I heartily support each of these initiatives. But I don’t see why we couldn’t also:
Gun violence is actually decreasing in the US, although you’d never know it from the constant scare stories in the media.
Still too many, of course, but it’s scarcely an epidemic. By all means adjust the laws (if they need adjustment at all) but we don’t need anything draconian.
If you read post #23, I point out that I would be expanding the mental health benefit to persons of all ages, not limited by age, which is what Medicare does for ESRD.
Medicare is mostly for old people, but people of any age can get it if they have certain conditions. I think all mental health treatment should be among those conditions.
The reason we don’t do that is because most Americans do not support your idea.
I was being sarcastic. You know, conservatives will say, “let’s ban Muslims 'til we figure out what’s going on.”
Sure, but there’s still finite resources and not enough of them to solve EVERYTHING that needs solving. So we prioritize.
I’m arguing that this isn’t a priority, at least on a national level. It’s just not a big enough deal when compared to the other items that the country has to face to really sweat.
I mean, we’re talking about something that’s the 10th most common style of death at the very most, and even at that, our suicide rate is something that’s not actually outsized relative to the rest of the world. We’re 50th, with a rate of something like 12/100,000. This puts us behind such beloved developed nations as Belgium, France, Iceland, Hungary, Japan, Korea, Finland and the Czech Republic.
Nationwide, homicides don’t even crack the top 15, with "Pneumonitis due to solids and liquids " at #15 being 1.5x the number of homicides. Even among individual states, it only cracks the top 15 in 14 states, with most of those being 15th or 14th, with only Louisiana and Alaska having a higher prevalence with 12th and 13th respectively. (DC has 8th, but it’s not a state).
There are lots of other things we can spend our money on more wisely; this is a knee-jerk reaction to media hype by people who are already predisposed to see this kind of thing as a big problem just by existing. The fact of the matter is that there are literally millions of guns out there in private hands, and a vanishingly tiny percentage are actually used in crimes or suicides. If the number of gun deaths per year isn’t down there with measuring error relative to the number of guns that are out there and the number of rounds of ammunition that are fired each year for recreation and valid law enforcement purposes, I would be greatly surprised.
That said, I’m all for spending that money on better mental health identification and treatment, as well as reform for the laws- I tend to have the feeling that the seriously mentally ill ought to be compelled to take medications and/or be monitored, for their own safety and that of others. I’ve heard too many cases where some crazy person takes their meds, decides they’re not crazy, or worse, decides they enjoy being crazy, and then stops taking them, with predictable results for themselves and their families. It seems patently absurd to expect rational decisions about treatment or medication out of people who are proven to not be thinking rationally (else they wouldn’t be mentally ill!).
Gun deaths caused by mental illness is a tiny fraction of gun deaths, and I think trying to direct attention to mental health care is really just trying to deflect attention being paid to the real problem, which is simply too many guns.
Let’s cure poverty first! Let’s cure mental illness first! These are things that won’t be fixed any time soon, and I think gun activists know this. There is an easier fix to gun violence.
While this is correct, I think it’s a misleading statistic. Roughly 2/3 of gun deaths are suicides. So, while mental illness isn’t a major cause, I DO believe that better mental health care can go a long way to curb gun deaths. Considering that, IIRC, roughly half of those gun suicides are men over 45, I think it’s likely a significant number of those are them losing their jobs in a rough economy, getting out of bad divorces, death of loved ones and parents, etc. IOW, I think these probably aren’t cases of long term depression or suicidal tendencies, but likely sudden extreme situations of desperation and suicide is the quick solution.
The thing is, regardless of what side of the gun issue one comes down on, short of making guns incredibly difficult to get (which, even if you want that, it ain’t happening in the foreseeable future), I think we can make a HUGE dent in those numbers by changing how we treat these sorts of issues, and it starts at the social and cultural level of destigmatizing mental illness, depression, and this whole macho idea that a lot of men are inculcated with against expressions of emotion and seeking help. It’s not enough to just make resources available, we need to, on a personal level, be aware of these sorts of signs and help people we see struggling.
After that, it’s crime, largely related to drugs and poverty so, again, unless guns suddenly vanish, I see it more as treating the symptom rather than the disease. Like others, I think ending the war on drugs and legalizing or at least decriminalizing pot and maybe a few other drugs is a great place to start. And dealing with poverty is a difficult and complicated issue, but I definitely think the money we save on not fighting the drug war could go a long way toward patching the social safety net and providing education and training to people looking for a better life.
Hell, I bet we could probably fund both improved mental health programs and social and educational programs in poverty stricken areas with the money we’d save (and more we’d make with potential tax revenue) by ending the war on drugs.
Good points. Let us start with smoking. Ban it. Now.
*Tobacco use remains the single largest preventable cause of death and disease in the United States. Cigarette smoking kills more than 480,000 Americans each year, with more than 41,000 of these deaths from exposure to secondhand smoke.1 In addition, smoking-related illness in the United States costs more than $300 billion a year, including nearly $170 billion in direct medical care for adults and $156 billion in lost productivity.1, 2
Allow smokeless and vaping for a while as they dont cause deaths do to second hand smoke.
Realistically, guns aren’t getting banned anytime soon. Continuing to beat this drum will be counterproductive. We can realistically legalize drugs (see all the states that have done so), make more mental health treatment available (the VA just doubled the size of their crisis center capacity, for example) and improve opportunity through education (see: every county/state level election ever).
Whether you like guns or not, focusing on the ‘gun’ part of ‘gun violence’ is not as pragmatic as focusing on the ‘violence’ part.
I’m on board. When do we start?
Write your congresscritter. But lets start local. Some cities have already banned smoking in public. CA bans smoking in cars with children. Start small.
Well, earlier I mentioned Germany, which has strict gun laws, and Australia which took most guns off the streets. Neither of those countries has eliminated poverty or mental illness. Gun control seems easier and it’s been shown to work. No country on Earth has eliminated poverty or mental illness.
Not in* this* nation for either.
You’ll get no argument out of me there.
Congrats. You’ve discovered that something politically feasible in one country is not politically feasible in others.
Can we agree that solving crime, violence, mental illness and poverty are even less viable?
Nobody has claimed they will “solve” them, so that’s a non sequitor. But we are saying efforts in those areas are both politically feasible and will bear fruit on the gun violence angle.
None of which are protected by the US Constitution and all of which the vast majority would like to solve. As opposed to banning guns, which has done nothing in the uSA.