Something Rotten Untied States Gun Control Shooting Tragedy
courtesy thesmartset.com
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“If guns make people powerful, it is certainly true, as King Claudius says, that “madness in great ones must not unwatched go.” But mass shootings are not a mental health issue. Mental illness has been around forever. It’s not going anywhere. Widespread ownership of guns is a relatively new phenomenon. If our plan is to keep our guns and get rid of mental illness, we’re going to fail. But gun control does seem to be a challenge within our grasp. If you take the power of guns out of the equation – if unstable people don’t have access to guns – you take away the possibility of tragedy.” – Jeffrey R. Wilson in Something is Rotten in the United States of America [via thesmartset.com]

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136 COMMENTS

  1. Scanned the article, did not read it. Hard to take anything seriously when it is illustrated by a 5 yr old child.

    • “Hard to take anything seriously when it is illustrated by a 5 yr old child.”

      Did you notice the top of the page ‘drawing’?

      The little bastard ripped off Ralph!

    • I think it’s harder to read when it’s written by somebody with the intellect of a five year old.

      I can’t think of anyone who’s more qualified to write about mental illness and guns than a Harvard professor…who teaches writing…

  2. Funny how the vast majority of these events have happened since the advent of 24 hour cable news channels.

    That’s a couple hundred years more recent than firearm ownership.

    • funny how that exactly corresponds with…hop up your kiddies on Ritalin! our a thousand other drugs too???

      blame cable tv or drugs…

      I’ll take drugs for a thousand! ===daily double!

      • Irresponsible parenting, bad teachers, glorification from corporate news, becoming immortalized via the internet, prescription drugs, mental health system failure, law enforcement dereliction, political disarmament agenda and a change in American culture/society. To name a few… Hence why a childish idea to remove a human/civil right isn’t going to fix the issue, instead it will create many more issues in the daily life of the average person.

        • Glorification is definitely a factor for many of these killings. We know that some of these killers studied other mass killers and were trying to beat the death count, or they idolized other killers (Santa Barbara, Parlkand, etc). They don’t care whether they get fame or infamy, as long as they are known. I try not to use their names and help further their goals, and I wish the media would follow suit. The media voluntarily withholds sexual assault victims’ names, and they should withhold the killers’ names unless the police need help in their investigation. This wouldn’t solve the problem, but it might deter a few of these rare killings.

        • They don’t care whether they get fame or infamy, as long as they are known

          This is precisely correct. while most mass shootings in the stats thrown around are in fact are criminal on criminal, the common thread in the statistically tiny school shootings involves the presence of these factors a) narcissism, b) insignificance c) broken empathy mechanism and d) conflation of infamy with fame.

          #a and #b seem to be contradictions, but that is exactly the point, the contradiction in the mentally ill person’s mind leads to the problem. They are egotistical and narcissist but also insignificant and are desperate to end their insignificance.

          #d is a mechanism abetted by the media coverage. Just look at reality TV, which is a successor to jerry Springer which had been a successor to “candid Camera.” A certain tiny fraction actually thinks being notable for being a moron constitutes celebrity.

          No amount of gun control will affect this since these same actors can either find guns or will use other means.

    • Backup and read some history. Anyone living 70 years ago would dream about our “problems”. We go from the very real possibly of turning the whole planet into a parking lot to a 100000 to 1 chance of being shot by some lunatic.

  3. Widespread ownership of guns is a relatively new phenomenon

    On a geological time scale?

    Admitting violent people act violently is a good start. Kills the fantasy that focusing on “gun-violence” will somehow affect violence overall.

    • Yes, for instance widespread ownership of g uns is a much newer phenomenon than, for instance, global warming. It’s been 11,700 years since the glaciers melted but only a few hundred years since widespread ownership of g uns became a thing. Much newer phenomenon.

    • “Widespread ownership of guns is a relatively new phenomenon”

      What they are doing is deliberately feeding a lie over and over again until it becomes the truth.

      And that lie is, that America has never had a historical gun culture.

      It’s a ‘talking point’, a mantra, that we can expect to hear from them here on out…

      • True.

        A lie becomes common knowledge if you can keep it alive long enough for people to forget it was a lie in the first place. For example, the lie that the United States is a Democracy or the lie that the President is the most powerful man in the world.

        • That particular lie can be traced back to one book, and one author: “Arming America,” by Michael Bellesiles.

          This bit of propaganda, written in 2000, purported to ‘prove’ by analysis of old tax and probate records that guns were very uncommon in America in the early years, and only began to become even slightly ‘common’ in the years after the Civil War.

          Unfortunately for Mr. Bellesiles, although his book was awarded the Bancroft Prize in Literature and was VERY well received by the anti-gun set, other real scholars found out that he had fabricated virtually all of his claimed statistics from documents that didn’t exist and probably never had, that he could not provide any notes to show his statistical methods, that his percentages and statistics were seriously flawed (in some cases 100% wrong), and that his entire book was a fabrication and a fraud.

          Poor Mr. Bellesiles was stripped of his award, terminated by his publisher, and generally shunned by his fellow historians.

          If anyone brings up this book and this author as having proven that America never had a ‘gun culture’ in its past, this is the truth to set you free of them.

          Yes, I have a copy of the book. I wouldn’t recommend it.

      • I’m confused…. the liberal media has been saying for years that gun ownership is down and the vast majority of guns are owned by “super owners”. Now gun ownership is up? I suppose the gun ownership rate is whatever it needs to be for the sake of winning the argument.

        Is the climate “warming”, “cooling”, or “changing”?….. “It is whatever we say it is!! Stop asking questions!!!”

        • We are experiencing “Climate Change”. Sonofab****! It happens every year. It’s called the seasons!
          Here’s a thought….the north pole is thawing and the south pole is increasing in ice mass. This falls under basic physics. Warm air rises (north) and cool air falls (south). There, that solves it. /S

      • I wish they’d get their lies straight. They keep telling us that gun ownership is dropping, and half the guns are owned by 3% who have huge arsenals. So, we have “widespread” ownership at a lesser rate than 30 years ago when these killings weren’t as common (and someone could pay $200 to make a machine gun). If ownership rates were a factor, this would indicate an inverse relationship, and a higher rate would mean fewer spree killers.

    • It’s curious that supposedly liberal people are making a gun control argument based on an appeal to tradition. And, in my opinion appealing to a tradition of a disarmed populace and centralized power, which was the state of most societies for most of time is a horrifically regressive thing to idealize.

      The left’s “power to the people” mantra is complete malarkey, and gun control illuminates that fact perfectly.

      • If the Republicans were more about diversity and giving power to the people, it would be hard for Democrats to remain hardcore supporters without looking like cult members. Majority of Republicans are still pro corporations and fanatically religious. Democrats don’t like the concept of a corporate entity and religion goes against their liberty.

        • Liberals are very much for big business. They want liberal democrat controlled monopolies, under written by the government, to enact social change through corporate pressure. Conservative republicans want capitalist diversity in order to spur inovation and reduce prices. Both ideas involve big business, but for very different reasons…… gun control falls in to the same spectrum of ideas: they want guns but they want to control YOUR guns. They want big business, but they want to control what YOU buy.

        • @CZJay Are you assuming that I am a Republican? I am not. As a matter of fact I am a reformed yellow dog Democrat…who now finds himself politically homeless due to the widening ideological divide and my own political evolution.

          Both political parties have their problems but the Dems don’t have the weight of academia, Hollywood and the legacy media to counter their excesses. And the Democrats don’t give a shit about diversity. At best their desire to “help” marginalized groups is a cynical power play and a mere reflection of their paternalistic racism…the soft bigotry of low expectation. The Progressives of yesteryear were born of technocratic classism and racism and the Dems are not much better

          As for the faults with the GOP…there are third parties you know. Politics is not a binary choice.

        • Brandan, I suspect typos above. The Dems certainly *DO* have academia, the media, and Hollywood elites behind them, I think you meant the GOP. Yes? No?

  4. The best lies contain truth, and so it is with this selection. The author is a teacher of Shakespeare at Harvard, and at the end of his article attempts to twist a line from “Hamlet” to make a point. (Poorly, in my estimation.) So I will close with a quote myself:

    “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
    But in ourselves…”

    and until we acknowledge this most fundamental of truths, we are cursed by “solutions” told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

    • In my days in college, back in the 80’s, I learned that most of the professors of literature, art, ‘diversity’ studies, etc., were idiotic fools. The only ones I could respect were in the “hard” sciences; math, chemistry, biology, etc.
      The one exception was my photography professor. She was open minded, professional, and kind to all, even if they were contrary to the standards of the day, like me. The other “artsy” ones all ‘foretold by my aura’, or shook magic chicken bones, or some other, equally horseshit idea. Anyway, I learned that education does NOT make one intelligent. In fact, I coined a term for these types; “educated beyond their intelligence”. And man, are there a ton of such ones around today. Its almost like the 80’s and 90’s were their perfect breeding grounds, and now they’re everywhere, like flies.

  5. Anybody who calls the Parkland shills “articulate and insightful” needs to be locked up in a mental institution with the rest of the crazies.

      • Go away little luddite… Come back and talk to me when you finish your residency. Then you might be qualified to talk to me about medical issues.

        But I’m sure your GED and subscription to Alex Jones totally qualifies you to debate things with people who have forgotten more than the sum total of your education.

        • Why don’t you cite some more editorials and opinion pieces you FEEL(lefty statists love emotional based material) support your opinions. You obviously don’t understand the difference between evidence based science/research and opinion.

        • “Today, it seems that the public health establishment is obsessed with developing vaccines against every conceivable microorganism, and these government programs are bent to include everyone, every child, every infant in the immunization loop. And yet, at this time, the medical evidence should tilt the balance of the debate towards the government allowing parents and individuals to be armed with reliable vaccine information. So empowered, as individuals and masters of their own destiny, citizens and parents should be allowed to make their own decisions or those of their children with their private physicians…”MIGUEL FARIA, JR., MD But hey, he’s just ONE MD(neurosurgeon) who disagrees with you, there are countless more.

        • “PG is an uneducated prole with no understanding of medicine or basic immunology.” ~Abraham Lincoln, PotUS

          Un-cited quotes aren’t worth much.

        • That’s one way to avoid embarrassment, pretend contrary information and opinions don’t exist.

        • “PG is some weird Alex Jones worshiper… I got a solution.” Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho, PotUS

        • Allow me to introduce you to internet debates 101… “If you don’t link it, it does not exist.”

        • LMFAO, how many times have you said vaccines are safe and the risk of injury is minuscule? You have never, not once, not ever cited or referenced that opinion. You’re a not very bright hypocrite. Love the AJ references too, guess that’s your attempt at ad hominem instead of actually addressing the data and information?

        • But please luddite, link some data from a reputable source and I’ll address that. Until then, you’re provided nothing other than evidence that you are an uneducated moron.

        • Linking a Government website and NOT citing the actual science/research asked for…priceless. You’re a statist dupe, and a pretty dim one at that.

        • Yes… because why would the sources of the #1 medical research group on the planet be credible in respect to actual medicine? Derp. Cite a source or shut the fuck up.

        • Cite a source for what exactly? You’re the one making claims, not me. I’m stating the safety research hasn’t been done, how the F do you cite that? Another refusal to cite your opinions noted. For the 20th time. You’re a joke. When you’re capable of understanding that backing your opinions regarding a science and/or health related matter requires linking actual research, not government agency policy statements(and the government NEVER lies-LMFAO), get back to me. Until then, stick with pretending your’e not a big government-statist cheerleader. You’re only fooling yourself.

        • Yeah… I’m done with you. “muh’ government lies” is not an argument. I gave you a link to literally dozens of research summaries and you ignored them.

          Go hole luddite, you’re drunk.

        • The research summaries which compared vaccinated groups against other vaccinated groups and claimed vaccines were safe because there was no difference between the groups? Yeah, that’s real science, and it has a name-TOBACCO SCIENCE. Lol, I had no doubt you would run from actually trying to cite any real research that backs your ridiculous opinions.

        • @Kenneth, this poster has a long history of making false statements and replying with insults when challenged. He’ll pretend he supports gun rights and the Constitution, and at the same time he’ll parrot big government and pharmaceutical industry talking points.

        • I’ve noticed that tendency. It’s why I seriously doubt he’d be interested in any facts. At least none that stand in contrast to his prejudged opinions.
          In any case, he already knows I won’t argue with him. I’m not interested in he said-she said arguments simply for the sake of conflict. I state the facts and evidence, I post my sources, and I move on. The loonies can fuss and whinge all they like. I’m not interested in that. It’s just a waste of time that I can’t spare. Too many other things to do on my list. I have 60 years worth of projects and only another two or three decades left, at best.

        • Good heavens, you are two peas in a pod (Kenneth and pg2). Go join the Scientologists and have fun worshipping Xenu and trying to use your mental powers to change the world while protesting Evil Psychology. Antidepressants work: https://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm095980.htm. If you disbelieve all pharmacists who say so, government entities that says so, and psychiatrists that say so, who will you listen too? Nutjobs like yourself that believe Big Pharma and the Deep State want to turn frogs gay?

        • @Ken Agree to a point, but when you see someone posting on a gun forum and calling for mandatory vaccines and making blatantly false statements while doing so, not calling them out and exposing them as the liars/dupes they are implies what they are saying might have some validity.

        • “CDC also works with other federal government agencies and other stakeholders to determine the appropriate public health response to vaccine safety concerns and to communicate the benefits and risks of vaccines.”

          https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/iso.html
          A quote from pwrsurge’s link^
          It actually says they have risks. He completely nullified his own point of them being safe by his own link.

        • The CDC buys and distributes approximately 4 Billion in vaccines yearly. Its is estimated the CDC accounts for 1/2 of vaccine sales. If that’s not a conflict of interest, nothing is. Not to mention a senior researcher(Dr. William Thompson) was recorded saying he was the lead statistician on a 2004 CDC vaccine-autism study and his team was ordered to alter and destroy data that showed a clear correlation between the MMR shot and autism. Serge likes to leave out those kinds of details.

        • pg2: Agreed. That is why I make my point, post my source, and then move on. Anyone seriously questioning can do so, and anyone not open to anything they disagree with can go whine. I trust that any ones open enough to check a source, is intelligent enough to know what a whiny baby sounds like. And now I have an excuse to post yet another source:
          https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/pharma-corruption-started-the-opioid-epidemic_us_59d4f8c7e4b0da85e7f5ed58
          There are literally MILLIONS of other stories similar. In everything from medical books and magazines, to online, from all sources, left, right, and center, from laymen, researchers, MDs, PHds, and everybody in between.
          Yet the whiners continue to say: “all reputable sources…” are on their sides. They just leave out the part where they refuse to consider anything other than the TV shows they watch as “reputable”. It’s real easy to get 100 percent agreement. Just discount anything that disagrees with you and Presto, 100 percent agreement! Meanwhile, in reality, we all know that the only thing you can get 535 people to agree on is: Let’s go on vacation, and raise our salaries.

  6. False Flag Friday Alert! ( Sorry for thread “Hijack” ).

    Today is anniversary of Aurora Colorado ( July 20, 2012 ) movie theatre, alleged mass shooting.

    Since the Satanist/illuminati love their anniversaries and numerology, I fully expect the FBI to Try and STAGE a False Flag between today and Sunday, to Try and take advantage of that anniversary in order to Try and get more Gun Control.

    If “Anything” happens today, please call it out and DEMAND HD Video Proof!

    • Peddle your BS somewhere else. I’m a local.
      Strych9 had friends who were victims, and the defense investigator, who is VERY pro-2A, is a friend of mine and lead firearms instructor. There was nutball shooter who killed a bunch of people. He had a large capacity (100 round drum) magazine that jammed and prevented more injury, which is contrary to the media and grabbers’ “high capacity” narrative. BTW, most of the 70 people who were “shot” were hit by shrapnel splashing off the concrete, although the fatalities were direct hits.
      I believe the killer was influenced by video games since he brought a pistol, rifle, and shotgun, and changed guns during the rampage. For the weight of a shotgun with 6 rounds, he could have carried lots of spare mags for the other guns. I feel he was imitating games and wanted to shoot people with all 3. However, video games weren’t the primary factor. He was known to be a dangerous nut, and his psychiatrist didn’t report him. Although he was a nut, I don’t think he was criminally insane since he posted on a dating site “Will you visit me in prison?” This shows he knew right from wrong, and he chose to do wrong.

      • Disagree in part. He is a classic adult onset schizophrenic with hallucinatory ideation. He believed, from the voices in his head, that if he killed a bunch of people the voices would leave him alone. Much like Son of Sam. And his school psychiatrist did report him, but campus police didn’t act on it.
        Finally, he was insane for clinical purposes, but not criminally insane. Criminal insanity under the M’Naughten test requires that the actor be essentially oblivious to right and wrong, Few meet that standard. People who act under an irresistible compulsion are not legally insane, since such people know what they are doing is wrong but cannot stop themselves from doing the act. It is a pretty harsh test. And I am sure that you know that Holmes was found competent to stand trial only after the court-ordered forced treatment with anti-psychotic drugs.

    • Any entity – person, website, or whatever – that feels the need to advertise itself as “smart” might be a candidate for a Dunning-Kruger example.

  7. In 1914, Frank Lloyd Wright’s servant went mad and killed seven people using a hatchet and a can of gasoline. Four others were severely injured. Two of the dead were children. Where there’s a will, there’s ALWAYS a way.

    Lobotomies can be very effective in treating violent persons and were a major treatment in the 40’s and 50’s until liberals had them declared inhumane. Most of the lobots went back to their families to live out a peaceful existence.

    • I wonder how many mass shootings happen in Mexico. Obviously, they won’t report the actual numbers. I am guessing it’s extremely high. Even cops fall victim to mass shootings in Mexico.

      Mexico is right next door to America. They have all the laws that anti civil rights people want yet there are way more mass shootings happening everywhere, not just at a gun free zone because the entire nation is a “gun free zone.” America has millions of actual Mexicans living there now, why isn’t America exactly like Mexico?

    • Well, there is, but people are often reluctant to make use of it.

      (Getting involved in your children’s education, people. Why, what did you think I meant?)

      • “Helicopters, hurr-durr”

        Later that day…

        “Damn, murder isn’t working, and that’s all we’re good at!”

    • How true. What we are now reaping in our society is the fruits of socialists indoctrination of our children at school and with movies. The socialist is an atheist that does not believe that there is no god. A socialists god is the state and only the state , so as long as you do as the socialist program insists then all is correct and there is no wrong. The ends justify the means slogan. The libs. almost admit it is a societal problem but then they offer a cure that essentially states that we have too many rights. take away everyone’s rights then we will be in a safe utopia. ” For the people”. Control the money, food, water ,thought and speech then you have total control, but for who’s benefit. The ones at the top.

      • You must appease the Gods [politicians] with a sacrifice (of a human right). You shall make them an offering [law] they can’t refuse. Then back to the Gods’ church [school system] to worship and be educated about the word of God.

        Amen…

  8. Can’t/wont spend the money on healthcare for Americans, so let’s ban guns. Wish I could understand why taking care of Americans is wrong, but spending 2/3 (roughly) of our budget on the military is good.

    • We don’t; you have your numbers reversed.

      I direct your attention to this website: https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/

      You will find that roughly 1/3 of all of our spending is discretionary; of discretionary spending, roughly half is military. So, around 15% of the total budget is military. A far cry from half.

      On the other hand, non-discretionary spending accounts for around 2/3 of the budget. Of that, around 80% is social security, unemployment, medicare, medicaid, etc.; that’s around 53% So, we’re likely spending more money on healthcare than defense, and definitely spending more on “dependency” and “charity-like” programs than anything else, period.

      As a side note, roughly 2% of the federal budget is listed as “science.” That’s just sad.

      • Don’t confuse us with facts. We want free shit! Free healthcare! Free education!
        (Or rather paid for by other people.)

    • Because we can’t lock up mentally-ill people forever with no due process, so we have to let them walk around.

      What’s your plan for throwing more money at the problem that doesn’t involve imprisoning, heavily sedating, or killing suspected jerks?

      • How about we stop prescribing drugs that have “suicidal” or “homicidal” listed on their label as a side effect? That seems like a good start… and it includes almost all of the so-called anti-depressants.

        • How about you get your facts straight? Suicidal thoughts are a rare side affect of some anti-depressants – but this is by no means the norm. I’ve never seen “homicide” as a side affect. Plus, name a recent shooter who was actually under regular psychiatric treatment (not SHOULD have been, was). The Aurora shooter, but he was by no means treated, and his Psych should have said or done something about his (non medication related) homicidal thoughts. ADHD drugs and antidepressants are over prescribed, but you have no idea what you’re talking about, and blaming drugs that actually help people is not going to help

        • https://www.cchrint.org/psychiatric-drugs/drug_warnings_on_violence/
          Quoting:
          “Psychiatric Drugs—Regulatory Warnings on Violence, Mania, Psychosis, HOMICIDE(emp. mine, ken)

          Fact: Despite 27 international drug regulatory warnings on psychiatric drugs citing effects of mania, hostility, violence and even HOMICIDAL IDEATION(emp. mine. ken), and dozens of high profile shootings/killings tied to psychiatric drug use, there has yet to be a federal investigation on the link between psychiatric drugs and acts of senseless violence.”
          AND:
          “Between 2004 and 2012, there have been 14,773 reports to the U.S. FDA’s MedWatch system on psychiatric drugs causing violent side effects including: 1,531 cases of homicidal ideation/homicide, 3,287 cases of mania & 8,219 cases of aggression. Note: The FDA estimates that less than 1% of all serious events are ever reported to it, so the actual number of side effects occurring are most certainly higher.”
          ETC. ETC… you can read the entire thing if you can click a link.

        • Kenneth, you’re quoting the Scientologist’s front group. Watch Leah Rimini’s documentary on them, read about the group, heck, check out Dianetics. L. Ron Hubbard was a former black magician/devil worshiper, sci-fi author, and FlimFlam man who made up a religion that believes all humanity’s problems are caused by Emperor Xenu killing billions in volcanos on earth with nuclear weapons millions of years ago, brainwashing their souls/thetans, and these beings taking over people today and causing issues. And all of that is both true and verifiable, watch the documentary, read the biography “Bare Faced Messiah”, go to Wikileaks and read the OT documents. You trust a front group of these people to tell you the truth?

        • What about the National Institute of Health? Just what, one wonders, can a Statist complain about, if the source IS the State they worship? What, are you going to claim your G-d isn’t G-d? (yes, I do know why the hyphen is replacing the “o”)
          https://www.nimh.nih.gov/research-priorities/index.shtml
          “the FDA adopted a “black box” label warning indicating that antidepressants may increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in some children and adolescents with MDD. A black-box warning is the most serious type of warning in prescription drug labeling.”

        • I have never claimed they don’t have side effects – but they are RARE. And manageable. And for the vast majority of users they make a huge difference. Why do you insist on demonizing medicines that work for a small number of nut jobs who have been around since well before these drugs existed?

        • And I’m not a statist. Your attempt at slurs to the contrary, I do want the gov’t cut down to size and put into place. But actually thinking some of the less dysfunctional pieces of the gov’t work is not statism, and trying to demonstrate that the issue isn’t solved by demonizing drugs that actually help millions of people isn’t being a government shill or agent of big pharma, it’s trying to remove distraction and get people to focus on their home and communities where they can make a difference.

      • I have personal experience with a human who’s brain was not normal. They require 24/7 monitoring for their and other people’s safety. Drugs would only make the outbursts more severe or will be cruel (in that the human wouldn’t be able to function). If they don’t have care takers 24/7 they must be put in a facility with a staff for their specific needs. The parents won’t be able to monitor their child for the rest of the child’s life for obvious reasons nor could they even afford to stay home 24/7 until death do them part.

        When those parents die their adult child then becomes homeless. Society ends up with a lot of mentally unstable/incompetent “adults” roaming the streets to be harmed or cause harm to others. Those unfortunate humans are more likely to end up dead be it from justified homicide or unjustified homicide.

        • San Francisco and Seattle end up with a lot of mentally unstable/incompetent “adults” roaming the streets to be harmed or cause harm to others. 

          FIFY

      • Involuntary commitment follows due process. People can be held for a couple of days for observation/diagnosis, but a court must be involved for longer stays. They are being ruled as mentally incompetent and unable to make decisions for themselves,or they are ruled a danger to themselves or others. They leave when they are cured, not after a set period of time. This is treatment, not punishment. Some people are never cured, so they never leave. Some people commit crimes before being committed, and they are sentenced to the asylum if it is ruled that they weren’t capable of knowing there were doing wrong.

        • Where in the world do you think that is happening? It was like that in my youth (’50s and ’60s), but SCOTUS rulings shuttered all the mental hospitals involved and turned the inmates out on the street, like 40+ years ago.

    • Republicans say we must have a standing army and socialize it because America should protect its “allies” and police the world.

      There is more to that, but we can’t speak publicly about the details.

  9. Golly it’s not like crazies can’t -ya’ know- RUN people over with a bigazz truck. Crazy and/or violent folk’s have been around forever Cain. If you confiscate their guns they’ll just find another weapon-see:Britain…

  10. Of course several recent mass shootings could have been prevented by policy changes wrt mental illness. Just review the Newport RI police report.

    “[Aaron Alexis] believes that the individual that he got into an argument with has sent 3 people to follow him and keep him awake by talking to him and sending vibrations into his body.”

    These are classic symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. They were observed by police officers and reported to the US Navy before the DC Navy Yard shooting (12 killed, 8 injured). Alexis was a contractor (employee) of the US Navy who held a Navy security clearance and had access to Navy facilities.

    A good first step, since we apparently have decided against incarceration of paranoid schizophrenics, would be education of, at a minimum, teachers, police officers, and first responders, of the classic symptoms of dangerous mental illness and what to do when they are observed. In Alexis’s case, there could have been an intervention and an offer of health care (he was gainfully employed and also had access to the VA).

  11. I’ve been taking Intro Psych this summer. As a result, I’ve poked my head into the field and found lots of interesting scandals.

    I’ll put this out there: Psychology is an outright crock. It is a bright and shining lie to call it ‘science’.

    Most psych studies cannot be replicated. The field has huge scandals of scientific fraud, deceit and political “push” studies.

    For examples: The infamous Stanford Prison Experiment? A complete and utter fraud. Invented data. The principle researcher (Zimbardo) didn’t even have an independent variable identified when he started the experiment.

    So what did the American Psychological Association do about a fraudulent study like the Stanford Prison Experiment? They made the researcher (Phillip Zimbardo) who perpetrated this fraud, president of their association (the APA), and then they gave him a lifetime achievement award. Yep, real professional accountability right there.

    Want to see mathematical gullibility writ most large? Go look up the fraud perpetrated on the field by the Dutch psych researcher Diederik Stapel. People bought his invented/doctored datasets for nearly 20 years. Go ahead, google that guy. Start reading. A complete fraud. 10+ PhD students were issued doctorates based on Stapel’s fraudulent data. After it was discovered that Stapel invented datasets out of whole cloth, did the universities pull these PhD’s? Nope. So you’ve got 10+ PhD’s out there whose doctorates were based on invented data – but they’re still PhD’s – because they went through the motions. Never mind that these doctorates were gullible enough to not spot a fraudulent dataset.

    Something not well understood by most people is that most of the “test subjects” in psych experiments are college students, and often psych students. They’re not representative of the population at large. From there, flawed experiment design and incompetent statistics mean that things just go downhill from there.

    It’s time for people to do their homework and discover what a hot mess the field of psychology is. If you want rigor in science, with replication of studies, honest reporting of data, well-constructed experiments with clean results… psychology isn’t the field for you. Want to read some truly disturbing stuff? Go read Freud’s original writings. Freud was a straight-up pervert. But put that aside. Freud would also make sweeping pronouncements that his theories were “irrefutable.” No need for Popperian falsifiability here!

    Don’t let these frauds dictate your rights and abilities to you or anyone.

    • To be fair, it makes sense to do such studies on psych students, since mental illness is consistently over-represented in that demographic to start with; people trying to figure out what makes them tick, I guess (or is it the courses driving them nuts, or that only ‘off’ people can stomach the nonsense while everyone else bails early on?)

    • There is much rotten in the field of psychology, but to declare the entire discipline a crock is just a sweeping generalization refuted by the facts. Sure, psychologists attempt, and often fail, to punch above their weight; to run in the tall weeds with the M.D.s and PhDs in the hard sciences.

      Where the field shines, however, is in predicting and influencing behavior. In areas ranging from consumer choice to revenue maximization to reducing nonadherence to doctor’s orders, psychology wields a wide range of impressive, effective, have-to-see-it-to-believe-it tools.

      Now, pinpointing which whackjob is going to shoot up which “gun-free” zone can be a tad harder. However, many of those who’ve actually committed such crimes were so off the charts crazy and red flag waving to begin with, that it wouldn’t take a psychologist to point them out, anyway.

      • Sure, I can see how it is difficult to predict behavior, especially sociopaths who are going to do mass violence. I’ll grant that. Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.

        I’ll even agree to put aside the Aurora theatre shooter – who could have been put on a watch by a licensed psych professional.

        Let’s instead look at people who kill themselves – in aggregate. How is it, in this “modern age of medical science” and modern medications, treatments, therapies, etc – the suicide rate is hitting multi-decade highs?

        https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/health/us-suicide-rate-surges-to-a-30-year-high.html

        That’s a rather sad indictment of the field right there.

        Then let’s talk about the opioid addiction issue. Most of that is mental health related as well.

        Or, want to talk about behavioral psych? OK, let’s do that. Let’s look at the lunacy on the political left in the US just now. There are some truly unhinged people on the left now. How is it that these people have become more fragile, not less, in the face of so much available therapy and easily dispensed medications? Are they going to accomplish what they want? No. Any behavioral therapist could take them aside (individually or as groups) and say “See, when you do this, you’re actually working against what you claim you want to achieve… so let’s try to change your behavior..” We don’t see any of that.

        But we do see psych ‘professionals’ wanting to diagnose Trump from a distance, and even make estimation of his IQ score, sans testing, rather than advising some people who are clearly outside the norms of cultural and societal accepted norms of behavior for adults.

        The field can be attacked from so many angles. I chose only the research/theory side above.

        • From a research perspective, I agree. I was a psych major in college many decades ago, at a university that specialized in experimental psychology. The field then–and to this day-suffers from an inability to even agree on the basic terminology that describes their work. There is no consistent and verifiable theoretical basis that can be agreed upon and tested. As such, the field is generally a failure. I gave up on it entirely and went to law school.
          On the other hand, various individual conditions of mental illness or disease can be described reasonably objectively and effectively treated. Drugs can be tested as to efficacy and side effects, etc.
          So what we end up with a bunch of treatments that may or many not be effective and massive disagreement as to what “causes” behavior. The science isn’t there, even when combined with the hard science of the study of the brain, brain chemistry, brain structure, interconnections between neurons and neuronal activities, and by a host of different testing protocols. Put simply, we don’t know or understand how the brain works, and for as much as we have learned, we have a long way to go before truly effective treatments with acceptable side effects are developed.

    • The same conclusion I came to after just one psyc class, taken as a general requirement in 1985. The entire field is a fraud, full of lunatics, liars, and thieves. Honored and cherished by the system that created them, to be sure, but still nutty as fruitcakes.

    • Hopefully he ends up with it etched/tattooed on his forehead.

      EDIT: More like Rumplestiltskin than a vampire, I think. Drive off the beast by uttering its true name.

  12. “if unstable people don’t have access to guns – you take away the possibility of tragedy.”

    Interesting theory…

  13. So, because the one thing only does some good, we have to do the other thing that does less than no good?

  14. A lot wrong here, nearly all mental illness is subjective, and is based 100% on opinion. There are very few, if any, mental illnesses that can be verified or ruled out with lab testing and/or imaging. Making blanket comments on mental illness is disingenuous. School shootings are very new despite firearms, even high capacity rifles, being readily accessible to the public. What’s changed?

    • Widespread use of prescription drugs that have “suicidal” and/or “homicidal” listed as side effects? That’s new.

      • Once again, name a drug with “homocidal” as a side affect. When you treat a group of people that includes suicidal depressives with a drug, some of them may get more suicidal, but “homocidal” is not a side affect I’ve ever seen listed on a drug.

        • http://www.wellbutrinxl.com/

          “Call your healthcare provider right away if symptoms such as anxiety, irritability, impulsivity, trouble sleeping, aggressive behavior or suicidal thoughts are new, worse or worry you”

          Irritability, impulsivity and aggressive behavior.

          https://www.chantix.com/#important-safety-information

          Some people have had new or worse mental health problems, such as changes in behavior or thinking, aggression, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, or suicidal thoughts or actions while taking or after stopping CHANTIX.

          https://www.zoloft.com/faqs

          “The most common side effects in children and adolescents who take ZOLOFT include abnormal increase in muscle movement or agitation, nose bleeds, urinary incontinence, aggressive reaction, possible slowed growth rate, and weight change. Your child’s height and weight should be monitored during treatment with ZOLOFT.”
          https://www.pfizer.com/files/products/uspi_nardil.pdf
          “The following symptoms, anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, akathisia (psychomotor restlessness), hypomania, and mania, have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for other indications, both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric. Although a causal link between the emergence of such symptoms and either the worsening of depression and/or the emergence of suicidal impulses has not been established, there is concern that such symptoms may represent precursors to emerging suicidality”

          All descriptions from manufacturer websites.
          =======
          Now, that’s not to say that the drugs don’t help a lot of people, or that the side effects are common even for the worst offender (Chantix, by far), but it’s worth keeping in mind when discussing factors that may contribute to someone deciding to do something unspeakably evil.

        • If a young male starts to think about killing himself, he is also likely to start thinking of killing others. It would not be a surprise if he had thoughts about killing his parents, the people who put him on drugs and the people that caused his mental issues.

          There is no way a drug company would allow “homicidal” to put on the label or mentioned in marketing. That would make the public quick to call for bans on those drugs and putting those people who need them in a facility.

        • And you won’t see one.

          Can you imagine a drug company try to get FDA labeling of such a drug? Can you imagine the furor that would erupt?

          How is a company going to test for such side effects? How are they going to quantify these side effects to put in the filing for approval?

          Then put yourself in the shoes of a MD prescribing a drug with such listed side effects. Is any MD going to open himself up to the kind of liability that would come with prescribing a drug with a listed side effect of “potential for homicidal ideation” or worse? Not any MD’s that I know.

          You’re engaging in post hoc reasoning here. “Because there are no listed drugs with such side effects, no drugs have such side effects” – even when no company would list such a drug and no MD would prescribe such a drug, which are the reasons why no such drug label exists.

          eg, There are plenty of people who do violence to other people when they’re drunk. Anyone who tries to claim that ethyl alcohol doesn’t have a side effect of making some people violent and even homicidal would be laughed out of a bar, never mind a lecture hall. Lots of people also commit suicide while drunk, too. There is no label on alcohol whatsoever – yet we all know that there are some incredibly violent drunks out there, and drunks who have killed. Here’s one such case from within the past week, on the other side of the world:

          https://sg.style.yahoo.com/chinese-actress-stabbed-death-minor-042500258.html

          Completely random run-in with a drunk. Other English sources out of China claim the knife was a Swiss Army knife – hardly the first choice for mortal combat.

        • No, I have zero financial benefit from any of this. And every drug does have side effects. But many studies have shown very, very low levels of risk. To start blaming mass shootings on people getting treatment gets all of this bassackwards. The drugs and psychotherapy can certainly help:
          http://www.apa.org/topics/depression/index.aspx
          https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-blogs/apa-blog/2016/03/the-truth-about-antidepressants
          https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/directors/thomas-insel/blog/2011/antidepressants-a-complicated-picture.shtml

          I could go on, but you’re going to rely on hearsay rather than tests, and won’t trust the mental health establishment. Sure, there are quacks, but you can find that anywhere. To suggest euthanasia for people with any mental illness, to blame mental illness on medicines proven to treat them, and to rant and rave about “Big Pharma” and Psychiatry shows a massive anti-science bent. There are lots of reasons behind the rash of current mass shootings – blaming medicine, psychiatry, guns, or any other simple solution makes you and/or others feel good, and shifts all blame off of yourself. How are you making stronger communities, better adjusted kids, kids who know and respect firearms, stronger social networks, helping those you know get real treatment for mental illness, making sure problems are reported, etc? These things matter. Blaming medicine, psychiatry, or vaccines is as ill-informed and misguided as blaming guns.

          And suggesting murder? I don’t have the words for that. Beyond simply stating that people have done that before, and it didn’t stop there. Respect for every life is vital, and while that may call for the execution of the guilty, anything beyond that makes your soul as black as the others who don’t about the deaths of innocents.

        • And as another note, SSRI stories is a subset of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness, the executive director of which is Ann Blake-Tracy, who falsely claimed to have a PhD from George Wythe University, and has no such degree. The site recommends, amongst other things, essential oils, reiki, organic Whole Foods, and herbs. So, the typical alternative medicine mumbo jumbo. Believe it if you want, but color me unimpressed.

        • Ingenero,
          So what you are saying is that even though their appears to be a correlation in these cases of these drugs causing homicidal tendencies as well as the suicidal tendencies you are will to discount the stories that have been in the mainstream media because of an issue with someone not having a PhD?
          I find that quite strange since most people understand that the mainstream media is and has been at the call and beckon of the psycho pharmaceutical companies since they’re inception and because they pay an enormous amount to them in advertising costs.

        • I don’t trust known fabulists. And I don’t trust hearsay stories. You can find thousands of hearsay stories to back up any view you want. Reefer Madness! Cannibalistic Bathsalts! D&D Demonworshippers! Reiki! Chiropractors! These nutters are not well-treated mentally ill people, they uniformly either didn’t have treatment or stopped treatment (or weren’t mentally ill but had other issues). Stop blaming drugs, we need stronger communities and families, and that hard work alone can help with this.

  15. This is always the argument that the grabbers use, ‘every country has nut-jobs, but in most countries they can’t get firearms’.

    In most countries:-

    – troubled kids aren’t automatically prescribed drugs at school
    – mental health institutions closed by dems (care in the community) & budgets slashed by repubs
    – nutjobs use other weapons
    – average people have no means of defending themselves from nutjobs who intend harm

    If the term ‘nutjob’ isn’t pc, I don’t apologize because I’m sick of the pervading pc ‘culture’ that we seem to be ‘enjoying’ right now.

  16. “Widespread ownership of guns is a relatively new phenomenon. ”

    Widespread ownership of *weapons* goes as far back as the first tools.

    • Remember this little book that tried to re-write history?

      Michael A. Bellesiles’s “Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture” published in 2000?

      Another book filled with invented stats?

      It was debunked by Clayton Cramer, who did a tremendous amount of research and quantification to put the record straight:

      http://www.claytoncramer.com/unpublished/ArmingAmericaLong.pdf

      Widespread ownership of guns is not a new issue in the US. Far from it.

      • Ah yes, the guy who found wills and other records which had been burned in the San Francisco ’06 earthquake and fire.

  17. Widespread suffrage is also a fairly recent phenomenon as well. Perhaps the article’s arthour would like to see that changed as well?

  18. ” Widespread ownership of guns is a relatively new phenomenon…”

    What a delightfully useless statement. First of all, relative to what? Relative to crazy people? Sure, you’re comparing a technology to the human condition. But more importantly, so what? Smart phones are much more new- does that mean it would be easy to get rid of them if we decided they were bad for humanity?

    “If you take the power of guns out of the equation – if unstable people don’t have access to guns – you take away the POSSIBILITY of tragedy.”

    Emphasis mine. Guy belongs on the short bus.

  19. What the doofus ignores is that his idea of gun control is not within our grasp, either. We have 20,000 gun control laws on the books, and all together they accomplish jack shit.

  20. I hate to say this….. but i fully agree with this statement. If you are a registered democrat, liberal, or socialist, been arrested wearing a mask at an anita riot, work for schumer, fienstien, or bloomberg, then no guns for you cause you have mental health problems. Big ones.

    • That’s the beauty about the “marijuana cards” anyone who obtains one, generally Liberals/Progressives (Democrats/Anarchists), are put on a”No Guns For You” list, kinda makes it difficult to stage that revolution they keep talking about, bottles full of frozen urine/feces/rocks and bike locks are no match for a firearm, even a .22 caliber two-shot derringer

  21. The only solution is to reopen the mental institutions closed by the Liberals/Progressives who demanded they be shuttered and that their charges be released into our communities, we must resume warehousing the deranged within the confines of secure facilities especially those that refuse to take their mood stabilizing medications.

    What pleasure I do take with the mentally disturbed running amok is that they tend to gravitate to and inhabit “urban” areas which are exclusively Liberal/Progressive (Democrat) enclaves eg. Seattle, San Fransissyco, Los Angeles, NYC, Boston, Denver, Boulder, Portland etc. I don’t know about others but I find it extremely satisfying when a Larry Hogue aka “Wildman of 96th Street”-type (NYC) takes up residence within a heavily “Blue” locale and begins terrorizing the inhabitants, it proves there is a GOD.

  22. I wrote a lengthy reply, only to discover they review posts before publishing comments. Sigh…lame.

    Anyway, I’ll post here so my time wasn’t a complete waste, in spite of the fact that I am preaching to the choir.

    “I’m stating a fact: mass shootings will continue in America until enough people die that the pity and fear we feel in response to tragedy transform into activism effective enough to create the cultural momentum needed to elect the politicians needed to pass gun control laws strict enough to significantly reduce the number of guns in the country.”

    If this occurs, you will be exchanging an exceedingly small statistical occurrence (dying in a mass shooting event) for an increased chance of igniting a second civil war, with a logarithmic increase in death.

    Examine recent history for an instant: a terrorist group numbering in the low hundreds blows up a couple of buildings on 9/11, and the United States overreacts, and creates terrorists in the hundreds of thousands if not millions, who have fought tooth and nail to this day, producing casualties that number in the millions. Instead of overreacting to the threat, a scalpel approach may have saved hundreds of thousands of lives; here too a scalpel approach to the problem of gun violence that doesn’t produce a backlash can save countless lives.

    Consider the reality: 40+% of US households own firearms and there are 400 million firearms in the United States, constituting 40+% of all the civilian owned guns in the world. This is a pandora’s box that has already been opened, you cannot put it back in the box without upheaval and tremendous violence.

    I recommend all people concerned about gun violence recognize we live in a relatively safe place compared with many locations worldwide, which have both restrictive gun control and sky high gun violence. For instance, Mexico (one of only 3 countries with a Constitutional right to gun ownership) with 1/3 of our population, has 3 times more gun deaths; this is in spite of the fact that there is only one gun store in the entire country where civilians are allowed to buy firearms.

    Be grateful that the vast majority of gun owners in the United States are exceedingly law abiding citizens. Recognize that the majority of gun homicides are committed by felons who are not legally allowed to own guns at all, and that the guns they use are purchased on the black market, which will remain immune from any legislative fix you might propose.

    Please…open your mind to the reality of what will occur if you truly get what you want – forced confiscation of firearms. It might have worked in Australia, but the US population are not Australian, and our history forces upon us a desire to fight and die to maintain our Constitutionally enshrined right to fight tyrannical overreach; don’t produce the overreach, and those guns will remain in their holsters. If you force their hands, the world will burn, and the low risk of random violence may well become a certainty of death.

    Cooler heads should and must prevail for the safety and security of our great nation.

  23. “Mental illness has been around forever. It’s not going anywhere. Widespread ownership of guns is a relatively new phenomenon.”

    Selective memory and false causation. Guns have been around in the United States since the birth of the republic, ie “forever”. Mass shootings as a phenomenon have only been around since about the 1990s. What the author neglects to realize- either via incompetence or agenda -is something has changed and it isn’t guns. In fact, gun regulation was considerably more liberal than what it is going into the present day.

    In other words, gun ownership and mental illness existed side-by-side for most of the 19th and 20th century, yet did not produce the results we’re seeing today. Something changed, and no leftist anti is going to dig any deeper to find out what other than to pick at the low hanging fruit of gun control, which is in and of itself a dubious solution considering the epidemic of mass knifings other countries see on a regular basis. The UK, a bastion of gun control has such a stabbing problem that it pushes public awareness campaigns. China is notorious for stabbings. In other words, this author is just as lazy and agenda driven as the rest.

    The problem became a problem no more than two decades ago. Lets see some answers on how to fix that instead of shoveling it under the general blanket lf “mental illness”.

  24. A number of years ago, a woman named Patricia Ford drove her Lincoln down the sidewalk of Virginia Street in Reno, killing and injuring a large number of people. She didn’t use a firearm, just a full size car. She was found to have mental health issue. People who want to hurt others, for whatever reason, will find a way. Taking away my guns won’t change that, but the mist anti-gun people already know that. It isn’t about stopping violence, it’s about people control.

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