More mass shootings

[yoink 321]

Hooknswoop

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What's the common factor in all of these types of even other than a body count?

An individual that needs medical attention, but isn’t receiving treatment and ends up going postal with either a pressure cooker, firearm, van, or other instrument?

Derek V

Possibly, although there was no definate indication that the Las Vegas shooter was mentally ill. A bunch of school shooters have been angry, but also have had no diagnosis of mental illness.

But maybe you're right. Maybe every single one of these individuals is suffering from some form of mental incapacity that means that they should not have been able to procure or access firearms.

Can you think of any screening process that would reveal these problems that wouldn't grossly violate not just the constitutional rights of the people, but basic human rights as well?
You would have to screen every single person in the United States - can you imagine what you'd say if I suggested that to you? You'd be screaming about violation of rights before I'd finished typing.

Mental illness is difficult to diagnose, is made up of a bunch of grey areas that aren't commonly agreed, and rely (mostly) on voluntary and self-initiated exams. Medical records aren't reliably linked across states and you've stated yourself that you wouldn't support any database that limited access to firearms in the way a mental health database would have to.

If you honestly think that identifying mental illness is the best way to tackle this problem you're kidding yourself. It will almost always be reactionary because without enforced, compulsory and comprehensive screening of every individual in the country you might well miss the indications BEFORE an event takes place.

I've had a couple of friends who have committed suicide over the years. I'm sure you can think of a couple of people on here... It's very easy in hindsight to say 'it's obvious they were struggling with X, Y or Z' but actually seeing that before a tragedy takes place is incredibly difficult.

I'm sorry - but if someone doesn't have a gun then they can't shoot someone. It's that simple.

[billvon 2,400]

>An individual that needs medical attention, but isn’t receiving treatment and ends up
>going postal with either a pressure cooker, firearm, van, or other instrument?

What needed medical attention did Stephen Paddock not receive?

[BartsDaddy 4]

billvon

>An individual that needs medical attention, but isn’t receiving treatment and ends up
>going postal with either a pressure cooker, firearm, van, or other instrument?

What needed medical attention did Stephen Paddock not receive?

We will never know, he is dead. How many people never show signs of mental illness until after they have killed a person or more, then they claim mental illness to stay out of prison. If he was still alive he might be one of those.

Handguns are only used to fight your way to a good rifle

[Westerly 61]

yoink

***

Quote

What's the common factor in all of these types of even other than a body count?

An individual that needs medical attention, but isn’t receiving treatment and ends up going postal with either a pressure cooker, firearm, van, or other instrument?

Derek V

Possibly, although there was no definate indication that the Las Vegas shooter was mentally ill.

I hope your kidding. In what realm would you not be considered mentally ill if you thought it was acceptable to randomly murder dozens of people you have never met before and know nothing about? If you find that acceptable, you're mentally ill. It's an automatic. Pretty much anyone that goes on a mass killing spree of people they dont know is mentally ill. There is no scenario where something like that could be justified even in the slightest.

[tkhayes 126]

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I hope your kidding. In what realm would you not be considered mentally ill if you thought it was acceptable to randomly murder dozens of people you have never met before and know nothing about? If you find that acceptable, you're mentally ill. It's an automatic. Pretty much anyone that goes on a mass killing spree of people they don't know is mentally ill. There is no scenario where something like that could be justified even in the slightest.

incorrect on many counts. people do stupid things. And for a variety of reasons and sometimes no reason at all. "I don't like Mondays"

To make this assumption is also to assume then that anything someone does to cause the death of another would therefore be a sign of mental illness.

what sort of mental illness does one have when the ONLY thing they ever did that would be considered heinous in their lives was a mass shooting? Were all the death camp executioners and officers in Germany, Poland and Russia also dealing with mental illness?

sounds plausible, i get that, but obviously not if no one ever showed any sign of a mental condition prior to engaging in a mass shooting.

So people snap, and they get frustrated at life, they kill themselves, sometimes they kill others, sometimes they just punch a wall. We can effect the outcomes of these incidents - not by pretending that we are going to magically find anyone suffering from any mental condition and then magically and perfectly treat it in time before they act.... or we can look at the risks to society involved with having hundreds of millions of weapons of war laying around with easy access and perhaps put some limits on them to make that access more difficult.

Reality is that we can do some of the former and a whole bunch of the latter. But we doing neither.

[DJL 232]

Hooknswoop

Quote

What's the common factor in all of these types of even other than a body count?

An individual that needs medical attention, but isn’t receiving treatment and ends up going postal with either a pressure cooker, firearm, van, or other instrument?

Derek V

People with mental health issues account for 20% of mass killings. It's not the common denominator but that's a worthy enough chunk to look at. However, still haven't seen an ACTUAL move from the NRA crowd because it serves its purpose as a a smoke screen to their goal of zero restrictions on firearm sales and possession.

"I encourage all awesome dangerous behavior." - Jeffro Fincher

[DJL 232]

BartsDaddy

***>An individual that needs medical attention, but isn’t receiving treatment and ends up
>going postal with either a pressure cooker, firearm, van, or other instrument?

What needed medical attention did Stephen Paddock not receive?

We will never know, he is dead. How many people never show signs of mental illness until after they have killed a person or more, then they claim mental illness to stay out of prison. If he was still alive he might be one of those.

1% of gun deaths are related to mental illness, approximately 20% of mass shootings involve someone with a mental health issue which can include anything from xanax to ADHD medication, any range psychotropic drugs. many of which are prescribed to people with zero propensity to violence. It's not a one way street from mental instability to mass murder, that is a gigantic farce.

Anyway, the information is out there and mental health is a bullshit smokescreen.

"I encourage all awesome dangerous behavior." - Jeffro Fincher

[jcd11235 0]

BartsDaddy

… then they claim mental illness to stay out of prison.

That's actually pretty uncommon. "Defendants offer an insanity defense in less than 1% of all felony cases, and are successful only about one-quarter of the time." Source

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[jcd11235 0]

Westerly

In what realm would you not be considered mentally ill if you thought it was acceptable to randomly murder dozens of people you have never met before and know nothing about? If you find that acceptable, you're mentally ill. It's an automatic. Pretty much anyone that goes on a mass killing spree of people they dont know is mentally ill. There is no scenario where something like that could be justified even in the slightest.

So if that occurs as part of a military mission (entirely possible, given your description), are the troops who carry out the mission mentally ill?

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[nolhtairt 0]

yoink

I'm sorry - but if someone doesn't have a gun then they can't shoot someone. It's that simple.

I'm sorry - but if someone doesn't have access to a vehicle then they can't mow people down. It's that simple.

[nolhtairt 0]

Westerly

******

Quote

What's the common factor in all of these types of even other than a body count?

An individual that needs medical attention, but isn’t receiving treatment and ends up going postal with either a pressure cooker, firearm, van, or other instrument?

Derek V

Possibly, although there was no definate indication that the Las Vegas shooter was mentally ill.

I hope your kidding. In what realm would you not be considered mentally ill if you thought it was acceptable to randomly murder dozens of people you have never met before and know nothing about? If you find that acceptable, you're mentally ill. It's an automatic. Pretty much anyone that goes on a mass killing spree of people they dont know is mentally ill. There is no scenario where something like that could be justified even in the slightest.

Anybody that's willing to kill a bunch of people and not have any qualms about it is by definition a psychopath. ETA - warfare as conducted under the Geneva Convention excepted.

[yoink 321]

nolhtairt

***
I'm sorry - but if someone doesn't have a gun then they can't shoot someone. It's that simple.

I'm sorry - but if someone doesn't have access to a vehicle then they can't mow people down. It's that simple.

Please explain how civilian weapons are currently a necessary part of western civilization, without which society would collapse.

Your access to guns is a right, but it's not a necessity - no matter how much you want it to be. The world would carry on as usual if all of the civilian guns around somehow magically disappeared overnight.
The same is not true of vehicles. Huge numbers of people would starve and the economy would fail.

While both can be used as implements of a mass killing, the two are not equivalent and this is a false comparison used to dodge tougher thinking.

[yoink 321]

Westerly

I hope your kidding. In what realm would you not be considered mentally ill if you thought it was acceptable to randomly murder dozens of people you have never met before and know nothing about?

Murdering a dozen people might well be the result of a mental illness, but if that's what it takes to get a diagnosis then it doesn't help us very much to be proactive about stopping these events, does it?

That aside, we actually need to be quite careful how mental illness is talked about in relation to this topic - TV pundits throw the term around in a similar way you just did: 'it's obvious that he had mental problems because of what he did', but that's really dangerous. It opens the door to non-specific, non-medical / professional application of what is actually a very specific term that has definable boundaries.

Someone who kills a bunch of people is undeniably crazy at that point in time, but they're not necessarily mentally ill. Stress, for example might well be the cause of someone snapping and shooting up their workplace, but it's not considered a mental illness.

[jcd11235 0]

yoink

Stress, for example might well be the cause of someone snapping and shooting up their workplace, but it's not considered a mental illness.

Probably a topic for a new thread, but perhaps stress should be viewed as a mental illness. It's not a terribly unrealistic view, and it might positively influence society's understanding of mental illness if it included something analogous to the common cold.

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[yoink 321]

jcd11235

***Stress, for example might well be the cause of someone snapping and shooting up their workplace, but it's not considered a mental illness.

Probably a topic for a new thread, but perhaps stress should be viewed as a mental illness. It's not a terribly unrealistic view, and it might positively influence society's understanding of mental illness if it included something analogous to the common cold.

Maybe, although the danger of that is that while it would promote a wider awareness of mental illness it might degrade peoples appreciation of the severity of some of these conditions.
We've all suffered stress at some point but I wouldn't say that it put me in the same 'mentally ill' bracket as someone with bipolar depression, for example. It would be doing their struggle a disservice and I could imagine some uneducated people going 'I've been mentally ill and just decided to get over it. I took a vacation. That's what X should have done'.

[DJL 232]

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I'm sorry - but if someone doesn't have access to a vehicle then they can't mow people down. It's that simple.

And if they do they can't drive it inside a building and kill 17 kids, or conceal it in a bag, or kill people from 300 yards away, or do a host of other things that a firearm is designed to do by it's inherent lethality and ease of use.

But you know what you can't do with a gun? Use it to drive you to work or drive a nail into a board or fillet a fish, or trim your hair. In fact,

and this shouldn't be news to anyone,

the only thing a gun is designed to do is to propel a bullet fast enough to kill whatever it runs into. And nobody give me that BS about target shooting. Let's not play this game where we play intellectual jump rope because you can equate something else's use in killing people, that's dumber than dumb, that has nothing to do with the point of stopping this first thing from killing people.

"I encourage all awesome dangerous behavior." - Jeffro Fincher

[billvon 2,400]

>How many people never show signs of mental illness until after they have killed a person
>or more, then they claim mental illness to stay out of prison.

And how many people never show any signs of mental illness at all, even after they have committed mass murder? There are people who are just plain evil.

[jakee 1,255]

nolhtairt

Anybody that's willing to kill a bunch of people and not have any qualms about it is by definition a psychopath. ETA - warfare as conducted under the Geneva Convention excepted.

How do you come by that strict demarcation?

People who fight a guerilla war or insurgency in defence of their country are psychopaths, but people who fight in uniform, while occupying a foreign country, against people who never attacked their own nation, are normal?

Maybe think about it a little and try again, yeah?

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[billvon 2,400]

>Anybody that's willing to kill a bunch of people and not have any qualms about it is by
>definition a psychopath.

So a cop who shoots a bunch of gang members who are on a rampage is a psychopath? How about a homeowner defending his home against the same? How about a guy who just sees himself as a hero defending his home against the evil government coming to grab his guns?

It's easy to say "anyone who kills a bunch of people is a psychopath" but that's not true. Stephen Paddock was, by all accounts, a relatively normal guy who simply became a mass murderer.

Liza Gold, a forensic psychiatrist at Georgetown hospital: "This is all a red herring. The vast majority of mass shootings are not committed by the diagnosable mentally ill, no matter what politicians try to suggest."

From a study by the US National Institute of Health:

==========================
Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms

Jonathan M. Metzl, MD, PhDcorresponding author and Kenneth T. MacLeish, PhD
Feb 2015

Four assumptions frequently arise in the aftermath of mass shootings in the United States: (1) that mental illness causes gun violence, (2) that psychiatric diagnosis can predict gun crime, (3) that shootings represent the deranged acts of mentally ill loners, and (4) that gun control “won’t prevent” another Newtown (Connecticut school mass shooting). Each of these statements is certainly true in particular instances. Yet, as we show, notions of mental illness that emerge in relation to mass shootings frequently reflect larger cultural stereotypes and anxieties about matters such as race/ethnicity, social class, and politics. These issues become obscured when mass shootings come to stand in for all gun crime, and when “mentally ill” ceases to be a medical designation and becomes a sign of violent threat.

. . . .

According to Appelbaum, less than 3% to 5% of US crimes involve people with mental illness, and the percentages of crimes that involve guns are lower than the national average for persons not diagnosed with mental illness. Databases that track gun homicides, such as the National Center for Health Statistics, similarly show that fewer than 5% of the 120 000 gun-related killings in the United States between 2001 and 2010 were perpetrated by people diagnosed with mental illness.
============================

[gowlerk 1,914]

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Anybody that's willing to kill a bunch of people and not have any qualms about it is by definition a psychopath. ETA - warfare as conducted under the Geneva Convention excepted.

Psychopath is a word that even professionals argue about the definition of. And there are several types of them. Very few people have no qualms about killing. Those who kill in the line of duty are no exception. At least if they kill up close and in person. Mass killers are very rarely psychopaths. But serials killers often are. Psychopaths do not want to be caught and they do not tend to kill themselves to avoid capture.

It is far easier on the mind to kill a large number of people from afar, as in dropping a bomb on them from an airplane then it is to look them in the eye and watch them die. Infantry soldiers suffer from PTSD, bombardiers do not.

Every one of us is capable of killing. Very few of us want to kill.

Always remember the brave children who died defending your right to bear arms. Freedom is not free.

[DJL 232]

gowlerk

Quote

Anybody that's willing to kill a bunch of people and not have any qualms about it is by definition a psychopath. ETA - warfare as conducted under the Geneva Convention excepted.

Psychopath is a word that even professionals argue about the definition of. And there are several types of them. Very few people have no qualms about killing. Those who kill in the line of duty are no exception. At least if they kill up close and in person. Mass killers are very rarely psychopaths. But serials killers often are. Psychopaths do not want to be caught and they do not tend to kill themselves to avoid capture.

It is far easier on the mind to kill a large number of people from afar, as in dropping a bomb on them from an airplane then it is to look them in the eye and watch them die. Infantry soldiers suffer from PTSD, bombardiers do not.

Every one of us is capable of killing. Very few of us want to kill.

I think we all me getting a bit too literal on our responses here. I think we can say that if someone kills a crowd of people in the context of our mass killing conversation then the person is fucked in the head.

"I encourage all awesome dangerous behavior." - Jeffro Fincher

[billvon 2,400]

>I think we can say that if someone kills a crowd of people in the context of our mass killing
>conversation then the person is fucked in the head.

Agreed. Unfortunately, while you can detect many mental illnesses (and treat them) you generally cannot determine who is "fucked in the head."

[DJL 232]

billvon

>I think we can say that if someone kills a crowd of people in the context of our mass killing
>conversation then the person is fucked in the head.

Agreed. Unfortunately, while you can detect many mental illnesses (and treat them) you generally cannot determine who is "fucked in the head."

Yup, it's pretty much an after the fact evaluation.

"I encourage all awesome dangerous behavior." - Jeffro Fincher

[gowlerk 1,914]

Quote

I think we all me getting a bit too literal on our responses here. I think we can say that if someone kills a crowd of people in the context of our mass killing conversation then the person is fucked in the head.

Well, that's true. But it's too broad to do much good. Anyone who voted for Trump is "fucked in the head". But only a few of them are fucked up enough to be mass killers. Quite a few people think skydivers are all fucked in the head, BTW!

Always remember the brave children who died defending your right to bear arms. Freedom is not free.

[jcd11235 0]

yoink

***Probably a topic for a new thread, but perhaps stress should be viewed as a mental illness. It's not a terribly unrealistic view, and it might positively influence society's understanding of mental illness if it included something analogous to the common cold.

…
We've all suffered stress at some point but I wouldn't say that it put me in the same 'mentally ill' bracket as someone with bipolar depression, for example. It would be doing their struggle a disservice and I could imagine some uneducated people going 'I've been mentally ill and just decided to get over it. I took a vacation. That's what X should have done'.

I don't think we disagree as much as we are looking at it from different perspectives.

I'm less worried that considering stress (which should probably be qualified in some way) a mental illness would minimize people's appreciation of a condition like bipolar disorder. I view it the same as understanding that a cold is more easily managed than stomach cancer doesn't make stomach cancer appear less severe.

I also see taking a vacation for the purposes of stress relief as taking proactive measures to relieve stress, not as "just deciding to get over it." I do, however, recognize that some people might miss that distinction, including "some uneducated people".

Personally, I've long considered the probability of a person making it through life without ever being mentally ill is approximately equal to the probability of a person making it through life without ever being physically ill, perhaps excepting those who die during childhood.

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