Always thought that it was the lack gun control laws which caused so many gun deaths in the US. If you were to compare with most European nations, gun death is but a fraction.
Then there is Canada, where guns are also readily available, but death by gun is still a fraction of the US.
What Canada has like the European nations is Universal Health. This includes mental health.
So my theory is, perhaps it’s not only gun control, but also National health which is helping to control nuts from going off.
Thoughts?
We can’t tell since the NRA got Congress to pass a law forbidding government research agencies like CDC from studying it.
In this country, everybody has a right to be as bat-fuck crazy as they want to be; and to own a gun. I believe that’s an NRA by-law.
In Connecticut a woman with a history of mental health problems took her husband’s gun, checked her two grandchildren out of school at the end of the day (she was on the list) and killed them and herself. How would mental health checks have prevented this? I’ve seen nothing to make me think that they couldn’t afford care. The owner of the gun did not have mental health problems. I don’t know how more accessible mental health treatments (a good idea by itself) would help here.
There are certainly people out there who view firearms as a health care problem in the United States. See the relatively recent kerfuffle over family physicians being able to ask their patients if they have any firearms in the home. Then there’s the fact that more than half of all firearm related deaths in the United States are suicides. I don’t think health care will do much for the homicides but maybe for the suicides?
To my read some of y’all are not responding to the op. The proposition is that keeping the general population healthy, in particularly having good and accessible mental health services that are utilized, reflects in fewer gun deaths. NOT asking about required mental health checks or background checks of the owner or even if mental health services were something an individual could afford. Affording something that is not available to buy or too inconvenient to use or costs more of your income than you feel you want to spend or that comes with stigma you are unwilling to accept or that you do not realize you need, would not help from the proposition’s POV.
In Voyager’s vignette – better services in which a good primary care or other point of contact identified that woman as having mental health issues and got her quality mental health care before she reached a point of severe instability would have prevented those gun deaths.
Of note homicide rates across the country have dropped greatly over the past 20 years. Suicide rates and the rate of the rare but dramatic mass murder have not.
I’m not sure what the situation is for care of mental issues in Japan, but they have a far higher suicide rate than the US does, despite having virtually no guns at all.
Here’s my problem. It appears that she was identified as having mental health issues before the incident. And nothing I read says that she was not treated because of lack of money. I don’t know if she was treated ineffectively, or if she and her husband chose not to have her treated. And she was not considered to be potentially violent.
So I’m not sure how increased access to mental health treatment would have helped. She certainly did not seem bad enough to be involuntarily locked up. Would you (general you) support restrictions on gun ownership for people living with those with mental health issues? How severe should they be?
More generally, I don’t see how a list of those with mental issues will help at all. If there are no background checks, how would being on the list keep someone from getting a gun? The state of treatment is not such as to cure all who undergo it, and plenty of people with latent issues do not rise to the level of needing treatment until it is too late. Plus, those with mental health issues and a desire for gun ownership would avoid treatment. Should they be forced to get it? How would you do that?
According to my son who lived there for 4 years, the last two in a capacity that included some limited counseling role, pretty awful.
Again, lack of money is only one barrier to care.
And again, the position laid out in the op is not about restricting access to guns or any list. Not sure how you are reading creating a list o those with mental illness into the op, other than substituting what is written with what you have heard the NRA and others propose. It certainly is particularly good sense to lock up your guns securely from others in the house if you have any reason to believe that someone in the house or who even visits may be suicidal or even remotely considering self-harm, but that is not the point here either. The position is that better and more accessible mental health services (and I pointedly include decreased cultural stigma against getting such care) would make a substantial impact on gun violence rates from here.
Like you I know not the details of your vignette, but to no small degree it exactly illustrates the case the op is trying to make. The woman was clearly mentally ill and unless one believes that mental illness has no effective treatments then the fact that reached the point of killing herself and her children is prima facie evidence that she was not being effectively evaluated and treated, even if she was “identified” as ill. Had she been evaluated and treated more effectively earlier then her illness would have been unlikely to reach the point it did.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m very much in favor of something like a Canadian system. Its advantages far outweigh any considerations about whether it is or is not responsible for a reduction in gun violence.
is it easier to commit people in Canada than here? Here it is quite difficult, and anyone not being directly threatening (like this woman) could not be involuntarily committed. It used to be simpler here. Given that, I’d like to see some data showing that lack of access to treatment - as opposed to lack of acceptance of treatment and lack of success of treatment - is responsible.
Clearly part of my problem is that the sudden desire for better mental health care seems to be an either or thing with better gun control - as if better mental health care would totally solve the problem. I don’t buy it. However, if the NRA would lobby for a single payer system I won’t complain. It certainly would help in reducing gun violence to some extent, and it would help far more in other areas.
Fat chance, right?
I lived in Japan about 10 years ago, and the situation for care of mental issues seemed to be much, much worse than the US. A lot of the books on living in Japan for foreigners mentioned that if you wanted to see a therapist you were probably SOL unless you were in a major city. It was my impression that hardly anyone in Japan admits to having mental health issues. Here’s a brief article from The Economist from around the same time period that describes how mental illness in Japan is/was often treated with lengthy institutionalization. A woman who’s suffered from depression for years says if her condition were known to others she could lose her apartment. I hope things have improved since then, but even if there’s been a completely successful reform of the mental health care system there must still be many adults who suffered from lack of care or bad care in the past.
With regard to suicide, in the West suicide has often been regarded as either crazy or sinful. In Japan it has not traditionally carried the same stigma, and that alone probably accounts for some of the high suicide rate in Japan.
I think that’s a signficant factor. But in a lot of European countries, people can keep a hunting rifle at home. They, mostly, choose not to. I think people voluntarily choosing not to arm themselves is a bigger factor than the laws. Fewer guns, fewer gun deaths.
My sense of it (and this little bit is consistent with it) is that involuntary commitment is no easier in Canada than in the U.S.
Clearly part of your problem is that you are responding to the NRA talking points (keep lists of the lunatics) and not what was brought up in this op, which is something completely different. This is a narrow discussion and acknowledging the claim of the op, that accessible affordable and effective quality mental health services might be a bigger factor contributing to differences in gun violence rates than laws controlling gun ownership, does not require one to accept an either/or proposition. One can also believe that a different set of gun regulations than what we currently possess would also help … or not.
My problem is also that it seems to be presented as a virtual either/or, with most who really want to do something focusing on gun laws, not improved mental health. If it must be either/or I would put forth that while passing new gun laws will help people feel like they have done something, they will actually do very little. Improved mental health is harder to actually accomplish, but much more likely to have real impact. IMHO.
Our country has a very very serious problem … it’s not that criminals shoot each other, or that psychopaths rarely run amok, it’s that politicians and the AMA lobby successfully against universal free health care. This is a major issue, and a threat to the corrupt politicians who have the best health care in the world, paid for by us, but won’t institute socialized medicine because they accrue more money and power by maintaining the status quo.
Part of the reason the president and his henchmen are pushing gun control is that it distracts us from the dire condition of our health care policies, among other things. How many poor, self employed, part time workers or unemployed die or suffer because it profits the politicians, lobbyists and doctors?
You may go your whole life without losing a child to a bizarre massacre, being mowed down in a drive-by, or committing suicide … but sooner or later, your loved ones and eventually you, will get sick, and then die. Even if you have great health care through a good job, millions don’t and as time goes by, millions more will suffer for lack of civilized modern health policies.
Oh, also, hopefully, universal health care will treat mentally ill patients, some of whom won’t go on to be violent, with or without a weapon like a firearm.
This sort of thing is such a small subset of gun deaths that while tragic, you can’t let it drive policy until you have handled the broader problems of gun violence mostly from criminals (putting suicide aside).
I’m not sure about that, I also support universal health care but I am not sure of the connection to gun violence.
As a data point, what kind of wait can you expect if decide you want therapy or to see a psychiatrist in Canada? As in “I’m feeling a little depressed and want to talke about things” not “I’m going to jump off a bridge tonight”.
I get the idea that in UHC everyone that wants needs therapy eventually gets it, but it could be some kind of a wait from weeks to months, In the US system you might get it immediately if you have insurance, or never if you don’t. Don’t most of the mass shooters in the US come from middle class backrounds presumably with insurance, but the crackheads shooting each other on the street because they got stiffed in a drug transaction don’t.
DA what about the broader problem of gun violence from criminals? The fact that homicide rates have consistently decreased over the past 20 years and are now less than 60% of what they were? Total violent crime 63% of what it was?
There is no epidemic of gun violence in the United States right now. There is instead a consistently improving trend. Of course we can do better and of course keeping guns out of the hands of those who have no legal right to have them (by universal background checks, better enforcement of current laws against straw purchases, encouraging more responsible ownership, see many other debates) is a good idea but further reducing homicide rates should not be driving policy while suicide rates are as high as they are. And actions like that woman’s, and often that of other high visibility mass shootings, are, IMHO, more akin to suicides than to typical homicides.
Suicide is far above homicide as a leading cause of death in the United States. Suicide is the 10th largest cause for those over 10 years old; homicide only 15th. And its rate has been pretty flat over that same last 20 years that saw such an impressive drop in homicide rates and violent crime in general. To dig deeper down in those over 65, flat in the 10 to 24 group, and increased in those 25 to 64. Firearms lead the list for mechanism of suicide completion. The percents of High Schoolers who have considered, planned, and even attempted suicide at some point is frightening.
You want to make a meaningful impact rather than something that you can feel good about while it actually does very little? Put a bit more effort at improving mental health service quality, availability, and affordability, and a bit less arguing over assault weapons. (And please note, having insurance does not mean that the insurance offers much in the way of mental health coverage, let alone create a system and a culture that gets people to come to help even when it is covered and available.)
Wait..what in Canada limits a woman from taking her husbands firearm and killing here children?
Or is your whole NRA point just an irrelevant red herring?
Do you have a cite that shows any correlation between the number of firearms and the number of deaths?
As far as I know there is zero evidence the two are related.
What are you talking about?
Pretty simple concept: better more accessible affordable effective mental health services and a culture/system that gets people using those services results in fewer suicides and murder-suicides.
I do not believe the NRA honestly cares about anything other than preventing new gun regulations of any sort. Their list idea is not to my read what the op was discussing nor what I am.