Mental Illness is not to blame for gun violence

LV426 said:
You're the one arming them.

So if you can't arm them anymore, then they won't have guns, will they?
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^Mental case thinks I'm the problem now. :rofl2:
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LV426 said:
So thanks for showing these images because they continue to service my argument that mental health screenings and evaluations would significantly reduce guyn deaths.

Most certainly around suicides!

About 17,000 people attempt suicide by gun each year, and 15,000 of those people (85%) are successful.

Now, we know that far more people attempt suicide by drug overdose than suicide by gun, and even despite that uneven comparison, only 3% of people who attempt suicide by drug overdose are successful.

So if you took guns away from those 17,000 people who tried to kill themselves, leaving them with all the other options, chances are most of those people will try to kill themselves with drugs.

So...since only 3% of drug overdose attempts are successful, we merely apply that 3% to the 17,000 who would have killed themselves with guns, and come to find out that only 750 people would have died instead of 15,000.

But we would never have been able to make that figure go down by 95% without mandatory pre-screenings.
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T. A. Gardner said:
They are if required at unreasonable intervals and cost.
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ALRIGHT! NOW WE ARE GETTING SOMEWHERE!

What would be an "unreasonable interval"?

Annually? Semi-annually?

I would say...once a year is reasonable. Just like getting your car inspected, or if you live in a state with it, your medical marijuana license renewed. When I lived in CA years ago, before legal pot, I had a Medical Marijuana card that I had to renew every year, and the terms by which I had to renew it was to go to the doctor and get a screening. That was just a copay.

For this, I think the service should be completely free, or perhaps funded by the application and background check fees, which you already pay.

In fact, maybe it's a function of Medicare for All? Maybe M4A provides the free pre-screenings.


They are if they are subjective in nature.
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Well, of course it's going to be the doctor's determination, so why is that a bad thing? Don't you want a medical opinion on your mental health?

More importantly, it also forces accountability where there currently isn't any. So if a doctor approves someone and that someone turns out to have been mentally ill and went on a rampage, then the doctor who issued the pre-screening faces accountability, so they must also be careful and professional in what they do.


They are if the person(s) doing the screening have vested interests in the outcome
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What vested interest would a psychiatrist have in denying or approving your pre-screening? They get paid either way.
 
LV426 said:
OK, I totally hear you.

However, if the problem isn't guns, but rather people, then what sense does it make to give the problem access to guns?

If this is a mental health issue, then we would need to pre-screen every single gun owner with a mental health evaluation, and those evaluations would have to happen at least once per year. Those evaluations are going to inevitably result in some of those gun owners losing their weapons. So the blame for that would fall squarely on those who think gun violence, like what happened in Atlanta this week, is a symptom of mental illness.

Comparing guns to cars isn't a good comparison to make because of a few things:

1. Cars are heavily regulated in this country, you need to pass a test to use one, you need to be licensed, you need to be insured, you need to have your car inspected every year, and your car must adhere to at least 90 different federal safety regulations. You also lose your ability to drive a car if you fail an eye test, break the law, fail to renew your license, let your insurance lapse, or get multiple tickets/citations.

2. Deaths from automobiles used to be twice what they are today. In 1980, before a slew of seat belt laws, safety regulations, and speed limits, there were approximately 80K deaths on the roads every year. Fast forward 40 years from 1980, with all those safety regulations and more, and the number of deaths on our roads was literally cut in half, even as the number of cars on the roads doubled. And today, about as many people die on the roads as die from guns. But back in 1980, the same people who say gun control is an infringement of rights today, also said speed limits and seat belt laws were an infringement of rights that wouldn't protect anyone. They were wrong, of course.

3. My goal would be to have a completely gun-free society, but I know that's unrealistic...however, what we can do is stop production of firearms for civilian use now, that way no more guns are put into circulation.

4. About 200,000 guns are stolen from the homes and cars of "responsible gun owners" every single year, and about 10% of the time, the "responsible gun owner" doesn't even tell the cops the gun was stolen. Guns are one of the top items stolen from people's homes and cars by burglars; they LOOK for guns when they're breaking into your house and car. So that means 20,000 guns every year just...VANISH. After ten years, that's 200,000 guns that no one knows whose hands they're in. To me, that is the scariest and most troubling statistic about guns because it means there are 200,000 people who went out of their way to get an illegally-acquired weapon whose likely purpose is to commit a crime and/or an act of violence. If a thief steals a car, they're not stealing the car to commit a murder or a crime, they're stealing the car to sell it, most likely. When someone steals a gun, they're not stealing the gun to sell it, they're stealing the gun to use it.
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To morons, the Fifth Amendment is there to guarantee their right to forcibly overthrow the government.
They actually believe that they could defeat the military of the United States with their small arms.
They just recently failed to defeat a few capitol cops with bear spray and flagpoles, but how much do you think that they learned from that?

To common thugs, guns are to establish their turf.
Almost none of them live to age forty-five, except a few that reach 60 doing life in prison, but they don't seem to be quick learners either.
They are legitimately dangerous, though.

We'd love to find a way to keep guns away from those folks.

To most guns owners,
growing up in a nation where their right to bear arms is a basic feature of their citizenship,
their guns are like my golf clubs and your tennis racquet and PoliTalker's bowling ball.
It's their recreation, and few of them ever got into bigger trouble than maybe a speeding ticket.

Plus we live in a time when the constitution is no longer amendable.
In a nation as polarized as ours, the process we have now might as well not even exist.

Bottom line, we've got to find a solution that doesn't violate the constitutional right to bear arms, which is uniquely fundamental to being American,
but significantly reduce gun violence.
That's a tough job.

If we do nothing, we've failed.
If we do away with private gun ownership, we've essentially overthrown the government of the United States.
We won't find a perfect solution, but we've got to find significant improvement.

Background checks.
Banning of military style weapons.
Registration of all handguns with serious consequences for having an unregistered one in public outside of your home.
Things similar to this can and should be done.

Doing away with civilian gun ownership?
Sorry, but then we're a completely different country with a different constitution.
We could do that as well, but we're no longer the United States of America.
I'm probably better with that than you are.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
Same goes for undiagnosed mental illness.
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Yes. Exactly! It's like we're sharing the same brain here.

There is no way to know when someone's undiagnosed mental illness will crop up, so that's why it makes sense to pre-screen people before they buy a gun so we can be secure in the knowledge that they won't use that gun on themselves or others.

What is so unreasonable about that?
 
T. A. Gardner said:
It is a cause, but not the only cause. You keep implying it is the only or the major cause..
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Well, it's sure as shit the major cause for suicides, isn't it?

And suicides make up the majority of gun deaths, don't they?

So...wouldn't it make sense to make it harder for depressed and suicidal people to get guns to kill themselves?
 
T. A. Gardner said:
We can screen people before allowing purchase of a firearm.
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Right, but "screen" how?

A simple background check will not turn up any undiagnosed mental illness.

Since mentally ill people don't walk around with nametags saying they're mentally ill, we need to figure out how we can prevent a suicidal (or homicidal, for that matter) person from getting the gun to use on themselves and/or others.

The only way to do that is to pre-screen people.


But that screening has to have reasonable limits and serious controls on who does and how the screening is done.
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I totally and completely agree! It needs to be air-tight, and it needs to be transparent. And the other factor in this is that pre-screenings add a level of accountability where one doesn't currently exist.

So if someone who was pre-screened goes out and kills themselves or others, then we simply go to the doctor who cleared that person and hold that doctor accountable.


I want reasonable gun control laws.
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So do I.
 
Suicide is nobody's business but the that of the person who decided to leave.
People know when they've had enough.
None of us asked to be here in the first place.
We should at least have the right to decide when to leave.

Suicide is not a valid argument in the gun discussion.
 
Truth Detector said:
ITo buy a handgun, you must:
Be 18 or older
Not have been convicted of a felony
Provide a state-issued photo ID
If you’re buying the handgun from a local gun store or dealer, the seller will also have to conduct an instant background check.[/size]
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Right, which means you can walk into a store and walk out with a gun 10 minutes later.

You're the one who doesn't think that.
 
LV426 said:
They're not.

Go down to South Florida (Boca Raton) and you'll see plenty of massage parlors full of Eastern European and Russian women.
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in these ones they were. It was because they were massage parlors. Not because muh asian.
 
Truth Detector said:
What part if INSTANT BACKGROUND CHECK are you continuing to struggle with, you triggered, lying lunatic?
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The part where the instant background check has anything to do with walking into a store and walking out with a gun 10 minutes later, like that guy did on Wednesday.
 
Truth Detector said:
So they should subject everyone to a mental health screening before buying a car, voting......??
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Let's start with guns and see how it goes.

After all, you're the one who claims anyone who commits a gun crime is mentally ill, and you're also the one who believes all criminals are mentally ill.
 
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