I also know a 100 year old woman who smokes every day. (I don’t, really, but someone does.)
Are they not already? What’s the point in requiring a licence if not?
This is a fascinating read. Too bad I can’t quote the whole article.
Now that might be something to do. The article suggests more research is necessary, but given that the majority of gun deaths are suicides
source: Here’s What Actually Reduces Gun Violence, then it could be an idea worth pursuing more aggressively.
**Is mental health the real problem when it comes to mass shootings?
**
For the most part, yes. If one stops and thinks about it for a moment, it actually becomes openly obvious.
Is it the only component? Probably not. The anti-gun people will jump up and down and scream that it’s all about the guns, and that’s not correct either. It’s a phenomenon that has shown up with increasing frequency since the first one that I can remember (Charles Whitman). Until we come up with a way to identify why people want to lash out against innocents like this, the only thing we can do is put defenses in place against such incidents.
Too general; mental well being is an issue among teenagers ie. school shootings. That can be something as simple as bullying, self-esteem, a degree of alienation, etc
From 2006 to 2015, at least 1,068 people have died from gunshots in a mass killing, defined by the FBI as an incident with four or more victims. But another 140 people suffered fire-related injuries, 104 were stabbed and at least 92 were killed by blunt force.
This is not including the number of people killed by vehicles.
The fact that mental illness is a necessary requirement for people doing crazy things is a tautology.
For a tragedy like this to occur, some necessary elements are:
A person with the will to do it, who we categorize post hoc as mentally ill.
Access to firearms.
The existence of schools.
Inability to raise victims from the dead.
The question is not whether something is a necessary element. The question is, which of the necessary elements it is feasible and desirable to remove from society.
Indeed. Rick Scott and Trump can go get crammed on this. What exactly are the FBI supposed to do? Put EVERYONE who is a violence-celebrating ass online, or associates with supremacist militia groups, or is known around their social circle being an obnoxious asshat under direct constant surveillance? (OK, I could see association with supremacist militia groups being a reason to take you downtown and let you know we’re watching, but that would just encourage the putzes) People seem to expect the authorities to go full on Minority Report on Bad People, and that’s not how reality works, they have to triage the tips they get. I wonder what’s the ratio of people reported to the FBI for being Internet F*ckwads vs. those who do take concrete steps to act criminally. Or do we make expulsion from school for disciplinary causes a reason to place a marker on you background check against owning firearms for 5, 10 years, permanently?
This is an incredibly complicated issue and it makes the population very nervous in that it seems the violent loon element in America has taken a disturbing turn in how they regard the “soft target” scenario. The serial killer of the 20th century, clandestinely picking off one or two at a time over a few months or years, has been replaced with the binge killer slaying by the dozens at once as the looming menace out there. And they are not even doing conventional Domestic Terrorism with an identifiable policy goal like the old KKK or Macheteros. There is a certain nihilism to it, like they just want to prove society can’t protect you and *“sure, I’m a loser; but those concertgoers/worshippers/schoolkids are now all dead, ha ha, fat lotta good did living right do them!!”. * I strongly suspect many of these fellows ***want ***society to degenerate into the Hobbesian war of all upon all, with “at all times the fear of violent death” hanging over everyone’s head – if they have no peace, let no one have it.
Did any of the mass shooters seek mental health treatment first? Were they unable to access this help because of a barrier they had no control over?
It should also be pointed out that going to a doctor and saying that you wish to harm yourself or others is the same as going to a cop and saying the same thing. They will take you seriously and you’ll be imprisoned. So any individual out there who actually wishes to harm people will avoid this system. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
Do people that have opinions other than your own do anything but scream? :rolleyes:
Is it your opinion that nothing can be done offensively, and that strong defensive measures are the only solution? Seems rather fatalistic to me, seeing as how “It’s a phenomenon that has shown up with increasing frequency”. How much defense do we have to throw at this problem before you will even consider another route?
Not sure you’re grasping the scope of mental well being, or the fact that teenagers are mostly kids.
Due process issues with that. School boards, etc, are not judges and have to follow none of the procedures of a legitimate court. So they shouldn’t be able to take away a constitutional right. (now to be fair, one can reasonably argue that they shouldn’t be able to ruin someone’s whole future without following some legitimate due process, either, but that’s how it is. Individual students who got screwed by school boards don’t have anything like the clout of the NRA)
I’m sure you’ve heard about various outrageous expulsions under ‘zero tolerance’, where kangaroo court schoolboards throw out the quiet 95 lb asian kid because she has a pencil sharpener that uses an exposed blade, or some kids go hunting in the morning, leave their truck with the shotguns parked off campus, and get expelled.
Real judges do bullshit too, but they ultimately have to answer to the supreme court, can be punished for making excessive bullshit rulings, often have to get the consent of a jury for major decisions, and so on.
Exactly – the “why didn’t they do something why didn’t they see the signs” people are just who got the school boards to institute the absurd zero-tolerance policies in the first place, weren’t they?
In case I wasn’t clear: that was an example of approaches to the problem that won’t work.
Any individual who wants to have a meaningful life at all, even if they sometimes get urges to kill people and genuinely want help, obviously has to keep their mouth shut.
Have any of you ever had a member of your household, a coworker, or a neighbor that you felt was mentally unstable and might be prone to violence?
Because I have. More than once. And I suspect a lot of you have, as well.
Do you know how futile it is to try and get mental health intervention for a legal adult that hasn’t committed a crime? I’ve tried. It’s pretty much impossible. And I know other people that tried.
Have you ever tried to convince a mentally ill person that you care about their well-being and have their best interests at heart in suggesting that they seek help? Do you think they will say…thank you, I’m so relieved. I’ve been fighting these demons on my own because I thought no one cared. But now I know I was wrong. I need help. Thank you for caring. Or do you think they will think that you are part of the grand conspiracy against them?
Do you think they won’t warp the situation in their own heads and set out to try to frame YOU as the unstable person that needs help?
Do you think law enforcement is going to regard this as anything more than a personal dispute?
Actually in my case they did regard it as more than a personal dispute, because I overheard one of the cops say something to the effect of “he’s probably going to kill her someday.” But they STILL couldn’t do anything. Because he never threatened to kil me, he just kept telling them that he was scared I was going to hurt him and he might need to defend himself.
For background, the person was a foster child that lived with me past his 18th birthday. Someone I really cared about and wanted to help.
At one point I felt I was still making these complaints just to get them on the record. So no one would blame me for not acting if he did something really horrible. It was a dark time in my life.
So that is why I find the viewpoint of “all we have to do is get these people some help” really really naive. I live in a city that offers a large amount of resources for people that want mental health help. And they do a lot of outreach as well. But you can’t help someone that doesn’t want to be helped.
I have no problem with individuals owning handguns. I understand it. I don’t own one because I live in large apartment complex in a densely populated area and I feel the risks outweigh the advantages. But if I lived alone in a rural area I would probably buy one and learn to use it.
But I don’t think it’s reasonable to allow private citizens to own semi-automatic and automatic weapons, at least without some serious restrictions. And I don’t think a good guy with a handgun is going to stand a chance against a guy with an automatic weapon. And while I don’t like the idea of a crazy person going on a spree with a handgun, it’s a lot less frightening and less deadly than a crazy person with a machine gun.
As a side note, it seems that the school did see the signs in this latest mass shooting, and did take preventative measures.
They had 2 separate badged police officers on campus guarding the place, not rent-a-cops. They had a policy of locking classroom doors. They held mass shooter drills. They specifically made note of this specific kid and told staff to watch out for him.
If you look at the online videos, it seems the local police department was prepared, they clearly have long guns and level IV vests and tactical training.
But the kid had a weapon arguably better than anything a ww2 infantryman carried. Sure, it’s single shot, but nobody was shooting back, he didn’t need suppressing fire. And some of the mass shooter preparedness may have actually made thing worse.
If the classroom doors weren’t locked and the students all rushed the shooter, ironically I think fewer of them might have died.
Maybe schools will start turning all the side doors into emergency exits and just have one large main entrance, guarded by police officers with metal detectors.
And I think that’s as it should be. Perhaps it shouldn’t be as near-impossible as it is now, but there should be a very high bar for restricting somebody’s freedom.
Some small proportion of people who behave atypically have serious mental illness, and some small proportion of them have violent tendencies. The sensible solution to this problem is the one adopted by pretty much every single civilized nation in the world except the U.S., and it isn’t rushing to restrict the freedom of anyone who behaves atypically.
Lets remove alcohol too sense its involved in so many acts of violence, especially against women. Lets remove it for the good of society.
I’m gratified that you seem to be applying common sense to the situation. We restrict plenty of freedoms for the good of society as a whole - drug use, the age of consent, the possession of many other types of weapon. It’s a cost-benefit analysis. Does the benefit of the freedom outweigh the cost to society?
Far from being a natural freedom in a civilized society, the current consensus U.S. attitude to the freedom to own firearms is the extreme outlier in this analysis.
Evidence wise, if we *could *remove all alcohol we would have a safer, better society. It would save thousands of lives every year, and prevent many violent acts and drunk driving crashes.
We just have not found a way to do so. Trying to make cocaine illegal has not made it any less readily available. Mass incarceration of a million people hasn’t deterred others from continuing to sell it. Thousands of people have died in fighting between criminal gangs.
If we physically could do it without negative consequences, though, I’m all for it.