[Discussion] Mass Shootings - Yeah, we need a thread just for this...

This year is the deadliest year ever in terms of mass shootings. In a political climate of polarization, it becomes harder to suss out legitimate information from the misinformation propagated by those with political agendas. Complicating this more is the continual resistance of 2nd amendment advocates to allow for political talk surrounding these massacres. This will involve political discussion to see if there are ways we can all agree might be good ways to prevent mass shootings.

This discussion should involve the details of any current, or future mass shooting, and how they compare to past mass shootings. How are they the same? How are they different? Do gun laws have an impact? Does the race of the shooter affect how we treat them? What makes one a hate crime and one an act or terrorism? Are these shootings the price of freedom?

Chairman_Mao wrote:
Stele wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:
Stele wrote:

Young men aren't shooting up schools and workplaces in other developed countries though. Yes, the patriarchy and misogyny is a problem. But gun deaths are caused by GUNS. Let's fix the one thing we can quickly fix, banning the assault rifles, and then work on men's mental health because that's going to take decades.

How do we quickly ban assault rifles? I'd focus on the mental health first, cuz decades will still be sooner than we get reasonable gun control in this country.

They were banned 20 years ago. Undoing 20 years of lobbying is a lot easier than a couple thousand years of patriarchy.

I think that the time such policies have existed bears no relation to how easy they are to turn over. It really depends on the political will in the moment, as well as the alleged "constitutionality" of that policy. For guns, the advantage in both of those categories lies with the right.

But on mental health, I do feel like there is some will on both sides of the aisle to address it. So it becomes more a question of how, rather than if. I'm sure I won't like a lot of the ways the right wants to address it, but at least there is room for compromise there. Until the left gets back control of all three branches, I don't see gun control moving much at a national level.

Even with control of all three houses the Democrats won't do much. If they actually fixed problems they couldn't fundraise off them.

I hate to break it to y'all, but if you think fixing America's mental health system is easier than taking assault rifles away, then I want to sell you.... insert pyramid scheme/crypto/prime energy drink here.

America's mental health system is so broken, it effectively doesn't exist.

Take my state of North Carolina. We have a population of over 10 million, but less than 900 psychiatric beds for the whole state, and less than 100 of those are emergency beds.

This means if you have a mental health crisis, you basically have no shot at getting an actual psychiatric bed, instead you are going to be housed in an ER or jail cell until the acute crisis has passed, or an administrator decides that the crisis has subsided enough to kick you out for the purposes of the hospital or jail's liability.

But what about non-crisis situations, surely that's better? Yeah. no.

Most private psychologist and therapist will not take Medicaid, and even if you have a good employer based insurance plan, co-pays just for therapy can add up very quickly. Higher level care, say for a troubled child, and you are looking at months upon months of waiting for a treatment spot, and again, a lot of cost that are not going to be covered by many insurance plans.

Most states simply do not come close to funding mental health services at even a triage level, much less a functional one.

Ohh, and the same goes for Social Services.

To be clear, even tripling budgets for these programs wouldn't make a dent in the problem. And yet, as much as Republicans like to call for mental health reform for the last twenty five years of mass shootings, the actual funding deficits have only gotten worse over that time.

This feels like comparing how likely it is for my testicles to solve Fermat's last theorem from first principles versus how likely it is for bananas to successfully stage a coup against the government of France.

Wait, doesn't everybody's testicles solve Fermat's last theorem?

Rat Boy wrote:

Wait, doesn't everybody's testicles solve Fermat's last theorem?

Posting a picture of your nuts on Fermat's Wikipedia page doesn't count, Rat Boy.

I feel like there's a balls/elliptic curves joke to be made but I'm, one, not smart enough to make it and, two, not confident that anyone would know what I'm talking about.

iaintgotnopants wrote:

I feel like there's a balls/elliptic curves joke to be made but I'm, one, not smart enough to make it and, two, not confident that anyone would know what I'm talking about.

It's way too hard for me think.

Badferret wrote:

Take my state of North Carolina. We have a population of over 10 million, but less than 900 psychiatric beds for the whole state, and less than 100 of those are emergency beds.

I have a friend trying to use the system right now, and they are describing a literal hellscape of trying to get access for their family member that needs access.

And this is all happening during an actual crisis in the mental health of young people in general. A family friend who works in pediatric medicine told us that something like 75% of the patients she sees every day are there for mental health reasons. Our rickety system is stretched beyond the breaking point.

Podunk wrote:

Our rickety system is stretched beyond the breaking point.

This is true of just so many systems in the US....hell the system as a whole!

farley3k wrote:

This is true of just so many systems in the US....hell the system as a whole!

Amen to that.

Podunk wrote:

And this is all happening during an actual crisis in the mental health of young people in general. A family friend who works in pediatric medicine told us that something like 75% of the patients she sees every day are there for mental health reasons. Our rickety system is stretched beyond the breaking point.

And I suspect a great deal of the mental health problems of young people can be attributed fairly heavily to our depraved economic system.

I'm not saying we should only focus on mental health, but unless a constitutional amendment is ratified that says mental health services cannot be provided by the government, limiting gun rights will always be more difficult, IMO. There is simply no way an assault gun ban will hold up with the current supreme court.

Democrats could have expanded the court if they actually wanted to fix things.

Mixolyde wrote:

Democrats could have expanded the court if they actually wanted to fix things.

How would expanding the court fix anything that couldn't be unfixed in 4 or 8 years later.

lunchbox12682 wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

Democrats could have expanded the court if they actually wanted to fix things.

How would expanding the court fix anything that couldn't be unfixed in 4 or 8 years later.

The larger the court, the harder it would be to find, seat, and keep a majority that would keep doing all these awful things. Democrats should also pass ethics rules that would apply to Supreme Court justices so they could be more easily removed for brazenly partisan behavior and literally sleeping with an enemy of the state.

Also 4-8 years of good laws o ce in a while is better than just letting the Right take over and destroy democracy.

Mixolyde wrote:

Democrats could have expanded the court if they actually wanted to fix things.

The problem is/was that they never had the votes to do so.

WizKid wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

Democrats could have expanded the court if they actually wanted to fix things.

The problem is/was that they never had the votes to do so.

Yeah...because they don't want to actually fix things.

Dear Gun & Garden,

Is it possible to over-water my tree of Liberty?

Angry men disproportionately cause mass shootings. Angry men, even without access to guns, disproportionately inflict domestic violence.

Yes, it's true mental health and guns shouldn't mix.

Yet look at Australia. Sure we have rampant mental health funding gaps and angry men hurting and killing people disproportionately. However, we DON'T have angry men regularly using semi/auto firearms creating mass casualties on the daily.

In my view it's like fire. You need the fuel, the oxygen and the spark. You cut one of those out, you won't have the fire. Sure, mental health is a common feature in mass shootings but I wouldn't be so quick to rule out availability of guns as the real driver of mass shootings. I mean, if it is really driven by mental health then why don't we get similar mass casualties with knife/other weapons? We've seen globally that even cars/trucks that can cause tragedies are used far less for perpetrating massacres despite them being available everywhere and every country underfunding mental health services.

Just ban the damn things or gatekeep them behind stringent controls like the Swiss.

I would never condone this but I can confidently say if semi/auto weapons were used to systematically slaughter the top wealth holders in the US you will suddenly find gun reform isn't as hard as it was once thought to be.

Agreed. However, in the US there is a lot of toothpaste that has escaped the tube. Cleanup will be long and difficult.

JLS wrote:

Agreed. However, in the US there is a lot of toothpaste that has escaped the tube. Cleanup will be long and difficult.

IMAGE(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51fNd2UJwTL._AC_.jpg)

I saw this post on reddit the moment I read your comment.

Toothpaste in Philadelphia

IMAGE(https://i.redd.it/u2lrca3shqfa1.jpg)

It's OK. I have my Crest Carry Permit.

I am tracking this as a result of my job and we'll see how this spins out. Looks like multiple scenes, no idea how many injuries, but early Twitter scuttlebutt is 14 injured, 5 dead so far.

On the eve of 5th anniversary of parkland.

Prederick wrote:

I am tracking this as a result of my job and we'll see how this spins out. Looks like multiple scenes, no idea how many injuries, but early Twitter scuttlebutt is 14 injured, 5 dead so far.

Feels insane that I feel like I'm saying in an upbeat voice "I was wrong! Only three dead and five injured!"

Saw another blurb on this and the lead in line is

The two buildings at the center of Monday evening's shootings on the campus of Michigan State University are accessible to the general public during business hours, police said in an early morning news conference Tuesday.

So of course, now the problem is going to be that we don't have locked doors everywhere. Not the guns. Never the guns...

There has to be some long-ass German word that captures the feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you find out that one of the survivors of Sandy Hook is now old enough to be in college and they just so happen to go to Michigan State University...