imagine being a lonely young boy, growing up getting bullied all the time, being told you amount to nothing, and it's your fault, and at the same time, while everyone around you is deep into corruption and sin, they preach to you that you should be sinles…

Where are the parents / guardians in all this? They should be responsible for the way their kids are raised, and their actions.

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

#812

Post by throwaway894345 »

nothingisbad wrote: post #706
dgfitz wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking to my wife about this the other night and we came to the same conclusions as the points you made. What we posit at this point is: what didn’t exist in 1969? Social media. The internet. Legislation won’t change anything. Proponents of stricter gun control are being idealistic. Having kids in school right now, we are both quite concerned about the current state of affairs when it comes to school shootings…

That's not consistent with the reality of the rest of the world. Australia banned guns in 1996 and has had one mass shooting since, compared to 66 in the US in April of this year.

I have no doubt that Australia has fewer mass shootings than the US by pretty much any reasonable metric, but we should be careful in our comparisons. First of all, definitions vary widely on what constitutes a “mass shooting”, so we should always give our definition and make sure we’re applying the same definition to both operands (notably, by most common definitions, Australia has had several mass shootings and quite a few more mass murders since 1996).

We should also adjust for known dependent variables, like population, population density, crime rates, number of guns in circulation (i.e., we would intuitively expect fewer mass shootings from a small, sparse, low-abiding country with few guns in circulation irrespective of gun laws)—Australia has only 8% of the US population and only 10% of the density—not sure about crime rates. I also suspect there were fewer guns in circulation prior to 1996, so even if officials could get the same share removed from the US market, it would likely leave more guns in circulation than in America (even adjusting for population, etc)—I also doubt Americans would be as willing to give up their guns as Australians were in ‘96, so the odds that America could get the same share of guns off the market as Australia did seems unlikely.

That said, I’ve read that Australia’s gun count has crept back up to pre-96 levels (not sure if that is per capita or not), which is interesting—potentially it suggests there’s something else going on: either it matters what type of guns are banned (e.g., semi-automatic handguns), or perhaps there’s an altogether different reason or hidden factor behind the decline in Australian mass shootings.

In any case, mass shootings is probably the wrong metric, but rather we probably want to look at number of mass murder deaths overall (presumably some people switch to stabbings or arson, but both of these are probably result in fewer fatalities). It’s also not clear to me why we fixate on mass murders/shootings rather than homicides overall—is it really worse when 10 people are killed all at once rather than 10000 people killed individually?

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

#813

Post by SamuelAdams »

condercet wrote: post #68

It is not fair to place the blame for this epidemic of violence squarely on those suffering from mental health issues. Mental health issues are distributed globally, but the gun violence problem is not. People who suffer from mental health issues are tremendously more likely to be victims of violence, rather than the perpetrators. These individuals already suffer from tremendous discrimination and hardships in their…

Yes, this is directly referenced in the article.

Media reports often assume a binary distinction between mild and severe mental illness, and connect the latter form to unpredictability and lack of self-control. However, this distinction, too, is called into question by mental health research. To be sure, a number of the most common psychiatric diagnoses, including depressive, anxiety, and attention-deficit disorders, have no correlation with violence whatsoever.18 Community studies find that serious mental illness without substance abuse is also “statistically unrelated” to community violence.40 At the aggregate level, the vast majority of people diagnosed with psychiatric disorders do not commit violent acts—only about 4% of violence in the United States can be attributed to people diagnosed with mental illness.41,42

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

#814

Post by kergonath »

ImaCake wrote: post #650
r_c_a_d wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another outsider, I can remember seeing reports of mass shootings in the US every year or two for the last 30 years or so. Each time I thought "this time they have to do something" and yet the pattern continues. So to me it also seems "clear" that there isn't _enough_ will in the US to act on this.

Yes. There is even precedent in other western countries. Australia radically restricted its gun ownership laws after a single high profile massacre. This was done by a conservative government no less! The same one that followed the USA into Afghanistan and Iraq. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australi...

> This was done by a conservative government no less!

It is entirely consistent. Law and order is something conservatives claim to support, so it is logical to want to remove instruments of crime and disorder. The fact that we can find it surprising now tells more about the intellectual trajectory of conservatives over the years. To the point that modern mainstream “conservatives” would have been seen as quasi-fascist rabid nationalists just 20 years ago.

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

#816

Post by pitaj »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #744
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #701

Step 1: repeal the Second Amendment. There's never going to be useful progress here until America unsticks from the idea that the right to arm yourself belongs in the same category as the right to free speech or due process.

Enforce the Second Amendment. It starts with "A well regulated militia..." A well regulated militia has absolutely no relationship to selling assault weapons to teenagers and/or fantasists. There is no constitutional "right to bear arms" outside of that context. And while that's being clarified, it would be also be good to investigate the NRA's Russian money problem. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/27/nr…

That's completely false. The right of the people to bear arms is not dependent on them being in a militia.

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

#817

Post by NateEag »

v-erne wrote: post #712
dgfitz wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking to my wife about this the other night and we came to the same conclusions as the points you made. What we posit at this point is: what didn’t exist in 1969? Social media. The internet. Legislation won’t change anything. Proponents of stricter gun control are being idealistic. Having kids in school right now, we are both quite concerned about the current state of affairs when it comes to school shootings…

>> Making guns illegal won’t stop anyone touched enough to shoot up a school/gay bar/concert/grocery store. They’re going to find a way to do it. Somehow in my country (Poland) and in most of Europe they do not find a way to get the guns. Most of incidents of this class is done with knife or with some kind of vehicle (car or truck). I think that throughout history we had like literally one or two shootings in schools…

Sure - you can't shoot people (with bullets) if you don't have a firearm.

What gun control proponents miss about the US is that we literally have more guns than people.

I don't know of a feasible way to take even a meaningful fraction of those out of civilian hands, just at a practical enforcement level.

Never mind the political nightmare taking guns away en masse would produce. It might just actually trigger a civil war here.

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

#818

Post by SamuelAdams »

jasonhansel wrote: post #17
bifrost wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not wrong.

"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 is also in the article - does no one read past the first three paragraphs?

Media reports often assume a binary distinction between mild and severe mental illness, and connect the latter form to unpredictability and lack of self-control. However, this distinction, too, is called into question by mental health research. To be sure, a number of the most common psychiatric diagnoses, including depressive, anxiety, and attention-deficit disorders, have no correlation with violence whatsoever.18 Community studies find that serious mental illness without substance abuse is also “statistically unrelated” to community violence.40 At the aggregate level, the vast majority of people diagnosed with psychiatric disorders do not commit violent acts—only about 4% of violence in the United States can be attributed to people diagnosed with mental illness.41,42

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

#819

Post by pitaj »

ImaCake wrote: post #650
r_c_a_d wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another outsider, I can remember seeing reports of mass shootings in the US every year or two for the last 30 years or so. Each time I thought "this time they have to do something" and yet the pattern continues. So to me it also seems "clear" that there isn't _enough_ will in the US to act on this.

Yes. There is even precedent in other western countries. Australia radically restricted its gun ownership laws after a single high profile massacre. This was done by a conservative government no less! The same one that followed the USA into Afghanistan and Iraq. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australi...

If you look at rates of violence over time, the gun laws you're talking about had no effect. Violence continued to decrease at the same rate it did before.

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

#820

Post by CapricornNoble »

chmod600 wrote: post #340

An otherwise informative article, but using the term "military-grade" seems out of place. The term has little meaning. You could call socks "military-grade" as well, and the only meaning that it really conveys is that it was cheap and barely functional enough to win a contract. And AR15s are cheap. A lot of plastic and aluminum. You could say that's a problem, if you want. But that line of argument doesn't seem to le…

>>>>You could call socks "military-grade" as well, and the only meaning that it really conveys is that it was cheap and barely functional enough to win a contract.

"Cheap and barely functional enough to win a contract" = "government issue"

My Fox River combat boot socks (my standard everyday sock even when not in uniform) are definitely not cheap and barely functional.

But I otherwise agree with your overall point.

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