You could argue that suicide could be prevented by better mental health care, and suicides compose some 60% of gun deaths each year (roughly 19,000).
But the other gun violence that people are all in a lather about is a media-driven chimera. It’s roughly 12,000 deaths a year… out of some 2,600,000 deaths per year. That’s less than half a percentage point. Doesn’t even crack the top 10 causes. For that matter, that 12,000 is roughly 1/3 the total number of suicides in the nation, and suicide is the tenth most common cause of death.
There are LOTS of other things out there that any money and effort spend to reduce gun violence could be far better spent on- like say air conditioners or heating for the poor and/or elderly than going off tilting at politically correct windmills by ranting about gun violence.
How will covering it under Medicare help? Medicare is only for people receiving Social Security benefits, i.e. people who have reached 65 years of age (or 62, if you take early retirement) or the disabled. Did you mean Medicaid, which is designed to help low-income people?
This is not wrong, but my counter to it is that I think we as a nation can afford to work on reducing those top 10 causes of death and reducing gun violence at the same time. We’ve got 320 million people, we can work on several things at once.
Medicare is a federal insurance program that pays health care costs for eligible people who are
[ul]
[li]age 65 or older[/li][li]under age 65 with certain disabilities[/li][li]of any age with ESRD[/li][/ul]
[/QUOTE]
italics original to the article. I misunderstood that it’s only a specific kidney disease however.
But the real question is, what does locking up people for using drugs get us? We’re spending an enormous amount of money on it, but I’m just not seeing a payoff. Take some guy holding down a regular 9-to-5, raising a family, and sometimes smoking some weed. What’s the point of busting that guy, spending a ton of tax money to arrest, try, and incarcerate him, get him fired, separate him from his kids… why? Why is that a better outcome than just letting the dude get high on weekends?
The legalization of pot in Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Colorado and soon to be overwhelmingly approved in California has taken millions and soon billions of dollars (once CA comes online) out of the pockets of the drug cartels and left them with no reason at all to continue to illegally produce and import the stuff.
You can walk in and buy it with no more trouble than buying a bottle of wine. And instead of the profit benefits going to the cartels the state gets a very substantial tax benefit. In Oregon several of the more conservative counties passed ordinances disallowing any sales in their domain. They can’t prevent use but they decided to stop sales in their area. But they don’t get and tax money from the sales either. One by one they are quietly rescinding these bans so they get a piece of the pie too.
The sky has not fallen. School children are not being forced to inhale or else. Any casual visitor to these states will notice no social impact at all.
After California falls I expect that Mexico will soon follow. Inviting pot tourism to the homeland, so to speak. It will alleviate a huge problem in money and lives for Mexico. "Acapulco Gold! Come back home and remember!’
And these developments are not only preventing lives from being destroyed, they will be saving many lives once the illegal profit opportunities are removed.
There is a substantial social experiment going on in the western US, and it is working.
How about we start by saying "How do we solve violence? " and nor care if it’s by gun, knife or bomb?
Let’s reduce crime by reducing poverty.
Decriminalizing drug would reduce crime, true. It might even reduce violent crime, but the cartels still are pretty fucking violent even where Pot is legal.
I agree with this 100%. Many of the measures legislators have taken seem more like useless feel good things than real solutions. Magazine limits for example, just mean a shooter will carry more mags. We need to solve all violence. AR-15s are a red herring. The ultimate question of gun violence isn’t what gun should be legal, but how to stop criminals from pulling the trigger.
As far as mass shootings go, I think most of those shooters are looking for attention for one reason another. Every maladjusted young man knows that if he kills a dozen people, he’ll get his face on the cover of Time magazine and everybody will read his manifesto or his bad poetry. I think the best way to reduce these incidents would be to stop giving them so much attention. Don’t publish their picture, and don’t report at length about why they did it.
I’ve read that newspapers generally avoid reporting suicides (especially public ones) unless it’s a celebrity, so as not to encourage copycats.
Of course, I doubt my plan will happen, because I don’t think most of the media have enough ethics to forgo a little bit of profits in order to save people’s lives.
Then how the fuck did you arrive at your opinion that it should be as easy as just stopping? I’ve never been a woman but I sure don’t understand what all the fuss about pregnancy is. I mean, maternity leave? Seriously?! Someone mentioned bootstraps upthread, that’s all pregnant women need. Not all this coddling.
Medicare already covers mental health treatments, doesn’t it? Part A covers institutional care, Part B covers outpatient and therapy, and Part D covers prescription drugs. There are certain problems with Medicare not covering non medical doctors, like psychologists and clinical social workers, who don’t agree to the fee schedule that Medicare sets up, and I guess they could change Medicare rules to treat them the same way as they treat MDs in regards to fees.
That would probably be a good thing, but I don’t know that it would do a lot for gun violence. I don’t get the impression that the over 65 set commit a bunch of mass shootings.
This may have been possible at one time, maybe in the 1930s, or possibly just after World War II. Today? No way. That ship sailed a long time ago. Not saying I like it. Anyone who isn’t able to effectively defend themselves at this point will probably be in deep shit, possibly sooner rather than later.
murder has always existed. Mythology tells us the third human on this planet killed the fourth with a rock.
Forever and ever politicians have used any excuse to disarm the electorate. My biggest piece of evidence of this is their drive to ban .50 caliber weapons. Practically no crimes are committed with them, and they cost a zillion dollars so few own them anyways. But because they “could” cause problems they want to ban them.
Interesting that the people in power who want to ban or severely limit ownership of guns are usually protected by people with guns. How are their lives any more important than ours?
