Ego wrote:If a person is unable to maintain sanity, a non-depressed, or non-anxious state without external means (medication) then he shouldn't have access to guns. My opinion. An opinion that seems to be getting more popular. This isn't prejudice. It is post-judging. They've already been determined to have mental problems.
I completely agree. This view does seem to be getting more popular, which isn't surprising. Urban populations, which experience and view guns much differently, are growing very fast, while rural populations are staying the same.
Long-term I do think this and other factors could create a situation where we go overboard in firearms regulation. Better to start now with reasonable policies.
So we're saying what, that anyone who undergoes any sort of treatment for a mental/emotional issue must be turned in to the government (presumably by their doctor/healthcare provider) and be forced without due process to surrender some fraction of their constitutional rights? (It's not like there's not enough of a stigma attached to such issues that keep people who need help from getting it, might as well discourage even more people). Or is it that neighbors/friends/acquaintances and coworkers/associates should be the ones reporting people? Heck, if I knew a guy who ate lentils for weeks at a time or went all permaculture, desired to be mostly off the grid, was hoarding wealth without spending money the way an emotionally well-adjusted person would, maybe preferred to live in remote places, had no interest in maintaining productive employment, bought cheap clothes from the army surplus store, made his own soap and was otherwise weird and nonconformist; I might suspect he was mentally/emotionally unstable and apt to go all violent separatist any minute. Best turn him in, right.
IlliniDave wrote:Heck, if I knew a guy who ate lentils for weeks at a time or went all permaculture, desired to be mostly off the grid, was hoarding wealth without spending money the way an emotionally well-adjusted person would, maybe preferred to live in remote places, had no interest in maintaining productive employment, bought cheap clothes from the army surplus store, made his own soap and was otherwise weird and nonconformist; I might suspect he was mentally/emotionally unstable and apt to go all violent separatist any minute. Best turn him in, right.
Amusing, but it wouldn't be up to the person turning the other in to decide, it would be up to a psychiatrist/psychologist. In the case you highlight, it might even stop before the experts. The police would have no real evidence to force this person to even go for an evaluation. This is unlike Ego's previous example where there were plenty of witnesses of the tenant's abnormal behavior. So, of course, you would have to have rules and standards. And, of course, there would be mistakes both ways. There are always outliers when dealing with a population this large.
It's not really a ban, but rather tight control. And, it weeds out the yahoos as Ego put it. The referee process and police interview process (in your living room) would stop the crazies dead in their tracks.
I wouldn't want to go through it myself but it would put a lot of the mass shooting crimes to rest. Good points here though that these crimes are horrific but a small percentage of America's gun violence. Thanks to the media and politics.
I think anything can be stopped. Look at Japan. A close friend was a competitive shooter there. She loves visiting me here (in the us) and shooting my air rifles in the basement. She has a lot of trouble staying competitive when she has to go to the police station, pick up her air rifle, take it to the range, then check it back in when she's done. I would not like my access to my arms limited in this way.
Gun confiscations also work. I have a family friend in Germany that maintained an illegal hoard into the 80s. He started hoarding after WW2 and it just got riskier and riskier. I don't care what people say about not being able to collect up all the guns, collecting a lot of them and reducing the incidence of discharge is possible with draconian moves. Again, not something I'd like to happen to my personal collection or in my home country.
Aww man this reminds me of a good story. I take care of my aging mom and visit her in our family home. One night while I'm sleeping over I get a faint knock on the door. A guy shows up and says I saw the light on and I decided to knock. "I'd been walking by for years and didn't have the courage to knock."
"Um who are you?" I say. He's my dad's friend from 30 odd years ago he says. He explains he knew me when I was a little boy. I invite him in for a chat and tea. He tells me how he was an engineer like me. How he lost his job. He got hospitalized for mental issues. How he lost his guns.
Then I start remembering he was an NRA instructor. And I start getting flashbacks of going hunting with him as a kid. He was one my dad's "cool" friends.
Now he's an obviously mentally ill dude knocking on our door in the middle of the night. It was obvious he had serious issues. He seemed to be medicated on some kind of blocker.
He started dry sobbing about how they crushed his 1911 collection. I was starting to get worried but then he finally left.
No real opinion here but there's a confiscation story about a guy who got ill and lost his guns.
@ inllinidave, just my point. Look at the "criminal history and mental issues" that slipped through the cracks in the NYT article.
One guy was charged, not convicted with a misdemeanor drug charge.
One guy's father was under a domestic violence protection order. In Washington state, that would stop him from getting a concealed pistol permit. Not preclude firearms ownership.
One did 4 months in Iraq, and suffered from military medicine... And couldn't sleep.
One was a reservist (warning sign!) With an honorable discharge, and suffered from military medicine. Stopped from buying an assault rifle, I'm guessing by the price, used a shotgun.
Lanza was untreated for anything with no criminal history, another clear warning sign!
Another got drunk, kicked some holes in sheetrock, listened to music, then 18 years later, bought a gun.
Holmes was a grad student, and seeing a psychiatrist, honestly, why was he free to roam the streets?
The next guy had no mental or criminal history.
"Mr. Wong had been arrested, cited or had some minor contact with the police at least five times since 1990, but details about the cases remain unclear." That sounds so much more ominous than "had been pulled over 5 times in 19 years."
Oh, and then there is the other 6, of the arbitrary 14, that showed no history worthy of hysterics.
Seriously, if the net is tight enough to catch these guys, who among us would pass? I haven't been pulled over in over 10 years, never charged with anything, no mental history, but I was labeled as "socially retarded" by a middle school guidance counselor I never met, at a school I attended for 4 months. Maybe I should be forced to disarm...
After having been depressed myself: it's not the guys on pills that I'm worried about. At all. It's the undiagnosed, and the guys who don't take the pills they've been prescribed. Manic-depressives are notorious for this. They get on an upswing and think "I'm all better now... I don't need my meds anymore." And they just stop taking them. I'm also concerned about college students in their first year away from home, whose parents made sure they took their meds for depression/anxiety/ADHD as prescribed when they lived at home. But they're either too immature or too distracted to do it themselves once they're away at school. How can we better identify those who do need mental health treatment but aren't receiving it?
I think we could get around the issue of flagging the mentally ill by having a second checkpoint in the process. What if a doctor were to notify some sort of oversight committee when someone begins certain types of mental health treatment? That person would not be allowed to own/use guns. But then a second notification would be sent by a doctor in order to remove the oversight once the person had been symptom-free for a while and was therefore free to own/use weapons again?
It looks like the shooters all have at least 3 of the following symptoms in common:
* males
* between ages 12 and 52 (puberty and meno/andro pause)
* who have a mental illness
* who have been marginalized in some way
Any other major risk factors I missed? And how could society focus on prevention in these people without them feeling marginalized even more?
Speaking of violence prevention, I read this BBC article last night: Building the Pentagon's 'Like me' Weapon (The US military's foray into neurobiological research, and some possible applications.)
I still say the only practical solution is the opt out clause for advertisers. That won't stop the next spree killer. But, I imagine a Facebook campaign along the lines of:
My daughter (pic of daughter) was killed by XYZ, because he wanted to be famous. CNN featured him and his actions for 217 hours if airtime. Corporation ABC payed 17 million to sponsor that time.
That would echo in the board rooms across the world. And the spree kill after that would get a lot less airtime. No censorship, just allow corporations the option of opting out of sponsoring coverage.
Stop making these losers famous, and they can go back to sulking in mom's basement.
Trying to screen these guys out is a red herring. We don't have the medical knowledge to do it, even if we could, we have huge barriers in the legal system.
Remove the incentive, and let this problem die on the vine.
GandK wrote:
It looks like the shooters all have at least 3 of the following symptoms in common:
* males
* between ages 12 and 52 (puberty and meno/andro pause)
* who have a mental illness
* who have been marginalized in some way
Any other major risk factors I missed? And how could society focus on prevention in these people without them feeling marginalized even more?
Yes, I don't think its mental illness as commonly defined is necessarily the issue, because it includes a lot of relatively harmless depressed people. You are more looking for the zero-empathy types who have difficulty relating to other people as people and not objects. This includes autistic/Asperger types like the Sandy Hook shooter and the latest one in addition to the classic psychotics (people who hallucinate) like the Aurora one.
People whose mental states prevent them from interacting well enough with society to support themselves is kind of my common-sense guideline, although I realize its not implementable on a practical or legal scale.
But a public relations campaign along the lines of anti-smoking efforts, prevent forest fires or "see something, say something" might actually prevent a few of these.
"But a public relations campaign along the lines of anti-smoking efforts, prevent forest fires or "see something, say something" might actually prevent a few of these."
Or, a lifetime of extroverts pigeonholing every introvert as a potential spree killer increases the incidents. If you are going to be painted by that brush, regardless, you might as well get the fame...
Again, fame is the reward. In depth speculative articles are not written in the NYT about the driver who causes the car accident with the same body count. Hell, you can't get this much research in a NYT article about a government policy they endorsed. They do it because we will read it, and if we read it, they can sell the advertising. Because we read it, the next loser is inspired to go out in flaming glory.
Dragline wrote:
Yes, I don't think its mental illness as commonly defined is necessarily the issue, because it includes a lot of relatively harmless depressed people. You are more looking for the zero-empathy types who have difficulty relating to other people as people and not objects. This includes autistic/Asperger types like the Sandy Hook shooter and the latest one in addition to the classic psychotics (people who hallucinate) like the Aurora one.
People whose mental states prevent them from interacting well enough with society to support themselves is kind of my common-sense guideline, although I realize its not implementable on a practical or legal scale.
A few months ago you posted a video in another thread about psychopaths. In it they described how many of the credit-default-swap traders who played a part in crashing the market for their own personal gain were popping anti-depressants which deadened their natural empathic response.
John McAfee is..... what he is , but he made an interesting point in the article Jenny posted.
A little research will uncover the little known fact that mass murders, prior to 1980, were virtually unknown.
This fact disturbed me, since guns have been prominently owned in this society since the founding of our country, and there was no sweeping legislation in 1980, or after, that radically changed gun ownership laws or rates of gun ownership.
In the 1980s we saw the first wide scale use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (antidepressants), such as Prozac, Paxil and others. Hundreds of studies have shown that these antidepressants have side effects that include violent thoughts.
Violent thoughts AND a the removal of empathy, all in one pill.
Perhaps it is just me, and my lack of empathy, but I don't see that as the problem.
I can empathize with a alienated young man deciding after a trivial snub, that things will always be as bad as they are now, fcuk this I'm out. Deciding that suicide was probably the best option. And planning how to do it. I was there twice as a kid.
Fortunately, the next day, the sun comes up, good things can also happen, and my schedule was over a week away.
But in that dark time, was frustration, rage, and spite. While it didn't occur to me to take anyone with me, I did want to go out with a giant fcuk you to the world. I can understand the thought process that would lead to spree killing the people I could blame for my pain and shame.
The human mind can rationalize anything.
That is why I say take the fame out of the equation. This is attention seeking behavior
In never been on antidepressants, and I've noticed a pattern of concern on this forum for those who lack empathy, or are armchair diagnosed as psychopaths.
If psychopaths are 2%, auties 1%, asbies another 2%, you are talking 1 out of 20 people in one of these pet categories messing up the world for everyone else.
I don't buy it. There is a spectrum of empathy, like there is with any other trait. Even if all mankind's problems came from one end, that end is too broad to be used as a filter. For this reason, if no other, I lose interest.
If this problem were cougar attacks, some are screaming about outlawing claws, and you have narrowed it down to most cougar attacks are done by 4 legged animals with claws. A useful distinction, but still not near an effective filter.
I came across this article about American gun culture differences by a guy named Colin Woodard. In 2013, he wrote a book called American Nations where he argues that the US has 11 different cultural regions:
He says each of these regions has a different culture regarding guns (regarding lots of things), which is based on that region's past, including its role in the nation's history, the home country of its settlers (if any), and the outcome of any past interactions those people have had with the government.
After reading the article, I think this could be the explanation for a lot of the disconnect I talked about in the OP. Depending upon which America you live in, the prevailing attitude about guns, how to handle them, and whether the government can be trusted at all is completely different. This could actually be a factor in a lot of the cultural things we discuss around here (like @thrifty++'s recent thread about Capital focus).
I'm officially fascinated. This book is now at the top of my NF reading list, although I likely won't begin it until December.
That looks like an interesting book. Somewhat off-topic, but it made me think of the regional divisions in this old (1940)cookbook which was one of the 3 or 4 I used to teach myself how to cook when I was a child. Check out the Table of Contents. Apparently, all the different realms of Dutch cookery have combined with the realm of New England cookery to form Yankeedom in Woodard's book. Makes sense since styles of cooking and culture usually go together.
I think the areas of the Left Coast like where I live have more in common with The Far West (which I call "back east") or even with Greater Appalachia then they do with what most of us think as the Left Coast.
ffj wrote:Here is a guy I listen to occasionally. I don't agree with everything he puts out, and he has A LOT of content, but I think he showcases fairly well in this video why the issue of guns is a minefield. And potentially why certain data is ignored in favor of softer targets.
I found that incredibly uncomfortable to watch. I wonder what sort of suggestions he's planning to put forth as a follow-up.
I'm pretty sure I've seen something of his before (Stefan Molyneux). His name is familiar to me, but I can't place it. I scrolled through his video list, trying to figure out where I'd seen him before, and... wow. He has a lot of strong opinions on a wide range of topics. That immediately makes me wary. I think most people have strong opinions on a handful of topics, but when people are all fired up about everything, they strike me as unbalanced. I watched a few more videos, and my initial impression is that this guy is trying to develop a following. And maybe not just for his YouTube videos.
If late male virginity and social reclusion were seen as a positive thing by society (like some cool cast of wise hermit monks), there wouldn't be any shootings.
Gun control is completly off-topic.
, but he made an interesting point in the article Jenny posted.
