Leaving aside the topic of further gun restrictions for the purpose of this discussion (please), two methods brought up often are enforcement of already existing legislation, and mental health. What I don’t see from those in power who put forth these partial solutions are proposals to increase funding for either of these. I do believe the ATF is woefully underfunded, and if any that propose that looking into mental health is the thing to do have offered any solid plans towards that goal I haven’t heard about them.
Is this just hypocrisy, or are there serious efforts on the part of legislators that say these should be where we focus our efforts?
Both of those are pretty broad topics. I know very little about the enforcement of existing regulations, so I won’t comment on that side of things. As for the mental health, I think there needs to be multiple different ways of addressing that.
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Reducing bullying. One theme that seems to be present in many of these cases is that the shooter was bullied. I admit that the first thing I thought when I heard the Nashville shooter was a woman was that she had a child in the school that was being bullied. That turned out not to be the case, but I still believe we need to get more strict in disciplining bullies. No more letting “boys will be boys” serve as an excuse to not do anything about it.
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On the other side, I get the impression that the progressive positions are contradictory. On the one hand the claim is that we need to treat violent people who have a mental health diagnosis in the mental health care system rather than in the prison system. On the other hand the claim is that anyone should be free to refuse treatment, even if this results in uncontrolled violence. My disagreement is with the first proposition. I think violent criminals should be in prison. No being soft on them just because they have a formal mental health diagnosis.
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That being said, we definitely need more overall funding for mental health services to treat people before they decompensate to the point of committing crimes. Here in Corpus Christi, for example, the only way someone can be admitted for inpatient psychiatric treatment is if they are actively suicidal. That’s due to lack of bed space, which is in turn due to lack of funding, for treating any other mental health crises.
I’m all in favor of reducing bullying, but what does this have to do with school shootings? So far as I know, the majority of school shooters were not driven to it by bullying, but this has been a pervasive myth ever since the Columbine massacre in 1999.
The mental health aspect is just brought up as a deflection with no intention of actually doing anything about it. I’d like to think the availability of better mental health would be helpful, but there was at least one mass shooter recently from a wealthy family for whom cost wasn’t really an obstacle. This is mostly a phenomenon of angry young men taking out their frustrations, so what do we do about the angry young men?
For the purpose of this discussion, I would like to stick to the topics of proper enforcement of existing laws and mental health, and not dive down into that “What the real problem is…” sinkhole just yet, please.
I think it’s important to clarify something so we can all stay within the confines of those two subject areas. For purposes of this debate, should we consider being an angry young man a mental illness, or not**? If not, I’ll drop the topic after having gotten on board by earlier associating violent criminal behavior with lack of resources for mental health treatment.
**. Maybe not phrased well. What I mean to say is should we not consider violent behavior as a form of mental illness? I definitely don’t mean to imply that the mentally ill are all violent, but rather the converse, that extreme violence could in a certain sense be considered evidence of being mentally ill.
Maybe, maybe not.
That’s right. After a mass shooting, GOP politicians have to say SOMETHING to look as though they care and would support some sort of action, and they can’t just keep repeating “the solution is more guns” because too many people react to that with a reasonable disgust and contempt.
Republicans will NEVER vote for any funding for any sort of mental health-support, unless a way can be found for 100% of that funding to end up in the pockets of major GOP donors. And so far, no one has thought of a way to accomplish that.
O.K., what about properly funding the ATF. It does no good to say that existing laws should be enforced instead of making new laws if the means to enforce those laws properly do not exist. What is the Republican stance on funding the ATF?
The less money the better. Next. Question?
No gun control
They’d completely disband the part of BATF that tracks civilian gun ownership if they could.
I think many “angry young men” have some mental health issues. And I want to be very careful here because I don’t want to stigmatize individuals with mental health problems because many of them are more likely to be victimized than to harm others. To address the mental health issues there are a few key problems.
- The various stigmas associated with having a mental illness making it difficult to seek treatment.
- Access to mental health.
a. Because it cost too much
b. Because the patient has no idea how to access the available health care options
c. Because there is a dearth of mental health care options in the area
I don’t believe any current federal or state law will prevent mass shootings so just enforcing what’s currently on the books won’t work. I’m willing to be proven wrong, but in the majority of these mass shooting cases the shooter purchased their firearm legally or got them from someone who had.
I think that the realistic goal is to improve the situation, not completely eliminate the problem. If funding either of two approaches appropriately will help in any significant way, I say go for it.
This is a huge issue as well. Consider what’s going on with Senator Fetterman. Now imagine that instead of depression the disease in question was one that tends to be associated with violent behaviors. His career would be over, even in the setting of trying to seek help prior to doing something violent rather than being forced into treatment by the criminal justice system. The parents of a teenage boy in a similar situation are incentivized to keep things secret rather than seek treatment for their loved one, because of the stigma.
This was highlighted in that recent Jon Stewart interview with an OK rep, who made all the usual noises the GOP makes - it’s a mental health issue, we need background checks so the wrong people don’t get guns, and we need more guns. Except he’d actively fought mental health screening and background checks, and couldn’t explain why we need more guns when we already have more guns than citizens.
And as is typical for the US, the one thing we won’t try is the solution that’s worked for every other country because… America!
By this I assume you are referring to gun control, which is specified as off-topic by the OP and at least two moderator instructions in this thread have said not to bring it up.
Apparently, not only do the Republicans not want the ATF to better enforce the laws we have, they actually want to cut their budget…and some want to eliminate it entirely.
Medicare For All is the only really viable approach to solve the mental health coverage gap.
Like gun control, the funding and policies around public healthcare services are almost entirely state and local. That’s just not a viable fix. People move and the problems follow them, information is siloed, and HIPAA makes sharing it hard. We need a single policy for how mental health cases are managed and as part of that we need a universal registry of mental health cases which gun purchases must be checked against. We also must be empowered to confiscate guns from those deemed unsafe and hold liable anyone who makes guns accessible to those folks. These latter items will be difficult to implement.
Many politicians have regularly raised M4A as a partial solution to this problem, but we must be honest. Most shooters are angry and have been poisoned by social media but simply wouldn’t be flagged as “mentally ill” and an imminent threat. Should we have a solution for dealing with the mentally ill? Of course. Is that a primary pillar of reducing gun deaths? No one serious would say so.
Edit: ATF is a federal agency. The GOP has long pushed for gun regulation to be local, while protections for owners is federal. Convenient that. So, the ATF will not be a viable answer under the current structure. The kind of policing needed would be done at the state and local level, and we know there’s not much motivation in most of the problem communities to actually enforce the laws we have. They openly flout them.