I don’t see any maybe’s here.
Great, how do you propose we force people into mental health care? Take all the time you want explaining this.
Doesn’t take much time to explain. The answer is “you can’t”. Which is exactly my point.
You completely missed the point, just as I said you would. You’re the one who was lamenting the fact that “it’s difficult to incarcerate” someone like the Oregon shooter, as if all mentally ill people should be thrown in jail and that would solve all gun violence.
That just parrots the position of the NRA and the gun lobby – deal with the mental health problems, but be sure to leave the nation so completely awash in guns that there’s a gun for every man, woman, and child and their dogs, too – and trust us, the gun violence will go away.
No, it won’t. Because first of all you can never fully address all mental health problems, or even necessarily make much of a dent in it. And secondly, because it’s not even a well-defined problem. Every human being is potentially a mental health issue, all it takes is circumstances – stress, emotional trauma, depression, rage, perhaps enhanced by drugs or alcohol – and any perfectly normal person can be temporarily mentally unbalanced. The question is whether we want said mentally unbalanced person to be dangerously armed.
What you are again not getting is that this is the root of much of the problem. The gun nuts’ beloved image of the “good guy with a gun” is a myth because the distinction between the “law-abiding citizen” and the dangerous armed lunatic is often a fluid and tenuous one. It’s a distinction that can change overnight – it can change due to a single tragic circumstance, or the gradual accumulation of many – the sudden loss of a job, the discovery of an unfaithful spouse, the accumulation of life stresses – any of those things can send someone over the edge. This is a major contributor to gun violence, a bigger problem than guns in the hands of career criminals or readily identifiable mental health risks.
I quoted this before:
If you have a country saturated with guns – available to people when they are intoxicated, angry or depressed – it’s not unusual guns will be used more often," said Rebecca Peters, a Johns Hopkins University fellow specializing in gun violence. “This has to be treated as a public health emergency.”
And that ones worth a warning. Monstro, you should know better than to call names.
My wife has spent her entire career as a mental health therapist and managing mental health programs.
She and her colleagues just laugh as the subject of mental health and mass killings comes up. As a nation we are not funding enough treatment programs as it is - how can we imagine increasing it just because of rare mass gun deaths? We already tolerate high rates of gun suicide - a rather solid indication of mental health issues in my mind.
Here is a recent summary of mental health and gun violence - worth a look - even at the whole card deck.
A tiny fraction of gun violence is committed by the mentally ill | Vox.
If you don’t want to read it, it begins with :
In response to the original question “What is the future of guns and mass killings in the US” - the answer is as simple as it is sad - More of both…
I believe a lot of burglars do go in unarmed specifically because legal penalties increase harshly if a crime is committed with a gun.
Whoops! There goes the gubmint restricting gun rights!
Good info there, sourced from reliable sources. Here are a few more points from it:
Gun crime is more prevalent in the US than in other rich countries
Gun homicides are considerably more common in the US than in peer countries.There were 29.7 gun homicides per million people in the US in 2012, compared to only 5.1 per million in Canada, and 1.4 per million in Australia, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime
Places with more guns have more homicides
Protestations of gun rights supporters aside, public health researchers who study firearms generally agree that increased firearm ownership rates are associated with higher rates of homicide.
Suicide is more common in places with more guns
The relationship between gun prevalence and suicide is [even] stronger than the relationship between guns and homicide, as the Harvard Injury Control Research Center’s Means Matter project shows. People who die from suicide are likelier to live in homes with guns than people who merely attempted suicide, and states with higher rates of gun ownership have higher rates of gun suicide.
Living in a house with a gun increases your odds of death
Guns can kill you in three ways: homicide, suicide, and by accident. Owning a gun or having one readily accessible makes all three more likely.
Guns contribute to domestic violence
While everyone is at a greater risk of dying by homicide if they have access to a gun, the connection is stronger for women. In a survey of battered women, 71.4 percent of respondents reported that guns had been used against them, usually to threaten to kill them
Seems to leave the pro-gun side without a leg to stand on, assuming they haven’t shot them off already. So I’m going to guess that the strategy is deny it all, and drum up some manipulated highly massaged data to show that nothing makes for a happier, safer life than having as many guns as possible. 
Fine, we’ve established you can’t stop crazy people from doing bad things.
That just leaves us with how to deal with it. Take any mass killing and remove the gun and tell me what you think will happen.
[QUOTE=wolfpup]
Gun crime is more prevalent in the US than in other rich countries
Gun homicides are considerably more common in the US than in peer countries.There were 29.7 gun homicides per million people in the US in 2012, compared to only 5.1 per million in Canada, and 1.4 per million in Australia, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime
Places with more guns have more homicides
Protestations of gun rights supporters aside, public health researchers who study firearms generally agree that increased firearm ownership rates are associated with higher rates of homicide.
[/QUOTE]
This is rather like saying that the instances of accidents and deaths related to alcohol is more prevalent in countries that allow citizens to buy alcohol. Of COURSE gun deaths are going to be more common in countries that, you know, have guns. If pro-gun people say otherwise they are idiots since this is pretty much a given.
In countries WITH guns. In countries without them, suicide is more likely to happen in households without guns. Again, the US is pretty much in the middle of the pack wrt deaths by suicide. Certainly not in the top quarter/third. And many if not most of the countries above us don’t have guns or have very restricted access, so that sort of says that there is more going on wrt suicide then simply having or not having guns.
What contributes to domestic violence in countries without guns, or with very restricted access? Does it just not happen there? :dubious: I don’t actually know where the US ranks in terms of domestic violence, but my WAG is we aren’t in the top 10…and I’m guessing that many countries above us in classification wrt domestic violence don’t have guns or have very restricted access. Still, it would be interesting to see, since I’m fully guessing out of my ass on this. For all I know, USA#1!!! and that this will show a certain causal link between guns and domestic violence that only happens in the US. Do you have any data on this?
It only seems that way because you are, IMHO, ignoring the glaring holes in your argument. I don’t deny that guns have a large non-zero affect on preventable or supposedly preventable deaths. I don’t agree that the suicide stats are 1 for 1 correlation because there are too many countries that have higher rates of suicide but bans on guns, which to me shows there is something else impacting this issue. I’m unconvinced that if you magically took all the guns away from Americans that our suicide rate would plummet because I look at other countries and we are fairly close to them. Even Canada is only 2 points difference, which isn’t all that much. Japan is over 10 points difference and they have pretty close to a total ban for the average citizen on guns. Same with China.
But this all comes back, for me, to a societies willingness to put up with non-zero numbers of deaths by allowing certain activities known to cause harm. Alcohol. Tobacco (sometime look up the estimated death toll due to tobacco in China if you want a REALLY chilling stat…quick drive by, it’s in the millions per year). Diet. Hell, change the speed limit by 5 miles per hour upward and you will have a non-zero number of additional accidents causing harm and death. Yet we allow these things. And in America, despite knowing full well that people WILL die, we have thus far allowed this as well, because to many Americans the personal right to keep and bear arms is worth the price. YMMV, and in Canada what you guys do obviously works for you. Thus far, despite the slaughter, our stance works for us.
WAGs and eyeballing rank orders of countries. Thanks for the rebuttal of the data from Harvard. What do those fucking eggheads know about science anyways?
At least I read the article AND know what your argument actually is. But, as always, thanks for your invaluable input, Hentor.
Fascinating and disturbing parallels between the Oregon shooter and the one at Sandy Hook – mother and son bonding over the shared hobby of gun worship, target shooting, and their marvelous knowledge of guns and gun safety. The only difference is the son didn’t end up shooting the mother this time, just innocent students and then himself. From the New York Times, emphasis mine:
Unlike his father, who said on television that he had no idea Mr. Harper-Mercer cared so deeply about guns, his mother was well aware of his fascination. In fact, she shared it: In a series of online postings over a decade, Ms. Harper, a nurse, said she kept numerous firearms in her home and expressed pride in her knowledge about them, as well as in her son’s expertise on the subject …
In an online forum, answering a question about state gun laws several years ago, Ms. Harper took a jab at “lame states” that impose limits on keeping loaded firearms in the home, and noted that she had AR-15 and AK-47 semiautomatic rifles, along with a Glock handgun. She also indicated that her son, who lived with her, was well versed in guns, citing him as her source of information on gun laws, saying he “has much knowledge in this field.”
“I keep two full mags in my Glock case. And the ARs & AKs all have loaded mags,” Ms. Harper wrote. “No one will be ‘dropping’ by my house uninvited without acknowledgement.”
… Neighbors in Southern California have said that Ms. Harper and her son would go to shooting ranges together, something Ms. Harper seemed to confirm in one of her online posts. She talked about the importance of firearms safety and said she learned a lot through target shooting, expressing little patience with unprepared gun owners: “When I’m at the range, I cringe every time the ‘wannabes’ show up.”
I think as far as pro-gun arguments go this is the best one you can make. Like access to alcohol or to tobacco access to firearms is something you *want *to have, and you are willing to pay a price for it. A free nation should be allowed to make that choice. I am not an American. My nation has made a different choice and - fortunately for me - it happens to be a choice that I agree with. For my tastes the price America is paying for the right to bear arms is too high. But this is really for the Americans to decide, and if the majority feel that the price is not too high, I have no issues with that.
What I do have issues with - at least as far as debates on the topic go - is the claim that there is no price to pay. That there even is a net benefit. That line of argument (which you hear often) is never brought forward when it comes to alcohol or tobacco. It seems to be exclusive to gun rights and it is usually backed up with either weak evidence or not backed up at all.
You cannot simply compare guns to alcohol and tobacco as if they are equivalent, or as if tolerance of alcohol and tobacco represent some sort of decision about a fundamental principle or a right.
If it is a fundamental principle, then explain why we do not regard methamphetamines and heroin in the same way that we regard alcohol and tobacco.
I may be wrong, but I suspect that as you explain to me why we treat heroin and meth amphetamines differently from alcohol and tobacco, you will get to a point where you are fundamentally talking about the relative risk involved in the use of one of those groups relative to the other. And that is the point when you will come to the other aspect of firearm use that I usually go to right away, relative risk. Or as I usually say, it’s the denominator stupid.
Actually I think that on a certain level we *do *treat alcohol in the same way that we treat heroin. In both cases our societies have made a judgment call. We have weighed what it is worth to have the freedom to access these substances against what it will cost us. For firearms it is not all that different nor does it make a big difference whether you refer to the cost as “relative risk”. As a society you have to make that judgment call: Is the benefit of having the freedom to bear firearms big enough for you to accept the cost/risk associated with it? Of course in order to make that judgment call you need a fair assessment of the cost and benefit involved. That is where I find the debate to frequently be lacking.
She sounds totally charming. :eek:
[QUOTE=Hiker]
I think as far as pro-gun arguments go this is the best one you can make. Like access to alcohol or to tobacco access to firearms is something you want to have, and you are willing to pay a price for it. A free nation should be allowed to make that choice. I am not an American. My nation has made a different choice and - fortunately for me - it happens to be a choice that I agree with. For my tastes the price America is paying for the right to bear arms is too high. But this is really for the Americans to decide, and if the majority feel that the price is not too high, I have no issues with that.
[/QUOTE]
Exactly. At least you took the time to actually read my point of view and follow the logic. All societies make choices, and many of those choices have a non-zero impact on preventable deaths. The US decision to allow a personal right to keep and bear arms is one of those.
I think that net benefit and price are all in the eyes of the beholder and are impacted by the person making the assessments world view on this topic. So, to a pro-gun person the price is acceptable while the benefit is huge, since it is a right kept and an expansion of what that person feels is their personal freedom. An anti-gun person is going to have just the opposite view, thinking that the price is too high and that there is no benefit, just downsides. Someone more in the middle might reason that we could lower the price somewhat with more controls (totally Constitutional since we have them for the 1st Amendment), balancing cost to benefit a bit better.
[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian]
I may be wrong, but I suspect that as you explain to me why we treat heroin and meth amphetamines differently from alcohol and tobacco, you will get to a point where you are fundamentally talking about the relative risk involved in the use of one of those groups relative to the other. And that is the point when you will come to the other aspect of firearm use that I usually go to right away, relative risk. Or as I usually say, it’s the denominator stupid.
[/QUOTE]
Ah, you are much to hard on yourself Hentor. I wouldn’t say you are in the ‘denominator stupid’ just because you don’t understand the argument. You don’t WANT to, and you are so blinded by your partisan horseshit on this that you never will. You simply can’t bend enough to even try and understand.
Why? Why can’t I do that? Because they ARE. In terms of deaths and injuries they are pretty comparable, with both tobacco and alcohol having a higher body count. But the real reason they are comparable is that they aren’t necessary, and that societies CHOOSE to allow them despite knowing that people WILL die from this choice. And it will be a lot of people. You are trying to shift the playing field into right verse no right, but that’s because I suspect you actually DO get this and simply don’t want to. But to make it clear, I’m not focused on just the US in this, so ‘right’ doesn’t really come into play. Instead, I’m looking at personal gun ownership in the US from the perspective of an action sanction by society…US society in this respect.
However, consider that in order to ban the sale and distribution of alcohol in the past an Amendment (the 18th) was passed and to bring back the sale and distribution of the stuff another Amendment was needed (21st) to vacate the previous one…so, even in the US it’s comparable between guns and alcohol from a ‘right’ perspective.
How do we not regard them the same way? All are controlled substances, but the level of regulation and legal ramification are different. But they are part of a spectrum, not completely different things. And, again, recall that during Prohibition alcohol WAS considered pretty much the same, with jail time a possibility for those who broke the law. Even today, alcohol made illegally can get you as much jail time as meth or heroin.
So, in your mind, how does the fact that meth and heroin being controlled substances that it is illegal to make or manufacture relate to alcohol and tobacco, controlled substances where there are restrictions on purchase or use, and how does this make the comparison between alcohol and tobacco to guns wrt societal sanction fit together? Because, frankly, it continues to look like you don’t even understand what I’m arguing at all, and are just throwing a lot of shit at the wall, with some drive by links, in the hope something sticks.
I’m not asking for you to accept my argument, but it would be nice if you gave some indication you even grasp what it is and would be willing to bother engaging in debating the point. It has more to do with the actual OP than whatever it is you are on about, since it indicates the actual future of guns and mass killings in the US…the future is that guns will continue to be allowed in the US for exactly as long as our society sanctions them, and the killings will continue because, as with alcohol and tobacco and myriad other things, such decisions have a non-zero price in terms of deaths happening. This doesn’t mean we can’t or won’t have regulation, but even regulations merely tweaks the numbers, doesn’t halt them completely.
Why don’t you save your insults and personal attacks for the pit? Are you able to consider these issues rationally or not? If not, why not? Why so much vituperation and spittle?
Look, lining up observations by rank order and then observing “there are some above and some below, so therefore…” is simply not a useful strategy. There are reasons scientists try to match comparison cases, measure confounding variables, use longitudinal approaches, or otherwise try to account for other potential explanatory variables. Rage all you like, but your “WAG” is not equal to systematic study.
[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian]
Why don’t you save your insults and personal attacks for the pit? Are you able to consider these issues rationally or not? If not, why not? Why so much vituperation and spittle?
[/QUOTE]
The irony of this is simply off the scale. I’ll leave it to the reader to determine who is tossing around supposedly veiled insults and personal attacks, and who is rational or not. To paraphrase, you should wipe the foam from thine own muzzle before commenting on the foam on another’s.
Again, since you don’t seem to even grasp my argument there doesn’t seem a lot of benefit in continuing this. You are simply not interesting enough for this kind of bother, especially as I’ve gone into detail about my argument and, frankly, you have done nothing but some drive by rants, some drive by links and a lot of what you probably considered to be very clever veiled insults that basically show, once again, you aren’t nearly as smart as you think you are. When come back, bring something…or not, as you choose.
I grasp your argument, such as it is. You yourself say you are offering wild-ass guesses. I’ve cited a recent meta-analysis, and provided you the take away stat regarding the increased odds for suicide.
You referred to it as a “meta-study”, demonstrating that you’re ignorant about what a meta-analysis even is, let alone being able to grasp the contents.
You cannot seem to fathom that determing the difference in likelihood of suicide between two similar households based on actual measurements of those households is vastly more useful than looking at a relative ranking of polulation estimates from vastly different cultures, making a “wild assed guess” about how those countries differ on gun legislation (not even directly measuring actual presence of guns or method of suicide, mind you) and then concluding that people would just find alternate methods because reasons.
Yeah, it’s no doubt why you’re frustrated and having a hard time expressing yourself.
[QUOTE=Hentor the Barbarian]
I grasp your argument, such as it is. You yourself say you are offering wild-ass guesses. I’ve cited a recent meta-analysis, and provided you the take away stat regarding the increased odds for suicide.
[/QUOTE]
The WAG comment I made was about a completely unrelated subject, of course, concerning Canada. Your meta-analysis was talking about something different and only tangentially related, and I already addressed it. You would know these things had you actually bothered to read what I wrote and address it, instead of your disingenuous drive by posts.
:rolleyes: Whatever man…if you want to think that because I said ‘meta-study’ instead of ‘meta-analysis’ (and yes, I know the difference, and yes, it was a meta-analysis of various studies/data) then that’s fine by me.
Why do you think it’s ‘vastly more useful’? Well, because you think it makes your case for you. Why do you mis-characterize my posts and keep bringing up the WAG? Well, because you don’t feel people can scroll up, and again, you think it makes some point for you. Why don’t you address my actual points? Well, because you can’t, obviously…or, more likely, you just can’t be assed to do it because I disagree with you, so I must be evil, stupid or something.
Since you won’t even consider looking at even similar cultures that went from allowing guns to gun control and it’s affect on suicide, won’t consider the point that suicide throughout the world basically takes the form of the most handy instrument of offing ones self, can’t fathom how these things are related, won’t actually use your brain to think that this might impact current American suicide methodology in the event of a ban or increased gun control (i.e. if guns weren’t available then Americans, with their can-do attitude will do what people in other fucking countries do, which is find another way…or, more likely since there will still be millions of guns regardless, just keep using guns), are fixated on your META-ANALYSIS (even though it has caveats right in there that point out issues with the data and the analysis) as some sort of holy grail, what is the point of continuing to hump this dog? You want suicide stats to be in the overall totals because it makes the numbers bigger and scarier, which is what you want. Me, I think the numbers are big and scary enough, but the point still stands that in the US, regardless of the number of folks killed the right to keep and bear arms, including guns, including hand guns, is a protected right…and a sanctioned action by our society. Just like other sanctioned activities in our society that cause harm and death, it will remain so until there is a sea change in attitude. Yeah, I get that you want that to happen, and yeah, I get that to do that you want to make the numbers as big and scary as possible…and yeah, it might just work out for you and your buddies. Eventually. Maybe.
Hentor, I’m not frustrated…I know you are incapable of debating in good faith and incapable of stretching yourself to even try to understand, much less address any point of view that is in opposition to yourself. Why would I be frustrated since there is no real dialogue with you and no debate? You flatter yourself needlessly.
Okay, then please explain how passing a law will magically fix the murder problem here? You realize that murder us illegal right? So is rape, assault, robbery, etc. Yet despite these things being illegal they still happen. Someone intent on committing murder isn’t worried about breaking the law when it comes to the weapon used. Banning guns would go one thing really well however, it would make Joe Innocent unable to protect himself and his family. See, every single day in this country a firearm is used to protect someone. Funny thing is you don’t hear the media covering those stories do you?
I own lots of guns, even a few gasp assault type weapons. And I have killed and murdered exactly zero people during the 35 years I’ve had a gun in my home. Every weekend I, without regret, “murder” several paper and steel targets. Sometimes I even kill a few soda cans. But myself and several millions like me will never harm another person with our firearms. The only chance of that happening is if someone attempted to hurt me or my family, then I can assure you that my firearm would certainly have a human target in it’s sights.
The vast majority of firearm owners are law abiding citizens who use their weapons for recreational shooting and have them for the rare chance that they might be used in defense of self and family. We’re not happy with the senseless murders we see on the news. But we also realize that the problem isn’t the tool used, it’s the user of that tool.