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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)

#91

Post by bogwog »

whatever1 wrote: post #6

We need gory pictures from the executed kids everywhere. Until we understand the magnitude of the horror. I look at my FB and see proud gun owners cracking jokes and I really cannot comprehend how it is possible.

The way I see it is this: if you're against gun control, you're either

A) Devoid of empathy

B) A lunatic

Because if one of your kids/loved ones is killed in a mass shooting like this, and you're still against gun control, then you're a lunatic. If not, then you're just an asshole with zero sympathy for the families that have lost loved ones.

I don't know about you, but regardless of the politics, I would not want any of my elected officials to fall into category A or B.

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

#92

Post by Zak »

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 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 they commit evil acts. If someone does evil, they can be punished to dissuade further evil acts, caged to protect others from them, or killed. It is an injustice to do any of those things to a person before they commit an evil act.

If, however the wrongness is an illness, it might be possible to diagnose them before they do great harm to others and provide treatment. Of course there's a dangerous slippery slope possible here in which anyone who's at all atypical is given involuntary "corrective" treatment.

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

#93

Post by [deleted] »

dragontamer wrote: post #63
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…

Are there no Bullies in say, the United Kingdom? The big difference between UK and USA is the number of guns we have in our country compared to theirs. We probably can't stop bullying, but we actually can do something about the number of guns in our country.

[deleted]

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

#94

Post by krapp »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #28
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…

Take social media activity into account during background checks. Increase the age to purchase to 21. 1 month waiting period. I'm a gun owner btw. I also wonder what interesting things would happen if in order to own a gun you must drill with a militia.

>I also wonder what interesting things would happen if in order to own a gun you must drill with a militia.

Given the nature of American militias, likely white supremacist radicalization.

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

#95

Post by bitwize »

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.

There are plenty of free countries without a First Amendment -- and saying something even vaguely Nazi-like in some of those countries risks criminal penalty. Furthermore, the absolutist interpretation of free speech we commonly associate with the First Amendment (virtually all speech protected, barring speech that causes immediate or imminent harm like threats, fighting words, and CSAM) has only really prevailed since 1969. I mean, immediately after the Bill of Rights was Ratified, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Anyway, I don't believe that owning a firearm without a license and strict government oversight is a right.

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

#96

Post by bifrost »

mikewarot wrote: post #88

1. My ratio in this manner is awful... I need to do better How often do you: a) discuss issues with someone from the other side of the political aisle in a calm and rational manner? b) give in to the emotional urge to scream at those people ? 2. Money is at the root of this, in so many ways a) Lobbyists have captured the Federal Government, degrading our faith in Government, as they have stopped representing us, and…

Money has very little to do with people excercising their civil rights.

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

#97

Post by bifrost »

seiferteric wrote: post #86
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take social media activity into account during background checks. Increase the age to purchase to 21. 1 month waiting period. I'm a gun owner btw. I also wonder what interesting things would happen if in order to own a gun you must drill with a militia.

My personal view is that anyone can own a gun but should be required to take mandatory "militia" training courses twice a year (like 8 hours). This alone will probably limit the number of people wanting to go through the process. Another thought is that people could keep their guns in their locally ran armory that they could go and practice whenever they want and checkout guns for hunting purposes. Also no semi-auto…

Sorry, that requirement is illegal.

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

#98

Post by tomrod »

bifrost wrote: post #69
giraffe_lady wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of "intellectually stimulating" conversation about this and has been for decades. For the most part we value civility and compromise so highly that we'll accept the routine murder of children rather than pay the price of pissing a bunch of people off with gun reform. The conversations aren't the problem, the guns are. There's not really a path to compromise here, I don't think. Either we stop having gu…

Or we could take the spate of teenage psychopathic murderers and develop a plan to combat it sanely.

Like reducing access to guns! Yes, we can agree!

The causal model for gun violence is simple. Motivation, and access to guns. We can and should address motivations. Reducing access to guns has a strong effect too, evidenced by other countries people bring up "mass knife murders" of like 5 people in.

Arms get tired with knives. Cars can't drive everywhere. Bombs and explosive devices take special skills. Restricting access (even indirectly, through increasing cost of ownership via mandatory insurance purchases, required registration of last owner of record [and having that owner culpable when their weapons are used], and so forth) reduces gun death.

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

#100

Post by AnimalMuppet »

dragontamer wrote: post #63
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…

Are there no Bullies in say, the United Kingdom? The big difference between UK and USA is the number of guns we have in our country compared to theirs. We probably can't stop bullying, but we actually can do something about the number of guns in our country.

I'm pretty sure there are bullies in Serbia, too, and fraught home conditions. And there are the guns. What's missing? onesafari said:

> The root cause may be bullying combined with the media contagion effect.

You need the bullying (or other oppressive social condition) and the media contagion. And, as you say, you need the massive amounts of guns.

> but we actually can do something about the number of guns in our country.

It is not clear to me that your statement is true. Given the Second Amendment, given the Supreme Court (and, in particular, the current makeup of the Supreme Court), I'm not sure what can be done.

If you see a path, we'd all love to see the plan...

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