What does “properly secured” mean? An unloaded weapon locked away in a gun safe is useless for home defense.
The only “proof” that we have that the shooter was mentally ill is a garbled and misreported incomplete interview from his brother, and reports from acquaintances that he was “odd.” Until I hear that there was an actual diagnosis, from an actual psychiatrist, I’ll refrain from assuming mental illness.
It is possible, believe it or not, to shoot 26 people and then yourself, and not have a mental illness diagnosis.
We desperately WANT this to be a mental illness, because without that explanation, we are left with the sobering possibility that these kinds of things can’t be predicted or prevented. I’m not saying that they can’t, but it is interesting how everyone is seizing on certain aspects of media coverage that have not been verified in order to explain this event.
A report by a brother, misreported at first, that Lanza “may have had a personality disorder” does not mean a) that he actually HAS such a disorder, b) that he’s been diagnosed or seen by a professional, or c) that the disorder led to the crime. Personality disorders are notoriously difficult to treat. In addition, research has shown that people with mental illnesses are not more likely to commit violent crimes than people without mental illnesses (unless you throw drugs and alcohol into the mix, which is true for both groups).
I should think so.
I don’t know who rhubarbarin had in mind as a demilitarized country, but there can’t be many of them. And besides, like I said, with the world and humanity being the way it is, any country surviving without arms is doing so only because it’s under the protection of some other country that is. Arms and strength are what protect people, not peace and love. It would be nice if it were the other way around, but it would also be nice if there were an end to hunger and disease. But the world is the way it is, and it takes badassery on someone’s part if you’re going to survive. Otherwise some other badass will “see you driven before him and hear the lamentations of your women.” 
Agreed. I keep a loaded pistol in the nightstand. The idea that I should be liable should a disturbed family member grab it, shoot me, and then use it to kill others is foreign to me. Such a law would make self-defense weapons non-existent. And, I’m usually not conspiratorial, but I think that’s the point.
It seems from these comments that guns must be locked up in a vault and still only if all of your family and friends have no mental issues that you may know about.
This CT shooter was described as “lonely and detached.” I know people like that, and at times in my life, that has been me! Is that enough to bar everyone he knows from owning guns lest they be subject to civil or criminal liability?
I’d say that shooting by Adam Lanza of twenty children and half a dozen adults, including his own mother, and then killing himself, is a prime example of mental illness in action.
And you would be typical to assume that. It’s a natural reaction that people have - “he must have been mentally ill to do such a horrible thing.” Unfortunately, it’s not necessarily true. You certain could claim that at the time of his crime he was mentally UNSTABLE as indicated by his actions, but that is not the same thing as a diagnosed mental illness. It may be a manifestation of one not yet diagnosed, but without an actual, official diagnosis, insisting that he must be mentally ill merely continues the stigmatization of mental illness as causing more crime (which it does not).
I’m not saying you have to shove it in Fort Knox. I’m saying it shouldn’t be easy for people who don’t own the gun to use it.
Cause: you leave your gun lying around carelessly, where anybody in the house can get it including someone you know is disturbed.
Effect: someone else easily takes your gun and hurts people with it.
Proposal: if you are careless with your gun and someone uses it to kill people, you bear some of the responsibility. Not most, not all, but some. I’m not seeing the big mystery here.
What point are you making here? I will grant you that he may not have ever been diagnosed with a mental illness. But I don’t see how that matters. I cannot imagine what kind of bizarre, nonsensical, politically correct, fucked up definition of mental illness you are using that does not obviously include him.
We have only a vague statement (misreported at first) from his brother that Lanza “may have had” a personality disorder. This was initially misreported as autism, but reports have been walked back on that. We have no official word that Lanza actually HAD a mental illness. The insistence that he MUST have had a mental illness because it’s the only thing that explains his behavior, again, is not supported by the information we have. It also continues the tradition in society of making people frightened of the mentally ill, and convinced that the mentally ill are all murderers about to go on a rampage at any moment. Neither is appropriate or correct.
My vehicle is carelessly parked in the driveway. The keys are right here on the coffee table. Am/should I be responsible if someone steals the above and drives my vehicle into a school playground?
Having an undiagnosed illness doesn’t mean you don’t have an illness. Nobody else said “diagnosed.” If my doctor finds out on Monday that the pains I’m having are cancer, I had cancer on Sunday, too, even if it wasn’t diagnosed.
So, should we give everyone chemotherapy on the off-chance that they MIGHT have cancer? Because that’s the equivalent of what’s being proposed here - “keep guns away from the mentally disturbed” requires that the person be, you know, ACTUALLY mentally disturbed. Not “odd,” or “remote,” or “might have had a personality disorder but I don’t know because I haven’t seen him in 2 years.” ACTUALLY disturbed. I haven’t heard anything from anyone interviewed about this guy (yet, I’m open to more information as it comes in) that strikes me as a huge red flag or smoking gun that his mother should have known better than to have guns in the house with her crazy-ass son. Which is what’s being proposed here.
No. Your car pretty much has to be outside. Your gun doesn’t have to by lying in a drawer anybody can pull open whether there is a threat or not. Unless you sleep in your living room, I’m doubtful that your gun is useless if it’s under lock and key.
You have a small nuclear bomb. Same question.
Because a gun is a weapon it deserves a higher degree of care than something that can be appropriated as a weapon. Given enough time I could kill someone with a fly-swatter. But something designed to kill people far away from you with little personal danger, is the sort of thing that deserves to be watched more carefully than a car.
The mom may have knew something wasn’t going well - reports are the she pulled him out of high school and home schooled him in the tenth grade. Now we’ll have to tiptoe around homeschoolers as well as people who don’t want to talk about the influence of mental illness.
“Wasn’t going well” should not be enough to condemn someone as “mentally ill.” And again, we don’t know about mental illness yet. The reports received are vague at best.
Saying someone is mentally ill isn’t a condemnation. That’s a very telling word considering the background of this discussion. But so far there’s no hard evidence of mental illness here; there are reports he had Asperger’s or something similar and there are some indications that recently he wasn’t doing well and was getting worse, but it’s very sketchy. The Asperger’s claim is not a diagnosis, I think it’s a general comment from former classmates about his withdrawn behavior, so they could be way off base. Some people with severe autism can get violent but I think that’s even less common in people with Asperger’s. This is going to be filled in in time, but the supposition that he was mentally ill is reasonable.
I would disagree, actually, given the stigmatization in society regarding the mentally ill.
This is my point.
It’s a comment that was reported supposedly from his brother, but I haven’t seen it repeated since last night, so I am assuming that it was yet another example of misreporting regarding this case.
Autism that severe would have already been identified. And again, mental illness is not correlated with a higher likelihood of violence when crime statistics are looked at.
My point is that people in this thread are making claims that his mother should not have allowed him access to her guns because of his obvious instability, of which we have received no verification. People in this thread are saying “keep guns away from the mentally ill,” when we don’t have a good history of whether or not this person has a diagnosis, or even a history of behavior that’s disturbing (other than just being described as a nerd).
In the case of Virginia Tech, the shooter had a well-established history of psychiatric disturbance that was not adequately addressed. We don’t have that information here, and yet people are making statements about what his mother should have done, based on no evidence of pre-existing behaviors or patterns.
What’s going to happen after this is what happened after Columbine - vaguely odd people are going to be identified as possible threats for no discernible reason, because this shooter demonstrated vaguely odd behavior in his past. I would like more hard information, and more information in general, before jumping to conclusions about his mental health history.
You are imagining something and getting offended at what you’ve imagined. However, your imagination has no basis in reality.
No one is saying that all mentally ill people are mass murderers. But all mass murderers are mentally ill. How is this not blindingly obvious? If something happens in your brain that makes you kill your mother and go shoot up a bunch of elementary school children and then kill yourself, you’re obviously mentally ill. Are you really going to say “No, not really, it’s still possible he was perfectly sane and just decided that was how he wanted to spend his morning, we must wait for the evidence”?
Whether the shooter had been diagnosed with mental illness, whether he had suffered from it for a long time or only recently, whether this could have been predicted or not, those are all different questions. But I don’t see how the simple fact that he was obviously mentally ill at the time the shootings occurred is up for debate.
Exactly.
Anyone who has a personality can be diagnosed with something, by someone, in any snapshot in time.
Most of us have done SOMETHING in our lives that made the people around us suspect we’ve lost our minds, if only temporarily. Chances are, though, only a minority of us have ever gotten professional help…let alone been encouraged by others to do so.
And most people would be insulted if their mental health were questioned. Like, the guy who’s honking his horn and cussing at you in traffic. Do you really think he’s receptive to the idea that he needs therapy? And if he says, “Fuck off, numbnuts”, what are you gonna do? Call the men in white coats and have him forcibly removed from society? What about the coworker who never leaves his office or socializes, but still manages to get his work done? You gonna fire him for being “strange”? Are you going to go to management and ask that HR help him with his “problems”? Are you going to call his family and stage an intervention? No? But if you don’t and he gets fired, he might come to work and kill you! Oh noes.
You have a son who’s always made straight As and stayed out of trouble. You never see him with a huge gaggle of friends, but he occasionally socializes and everyone’s always saying how sweet he is. He gets to college and for some reason fizzles out. But you’re not worried since college isn’t for everyone. Who has never gone through a bad patch? So you let him stay home and get himself together. He doesn’t seem too interested in finding a job, but he’ll find something eventually. So what, he’s not like his high-powered, career-minded brothers? That doesn’t mean he’s a failure. He can still pull through this. By the end of the year, if he doesn’t have anything lined up, maybe you’ll think about getting him into therapy.
If you have a son like this, at what point do you decide, “OMG, I’M LIVING WITH A MASS MURDERER!!”? Just like most guns don’t end up killing anyone and most people don’t die in school shootings, the vast majority of mentally unstable people do NOT become mass murderers. Or any other kind of murder. Troubled does not necessarily mean violent. And treating a troubled person as if they are a violent person is a great way of making that person even MORE troubled. And possibly violent.
Preventing people from bugging out seems to be more unrealistic than preventing people from getting access to loads of gun.