One piece of "this gun violence sprang from the climate of hate, so conservatives should shut up now" drivel sounds pretty much like another, so let's quote former Mayor Paul Helmke of the Brady campaign just to give a nod to a hometown boy trying to make his mark:
We also are deeply concerned about the heated political rhetoric that escalates debates and controversies, and sometimes makes it seem as if violence is an acceptable response to honest disagreements.
I don't know if the shooter is indeed a paranoid schizophrenic, as this psychiatrist says, but it's pretty clear he suffers from some major mental illness, which means searching for a rational explanation for his actions is pretty pointless. There is a needed discussion or two to have, and maybe we can get to them once the political opportunists wind down: 1. How do we act on "warning signals" to try to prevent someone from acting out his violent fantasies without violating the rights of those who might have the signals but not the fantasies? 2. How do we do a better job of keeping guns out of the hands of the unbalanced without violating everyone else's rights?
Comments
Just pointing out the obvious Kev, I know you're proud of your liberal plans and philosophies.
As for solutions, I offered mine on this one, there isn't one except for being prepared. Crazy people do crazy things. Deal with it and be prepared in case somebody crazy comes after you.
How was the 9-year-old suppose to prepare?
"Again I hear money or funding can cure all evil."
If you hear that Larsen, you're not listening.
You pay for mental health care, or you pay for the effects of not treating mental illness. It's a specific problem, and it's an illness, not evil.
Are you so narcissistic and selfish that you don't believe it's your problem and that you shouldn't have to contribute to society dealing with mental illness?
Andrew J asks: do we really need to sell glocks to anyone who walks off the streets, u and me included?
Andrew, that's a terrific example of using emotion for a straw man argument.
In all societies, families and parents protect their young until they are able to protect themselves. Unfortunately that doesn't always happen and all the laws in the country won't protect every 9 year old kid from everything.
You can dissect every single tragedy like this one and make specious arguments and try to place blame.
For instance:
Figure out exactly which bullet killed the 9 yer old, say it was #12 in the sequence of the shooting. Using your logic, if it had been a 10 shot clip, she may have not been shot, therefore, it's the fault of:
A. The engineer that designed the bigger clip.
B. The company that manufactured the clip
C. The distributorship that delivered the clip
D. The truckdriver who works for the distributorship that delivered the clip
E. The clerk that sold the clip
F. The store that stocked the clip
G. The company that agreed to package the clip
I could tie in 100 others that you can lay some blame on too, and unfortunately this is what happens when a society teaches its people that someone else is always to blame for everything that happens.
It's unfortunate but it's inevitable, bad things will happen and short of rounding up 318 million people into a corral with a bubble over it we simply cannot protect everyone from everything.
but you can limit collateral damage. If you make it tougher for someone to fire 30 shots before reloading, as opposed to say 10, odds are better fewer people could get hurt. If that is a tradeoff to your right to carry a bandolier around your chest (a joke, but you get my drift), I suggest we consider it. You can still have your gun and still have your ammo but not as much as you would like to have. It's the same with over the counter meds that now have been moved behind the counter because people were abusing them to get high and the limitations placed on how many you can buy at one time. it's a hassle but i understand if there's a more noble goal, keeping drugs out of the hands of young people for them to abuse.
AJ
Andrew, not a bad argument, but...
Take Phil's example above, while be faced with 4 or 5 bad guys ( a very real example to which he can attest) is it worth losing Phil's life because he was not able to have big enough clip to save his own life?
You could probably research the instances of both, that of people NOT being able to defend themselves, thus losing their lives and the intstances of a 9 year old girl being killed by a mass murderer and find the former happens much more frequently than the latter.
So a 30 clip would have enabled him to kill all five; a 10 clip didn't? And really, is he that good a shot to kill five bad guys while they don't return fire? Sounds like he's better than the early versions of Dirty Harry. Probably needs an assault weapon if he's going to be in a shootout with a half-dozen thugs.
AJ
Andrew,
You keep missing the point. It doesn't matter exactly how many armed bandits there are, how well they are armed, or how good a shot anybody is. All that matters is that if a law abiding citizen ever has to face off against criminals, he will probably fare much better if he has a larger clip.
I think Tim Zank's analogy about the smaller gas tank is almost perfect for understanding the problems with gun restrictions. The only difference is that with guns, the criminals will still be able to get their hands on the resricted items for quite a while after the law-abiding citizen has been shackled.
The question is, why should some nut who improperly used a gun be the cause for restricting my ability to defend myself?
Many are supporting the position we restore funding to mental healthcare or something along those lines. How many illnesses are there in the world? What are the chances of being stricken by one? What ones were curable and which ones are not? Which ones then have a probability of affecting others and to what affect will they have; nuisance, pain, medical treatment, disabling or death?
Can anyone who thinks throwing money at the problem of loonies, present a FMEA
Or maybe we treat people with illnesses not *just* because society as a whole benefits from less illness/danger, but also because that same money (or more) is going to get spent on trials/incarceration if we *don't*.
The only difference is more people suffer in the second case.
Or maybe you don't give a damn about anyone else and only care about your money, up until the problem affects you personally.
Also:
"It
Andrew,
I believe the medication example is a bit off in the comparison. I will never need to purchase several dozen packs of this stuff at one time unless I am planning on making illegal drugs with them. But owning and carrying a large clip in my gun is absolutely no indicator as to whether or not my intentions are illegal.
As to the effectiveness of the med. regulations though, there are benefits which the article cited by Michaelk42 failed to mention. There have been many instances locally in the past couple of years where mobile drug factories were discovered because of the requirements of this law.
Although the Loghner case appears to stem from a different problem, I still think that requiring all sales of handguns to be registered would go a long way towards fixing the problem of too many guns in the wrong hands.
If Loughner or his his parents had sought help for him, and he was turned away, then the lack of funding for mental health issues would be a point to consider here. But that doesn't seem to apply in this case.
A person doesn't necessarily have to be convicted of a felony to have their gun rights revoked. If Loughner's odd behavior had been brought to the attention of the State Police, he probably never would have been allowed to (legally) purchase or carry a firearm.
The system did not fail here. The people who came into close contact with Loughner and did nothing about his problems failed the system.
Let's get real. If you have a clip with 10 bullets, the maximum that would be allowed by law, chances are you will kill fewer people than if the law allows you to buy and carry a 30 clip. Same with alcohol. Odds are better if my blood alcohol is .08 percent of not killing somebody while I'm behind he wheel than .10, as it used to be, which was just fine until irresponsible drivers (see the analogy?) started abusing their constitutional right to be happy (meaning have a few drinks in moderation) and began to drink too much and killed innocent people.
The ease of having a handgun makes the law abiding person feel safe; but I bet if you Googled news stories where the availability of handguns for law abiding people resulted in that person protecting themselves from harm pales in comparison to the Loughners of this world using store-bough guns to kill innocent people.
AJ
Yeah, Phil, catching a few mobile factories... makes up for the entire secondary market creation that didn't exist before.
That's an almost *eye-rollingly stupid* justification.
"If Loughner or his his parents had sought help for him, and he was turned away, then the lack of funding for mental health issues would be a point to consider here. But that doesn
Michael,
I don't know why you want to pesonalize and degrade the blog discussions. That really does little to further anyone's understanding of the issues at hand. So, if you would like to resubmit your last post without calling me stupid or otherwise needlessly personalizing it, I would be glad to respond to the two relevant points you made.
Andrew J,
I just want to add that if I was discussing this issue about fifteen years ago I expect my position would be very close to what yours is today. But having lived in a drug infested neighborhood for so long has dramatically altered my understanding of and position on many issues - including gun rights/control.
First of all there is the personal aspect, which I think Tim explained well in his post above (Jan 13, 12:36/12:46 p.m.). I have hundreds of my own stories in this vein, but I'll just summarize by saying that my experiences in this neighborhood have brought me to the conclusion that not carrying a weapon on my person at all times here is extremely dangerous.
There is also the realization (also gleaned, in part, from living here) that guns are easily available to the criminals today. And any changes to the laws will affect my ability to protect myself immediately, but will take a lot of time to filter down to where they affect the criminal's ability to arm themselves.
For me, the bottom line is that because of the criminal's ease for arming themselves and the government's inability/unwillingness to fully protect me against their agressive acts, my life would likely be endangered if I was not armed. Unless I actually do become engaged in a shootout, I can't know for sure exactly what I would need to survive. But I would certainly rather err on the side of caution and have a few extra bullets left when it's over than to be a few bullets short.
Phil, I said your statement was stupid. I stand by that. I think you realize I didn't say you were, but you don't have a response and are being obtuse.
I do think you fail to get that the only people winning at drug prohibition are the police and the dealers.
Michaelk42, We need to face reality here. The parents did not seek help for their son. Teachers and school officials did not seek help for the student. Friends thought he was a bit nutty, but did not intervene. College professor sought help and the college kicked him out. How many people saw indications, but did not act? What action could they legally take?
Let us take a known process, inspection of valves. In a case of special interest to me. How many people could have identified a defect, but did not? The company prided itself on its inspection and attention to detail. Every inspection/test failed to identify that a flow arrow, more than five inches long, raised a half inch, cast into the side of a valve body that was distinctly different; two - ten inch flanges on one end and one - ten inch flange on the other end. One side is inlet the other is outlet. It was seen by over 21 different people (inspectors, testers) while being constructed. In fact it was taken out of the ship twice and tested by Navy personnel and it was still not discovered even though indications clearly identified a problem. There were hundreds of valves cast and all had the same defect, the flow directional arrow was backwards.
The risk here was huge not only to personnel in terms of injury and most likel death, but a failure of this valve could disable all US Guided Missile Cruisers that
We're not talking about just this one act, William. We're talking about mental health care in general, and multiple degrees of harm and suffering.
You also keep missing the point that money is *going* to be spent on this regardless. The fact that you can't see this seems to be the dumb part of the discussion.
And no one is doing an FMEA because *people are not mechanical devices*.
But look, if you want to go live in the mountains and not participate in society, great. Otherwise, if you want to benefit from society's protections, I'm afraid you're going to have to contribute a bit to that society as well as live in it. That means some of your precious money might have to go to helping other people, or at least preventing some of those people from hurting you.
What is it you propose Michaelk42, marching over 300 million Americans through government mandated mental health evaluations annually?
Michael,
There's little difference between saying somone's comment is stupid and saying the person making the comment is stupid. You called me stupid the first time, you called me obtuse the second time, and you called Larsen sefish and narcissistic. Are you truly unable to comment on the issues without personalizing it?
You say that I have no response to your comment, but without having heard my response you have nothing to base this upon. I'm sorry, but with that kind of attitude there's really no way that I can deam any of your comments worthy of a response.
Andrew says: "The ease of having a handgun makes the law abiding person feel safe; but I bet if you Googled news stories where the availability of handguns for law abiding people resulted in that person protecting themselves from harm pales in comparison to the Loughners of this world using store-bough guns to kill innocent people."
Somewhere around 2 million times a year people use guns to protect themselves. You have the "pales in comparison" example backwards.
Tim,
It seems that carrying guns for self defense certainly serves the older generations well.
http://www.aware.org/arttruelaw/chrongifted.shtml
Phil: At this point, yes, you are being stupid. I'm sorry, but I can't not point out the obvious. And yes, you can point out that someone is saying something stupid without believing they themselves are actually stupid... but then you have to keep on it confirm the suspicion, don't you?
"That
Michael,
It appears that you are unable to deliver a message without attaching a personal attack along with it. That overshadows any relevance that your issue-related points may carry.
If you ever decide to seek help for the mental health issues which you appear to be suffering from, let me know. I will personally write a letter to the Governor requesting that he pay for your medication.
Michaelk42 wrote "You also keep missing the point that money is *going* to be spent on this regardless. The fact that you can
Let's be clear Michaelk42, the link you provided was to your website, which was a copy & paste of a Journal Gazette letter to the editor, which was an opinion piece written by employees of the National Alliance On Mental Health. The letter to the editor implies and your comments above squarely blame Mitch Daniels for the funding reduction at Park Center. You imply Mitch Daniels did this to save money toss mentally ill people out in the street because it's fun.
Let's look at what is really responsible for the funding cut.
" Indiana Family and Social Services Administration spokesman Marcus Barlow said the state received an audit from the federal government to pay back $25 million because Indiana's Medicaid rehabilitation option wasn't structured property."
The state changed the program in July to fit federal guidelines. The cuts affected community mental health centers such as Park Center in different ways, depending on what services were offered and how they were billing.
Barlow said Park Center's budget reduction was part of an overall restructuring of the program to fit federal regulations, not an across-the-board cut to save the state money. Some centers are seeing an increase in funding while others faced decreases, he said.
So, FEDERAL REGULATIONS FOR MEDICAID FUNDING caused it, not The Governor. The State has to do what the Feds mandate, so your beef is with the feds, call Obama.
Sorry, here's the link to the article I quoted above:
http://www.allbusiness.com/medicine-health/diseases-disorders-mental-illness/15260526-1.html
In other words, Mitch and Barlow the FSSA found a way to blame Obama, much like you usually do.
"...Indiana