smilingjaws, the proportion of mentally ill people who pose a threat to anyone it all is extremely low. There are a number of posters to this very MB who have been diagnosed as schizophrenic. The idea that all the “crazy” people are dangerous, or vice versa, is easily disproveable.
Furthermore, it is not up to you or me or anyone else to force anyone to take medication that they don’t want to take.
Mr. Dennison,
I know the number of mentally ill people who are a threat is low. I’m not stupid. But, there is a real need for supervised care for a certain number of diagnosed mentally ill people who are a threat to society. Every state in this nation has been dumping people out of mental institutions and cutting funding for them in the last decade. People are begging for help and not getting it–there is no safety net for the mentally ill or their families. We need to take mental illness seriously–and admit that some people need institutionalization for more than the 6 weeks funded by health care plans. The vast majority of people with mental illness don’t need to be institutionalized–that goes without saying. But there are some who need to be put in places where they are safe, get treatment and where society can be protected. We need more research on how to identify those who need this type of treatment so we don’t unnecessarily confine people.
The current program where people with mental illness are pretty much thrown on the street or left to family (many of whom are desperate for some sort of help) is failing not only society but the individual.
Guys… 3, 5, or 10 shootings in a year makes for a VERY low risk to the average person - not worth worrying about. If 100 people are killed by mass murderers every year, your risk of being injured or killed by a lightning strike is about 5 times higher.
The mass media feeds on these stories *because they are so rare. In California 7 people were killed in a shooting last year, while 5000 died in auto accidents.
It’s simply not a big problem for society at large, and I’m sick of the media turning it into one so that they can boost ratings.
Well, that’s a spectacular fucking attitude! Why don’t we treat all of society’s problems the same way. Seems to me getting murdered has pretty low per-capita odds, let’s not worry about that either. Hell, why’s it even illegal?
Even with population factored into it, the United States has an awfully large number of these “rare” shootings every year. Granted, the media does make ya wanna hurl with their coverage - anything for ratings.
I have no idea nor any answers as to why these things happen with the frequency they seem to in the U.S., but I’m damn glad I don’t live there.
Z
“Always forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.”
Re: violence in the US.
Reference texts: Asbury’s " Gem of The Praires", “Barbary Coast”, “The French Quarter”, et. al.
As the aboves histories of crime in American cities bear out, America has always had more than it’s share of violence. Gang crime , armed robberies, common domestic murders of husband & wife, serial killers. We have more of them across the board. A free society is a chaotic society, & a free & heavily armed society…well…
Prohibiting firearms has been discussed before, in the 1920’s & 30’s.
I dunno. There doesn’t seem to be one good answer. But the need to improve our mental health system is real enough.
Geneticallly inherited defects caused by illegal drug use & resulting in mental illnesses in the children of drug users? Maybe, but I’m blowing smoke, here.
Other environmental factors? Maybe.
Mental illness is on the rise. Nobody is talking about it. An election is coming up, so if you SD loyalists get a chance, see if you can get a candidate to publically pledge to look into our national mental health crisis.
We have met the enemy, and He is Us.–Walt Kelly
my alma mater was one of the schools where the shootings happened. It’s not random or isolated to me.
You know, the idea that everything bad that happens in a free society is a ‘problem’ that has to be ‘treated’ is exactly what leads to less freedom and ultimately, less security. It used to be perfectly acceptable to say, “Wow, that’s horrible. I really feel for the people that were hurt” without having to propose a government program or radical change to society along the way.
For the record, it’s very sad that people are killed sometimes by psychopaths, and I do feel horribly sorry for the victims and their families. That doesn’t change the fact that these occurances are so infrequent that they just aren’t a significant societal problem, nor are they indicative of any serious faults in society as a whole.
Before we had zillions of cable channels and agressive news reporting this stuff still happened, but you just didn’t hear about it. I remember around 1980 in Saskatchewan a guy killed his whole family (5 people), killed two police officers that responded to the emergency calls his wife sent in, then vanished into the woods. I remember it well because it was the farmhouse down the road from us and we spent a worried night locked up with my Grandfather keeping the guns near. But it barely made the news, and only started getting significant coverage as months went on and kicked off a very large protracted manhunt. Today, it’d be all over the news and everyone would know about it.
Here is one theory (OK not GOOD one but…) There aren’t as many wars now a days. Think about it 30 years ago you felt like killing you went to Vietnam. Before that Korea, WWII, the Spanish Civil War, WWI, and there was always the French Foreign Legion that was taking somebody on.
The real problem is not violence but the level it reaches. When I was a kid the worst you would get was beat up. Someone called you a name you got in a fight and when it was over who ever won knew his place. Who ever lost knew his place. A black eye, bloody nose, maybe a chipped tooth and it was over. Now a days the loser kids runs to KMart buys a gun and suddenly he’s equal to the kid who beat him up.
And the biggest reason is kids and their parents are pushing this “Everyone’s a winner self esteem crap.” People simply don’t know how to deal with losing. Children aren’t being taught OTHER PEOPLE COUNT. No matter how much self esteem you have, OTHER PEOPLE’S feelings matter too.
Without no sense of this you have a lost cause.
zoony, I’m sure you’d much rather live in a nice, stable region like Mexico, or Israel, or Belfast, right? Maybe you’d like to put up with that stuff?
pldennison wrote:
Quite frankly, I would. The idea of that level of violence is apalling, but the redeeming quality of sectarian violence is that it tends to be less random. As a member of a terrorist organization, I would be a little more prepared to be killed than if I were simply praying in church, attending high school or picking up my children from daycare!
If, from the evident facetious use of ‘stable’ you mean to imply that the relative stability of the US is superior to that of the nations you cite, then I’d say you missed the bus on that one, too. While the US may be politically more stable than Northern Ireland or Israel, the obvious lack of mental stability of an alarming number of the citizenry, coupled with an all-but-unfettered access to weaponry hardly add up to form the cornerstone of societal cohesion.
The fact that these shootings occur with tragic frequency is ultimately secondary to the rampant societal ills from which the US suffers. And that is the stuff with which I could not put up.
Z
Actually, those are exactly the kind of people who often die in those kinds of violence. Or do you think those Israeli school buses are full of blue-bereted soldiers?
I hope your next post provides a cite concerning the “obvious lack of mental stability of an alarming number of the citizenry,” with some concrete numbers, or I will have to assume you are simply opining here based on what you see on the news. I didn’t see anyone get shot today on my way to work. Did you? Could you live in Jerusalem and say that?
I bet that pound for pound they actually happen less frequently than earthquakes or floods. You just hear about them more than you used to.
Whether or not I’m opining based on the media coverage afforded the ‘rare’ shootings in the US is irrelevant (although I see pldennison is allowed to ‘bet’ on the ‘pound for pound’ frequency of shootings vs. natural disasters). Certainly Mexico or Northern Ireland or Israel may be less politically stable, but the US is not currently engaged in the types of internal sectarian violence witnessed in those countries.
The fact that Israel and N.Ireland are home to armed militias with real or perceived grievances against other nationalities is miles removed - literally and figuratively - from the violence occurring in the US. Those two dipshits in Colorado were neither bombing for the IRA nor engaged in jihad against the infidels at Columbine High. Ditto the guy in LA shooting up a daycare or the postal employees who’ve licked one too many stamps.
In a society which professes some measure of law and order, these types of random and all-too-frequent tragedies are harder to accept.
If you want some proof as to the mind-set of a certain segment of the American population, wander over to the Gun Control thread in Great Debates and check out the lucent arguments of the supporters of a clause in the constitution born out of the circumstances of a two-hundred year-old war. And these people represent the better-educated segment of society. I shudder to think of the thought processes of some of the less cogitatively competent members of the NRA.
Two things:
Comparing deaths from shootings to deaths occuring via natural disasters is just about the most ridiculous and facile argument I’ve ever heard. That’s like saying the only reason you hear abot the Holocaust is because of the media. After all, the Black Death killed more people - pound for pound.
I am ‘opining’ based upon a combination of media exposure, a seven-year residency in the US where no fewer than 11 of my high school classmates were shot during a three-year span (I know, I know - pound for pound, that’s probably pretty light), and the fact that I’ve never seen anyone killed on the way to work in Canada, which except for permissive access to weaponry is probably the most culturally similar nation to the US in the world.
“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
If the catch-phrase of the NRA is right, then I guess they would agree with me too.
Z
Zoony, you are using anecdotal evidence. I could point out that I have lived in the US a lot longer than you and have not known one person who was injured by a firearm.
But that aside, the stats on death for 1996 in the US are:
Annual Totals Firearms & Murder 17,000
Suicide 32,000
Auto Accidents 42,000
AIDS 42,000
Other Accidents 48,000
Pneumonia/Flu 82,000
Cancer 537,000
Heart Disease 734,000
Abortion 1,529,000
Statistics from National Center for Health Statistics, U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services, published in World Almanac 1996
If you want to save the US from itself, I strongly suggest that you lobby to make fatty food illegal. I would also suggest making unprotected sex a felony.
Smoking should be considered attempted suicide, and suicide…well there are almost twice as many people who want to off themselves as there are people who want to off others.
And for all of those homicidal bastards that have flu vaccine and wont give it out freely, well, I say we hang 'em.
100 people killed in mass shootings out of a population of 250,000,000 is not statistically significant.
There was one shooting in Canada this year. I think there were about 8 in the US. Weighing for population, the rate of school shootings in Canada is .33 HIGHER than it is in the US.
But as I said, with numbers this small, statistics are insignificant.
Better to watch where you are driving than to watch what your neighbor is doing.
Mr.Z,
Well, duh I’m using anecdotal evidence. Can’t form an opinion based on your life, can I?
In all seriousness though, anecdotal evidence is about as useless as statistical evidence. The OP’s question was why are there “so many” shootings, not why are there so many car accidents or why are there so many abortions.
Cancer, abortion, heart disease, car accidents (Christ I’m tired of the comparisons to the evils of motor vehicles) are all problems shared by the entire industrialized world. The gun related violence in the US is not.
Quite honestly, I have neither the interest nor the desire to save the US from itself. Now that I’m told that the gun violence problem is statistically insignifcant, I guess there is no problem.
I’d like to see you explain the statistical insignificance of the dead to their families.
Z
I never said that GUN VIOLENCE was statistically insignificant, I said that mass murders were. This is a difference between tens of thousands of incidents and less than a dozen.
the problem with fixing the school shooting “epidemic” is that the various solutions pose wide ranging changes that sometimes infringe on the rights of people in order to eliminate something very small.
For example, the fall of the Berlin wall may have been a good thing in general, but not if it fell on your foot.
Private gun ownership may be a good thing, but not if you are the one who gets shot. The same for the lack of school uniforms, the internet, violent movies, Doom, etc.
I know a little girl that was blinded because of a reaction with Ibuprofin. That does not mean we should take the drug off the shelves.
The problem is that everyone wants to make the argument “if it saves just one life, it is worth it.” This is an insane basis for making any decision.
After all, If anyone doesn’t like things here, they can go to the parallel but less dangerous universe of Canada 
I think ‘insane’ is a little strong, but granted, the overall good needs to be addressed before the individual.
And again, Ibuprofen was not designed with the intent of causing harm, thus reactions and side-effects are unfortunate. But how do we deal with these problems? We enact legislation to test products and ensure that every effort has been taken to minimize harmful effects for the bulk of the population.
While I know you’ll insist that guns are kept by the law-abiding citizenry for self-defence in strict adherence to the highest standards of nobility and reason, the fact remains that guns have one function: puttin’ holes in whatever you point 'em at.
Leastaways, that’s how it appears from the confines of my parallel universe. However, given the recent election of socialists in my home province, I’m considering my options in crossing the dimensional plane. The only thing worse than random acts of violence are the clueless acts of far left.
::: trying on my shoulder holster :::
Z
But it isn’t irrelevant. Not at all. The news isn’t going to report things that don’t happen, after all. Do you expect to turn on the news and hear them say, “Today, 15 million U.S. schoolchildren attended classes without any of them being shot?” If they did say that, and were able to say it for 360 days out of 365, would you still think there was a big problem?
You sure about the LA guy? He was looking to kill some Jews, IIRC.
More days go by when they don’t occur then when they do. I think you are missing that. How frequent is “all-too-frequent”? Once a year? Twice? Five times? How safe do you want to make it? Crime is on a downturn, you know, and has been for many years.
Which Amendment? The First? Or the Third? Most of the Constitution was born of those circumstances; the framers may have been visionaries, but they weren’t psychic. Are there some loons among the gun crowd? Sure there are. There are some loons in any crowd. That doesn’t mean that anyone who opposes a total ban on guns is a loon. And it doesn’t mean that anyone who supports nothing less than a total ban is reasonable.
No, see, the same folks who think we need a new law every time a shooting takes place are often the same folks who want to make preposterously restrictive building codes after natural disasters.
But, see, I’ve lived in the U.S. all but 3 years of my 30 on Earth, and I don’t know anyone who’s ever been shot. So, I mean, who’s got better evidence? Where did you live? Did your classmates hang out with people who are likely to commit crimes, or in places where crime was likely to be occurring?
Well, so? I never have either. OTOH, someone in my bulding was killed with a baseball bat recently. What does that prove?
While I’m sorry for their loss, appeal to emotions rarely makes for a cogent argument, and usually makes for bad laws.
Zoony, THis is not the place for an argument on guns.
Besides, it is not just the 2nd that folks want to shred. Try free speech and freedom from illegal search and seizure.
My point is that if a few incidents occur the proper response is not to start dismantling our rights. The proper response is to weigh the objective data and figure if it can be stopeed while maintaining the rights of the people.
The Chicken little approach makes for a great story, but a crappy government.
What pisses me off is that when two bank robbers fail to kill anyone with automatic weapons but are able to withstand multiple hits from police, the media clamors for police to get bigger guns based on an isolated incident in which the robbers ended up anyway while hundreds of thousands die of cardiac arrest every year and the police are not even required to get BLS certification from somebody reputable like the ARC or AHA, no a 2 hour class on a Saturday afternoon just dose not cut it. The police are usually able to react faster than any emergency personnel but when I asked my former “DARE” officer what steps her police force was using to get BLS and ALS along with responding officers, she could only respond that she had a rescue breathing face mask in her car and a reasonably good idea as to how to find the landmarks for open-chest massage but no real idea as to the decision tree to go through in a cardiac or respiratory arrest. Getting AEDs into police cars would save more lives than giving the police 10 cm mortars but I suppose it just is not as exciting.
There is no safety for honest men but by believing all possible evil of evil men.
–Edmund Burke