An opinion on gun control

[HeyBub]

Jamaica?

[harry]

And which is the most culpable?

[harry]

I suppose as a third world country it could be paralleled with the USA. The problems it has are the same as Mexico. Proximity to the USA. But if you want to compare

[krw]

Oh, good grief. You really are illiterate. It means that you cannot draw any conclusions (Duh!). The results may be positive, neutral, or negative but you can't come to any conclusions. However, the outcome

*MIGHT BE* harmful.

AC is perfectly correct. You're wrong (nothing new). QED.

[krw]

Obviously you think the kids murdered are more "culpable". You are one sick puppy, harry.

[krw]

We were on the verge of winning it until Congress intervened. See a link?

[Doug]

Are you that illiterate. Get another dictionary so even you can understand it !!

[krw]

IKWYABWAI is not a rational argument, not that it surprises anyone here.

You *are* an idiot. A stubborn one but an idiot, nonetheless.

[Kurt Ullman]

It ended. Poverty won.

[nestork]

I'm one person who questions the notion that anyone who takes a gun and kills a whole bunch of people, is, by definition, mentally ill.

The guy that shot up the movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado was a PhD student for crying out loud. He certainly had enough gray stuff between his ears, and he knew the difference between right and wrong.

Doing something horrible does not automatically mean that person is crazy. Perfectly level headed people can decide to throw their life away if they feel their life is so screwed up that it's not salvagable. It's a stupid decision, it's desperation, but it's not mental illness.

So, if the NRA wants the US Government to put together a list of mentally ill people, what about everyone who thinks their life has been wasted and that they're a failure. We need to make a list of those people to make sure they never get their hands on a gun, too.

[Robert Green]

An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older - about one in four adults - suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.

If you draw a Venn diagram of gun owners and mental illness sufferers, it's pretty much a given that they will intersect.

Both very smart people and very dumb people get schizophrenia. IQ alone can't protect someone from the changes that schizophrenia and other mental diseases cause. If you've ever had a friend or a loved one descend into this particular hell, you know it spares no one. Not the geniuses, not the beautiful, not those with great promise, not anyone.

Many of the mass shooters in the US succumbed to this disease or are thought to have had it. The diagnosis can't be reliably made after they're killed themselves (although that doesn't stop many "media shrinks" from trying!)

Maybe not "crazy" but maybe not completely sane either. One thing I remember vividly from an article about Golden Gate Bridge "jumpers" was one of the few survivors who said "On the way down I realized that there was nothing so drastically wrong with my life that it couldn't be fixed - except for jumping off the bridge."

Like most things humans do, there's a continuum. Only a very, very small percentage of suicides are mass-murder suicides. Many more are murder-suicides and the bulk are just plain suicides.

What's different about those that end their lives alone and those that seek to take others with them? I don't think we know yet, but I know that finally there's money being allocated for such research. Further down the road we may be faced with what to do when we discover someone has the "mass murder" gene (if there is one). As a nation, we've longed ago decided we can't lock up people (mostly) for what they have not yet done or may never do.

I have to disagree. Most normal people don't kill themselves or others. That behavior only tends to reinforce the idea that they are not "built the same" as other people. Given that such a tiny minority choose mass murder, I believe that indicates its extremely aberrant behavior which is typical of mental illness. The Texas Tower shooter turned out to have a brain tumor. Other shooters like Jared Loughner and the Norway killer are obviously out of their minds. My opinion is that when you kill people you don't know and have no grudge against, you're insane.

A good idea, in the abstract, but I can see a lot of reasons why it might fail in the field. When I was covering the Whitehouse for UP, I got to see the Whitehouse mailroom where all the "nutcase" mail containing threats to the POTUS were sorted out and forwarded to the Secret Service for "disposition." With 30 different people a day announcing their intent to kill the President via mail and now (traceable) email, it's obvious to me that there are more sick people out there than most people imagine. Too many to reliably predict who will snap.

[Doug Miller]

nestork wrote in news: [e-mail]:

High intelligence and mental illness are not mutually exclusive -- just because the guy's smart, doesn't mean he isn't crazy too.

Yes, it does. Sane people don't commit mass murder.

Throwing your *own* life away in suicide *may* be a sane, rational decision (though some may disagree). Taking multiple strangers is NOT sane or rational.

Suicide isn't, no. Mass murder is.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Killing large groups of people then is normal? I have to disagree. Taking your own life may be desperation, but taking a bunch of people with you is some sort of abnormality.

Being very intelligent is not a guarantee of saneness either. If you look back in history, many of the smartest people in the world were out of our accepted definition of "normal" Take a given odd behavior with a poor person and he is crazy but a wealthy person is eccentric. Taking care of mental illness is one of the points brought up with the recent shootings. Problem is, how do you diagnose and know who is going to do such a thing? It is not so simple as looking for people with a blue dot on their nose.

[The Daring Dufas]

When I tutored kids with learning problems, the hyperactive kids were not stupid, in fact they were bored out of their minds and really hungry for knowledge. This was more than 40 years ago before little boys were drugged for behaving like little boys. Imagine a generation of children who's developing minds and bodies are fundamentally altered by the drugs that have been forced on them by foolish educators. What on earth did they think the consequences of pushing these drugs would be? What did they think would happen when the essence and impulsiveness of childhood is suppressed so a developing mind can not be trained to cope with life and to learn self control. I'm going to hazard a guess that the young men and teens who committed the mass murders were drugged as schoolchildren. I wonder if anyone is looking into it and if the mainstream media will even report it because it might shoot down (pun intended) one of the sacred cows of the Leftist who infest the government school educational system? O_o

TDD

[Kurt Ullman]

Nonsense. People commit murder who are perfectly sane. Is someone who kills one person sane but two is insane? Three? What is the cutoff?

Of course it is. People want to be remembered after death and this is certainly one way to do it. Might be the only (rational) way some people can see their way clear. That and avenging old wrongs, is more or less rational.

Not remotely always.

[Kurt Ullman]

But not always mental illness, at least as currently understood. What happens is that most people can't fathom the why in their own context so it MUST be an illness. Could be any number of things such as upbringing, life experiences (many tend have been bullied and are striking back at not only the bullies but those they see as those who failed to protect them... certainly a rational outlook if not response)

[Doug Miller]

Kurt Ullman wrote in news: _OqdnZIx06GgN0TNnZ2dnUVZ [e-mail]:

Yes, but people who commit mass murder are not.

One way to do it, yes. Rational, no.

That's *not* rational.

So in what fashion is the mass murder of strangers "avenging old wrongs"? In what fashion is the mass murder of strangers "rational"?

Ummm, yes. Always.

[Kurt Ullman]

In article , Doug Miller wrote: rfectly sane.

Accroding to YOUR view of life. Hardly something to inflict on entire populations.

Again, according to you. This is very much goal directed behavior, just because it doesn't fit within your psychological context (or mine, for that matter) doesn't automatically make it mental illness.

Again to YOUR mind. The insistence on always calling everything you don't seem to understand mental illness seems to be losing it rationality to me.

What is it irrational.. other than you don't understand it?

See above about rationality.

[Doug Miller]

Kurt Ullman wrote in news:0J- dnWVHX51QLUTNnZ2dnUVZ [e-mail]:

If you think it *is* rational... well, you perhaps should seek help.

[harry]

Very interesting article. It takes thirty counter sniper teams to protect one man (Obama). Not much chance of one armed guard protecting a school then.