by Simon 16 Replies latest social current
... not "why does this happen" or even "how do we prevent it" but "here's todays locations and body counts".
So sad that some people just went to the shops and now their families will never see them again.
Seems like it is an insolveable problem for America.
Gun ownership is all part of Freedom in the USA as I understand it. In the UK I'd rather be free to go to the shops and stay in one piece.
It is quite a problem... but not a new one... mall shootings, school shootings and the like have plagued America since the late 70's... but cell phones, social media and high-tech police frequency scanners are making the problem appear more wide-spread than it actually is...
that said, it's still a very sad situation.
The problem could be easily solved if the US invested in a solid mental healthcare system. Most of these multiple shootings are committed by people who suffer from mental illness, and there is no safety net to catch them. Care for such people is limited even if they have health insurance. The clinics that provide services on a sliding scale are generally just cattle calls. Patients get put on medications, but there is very little follow-up to be certain the meds are being taken and the patients are functional.
Americans will never willingly give up their guns. Since that is the case, the US government has to do something about the mental health system in order for these tragedies to at least decrease. Also background checks should be done for anyone buying weapons, and that includes relatives who are mentally ill and live in the gun owner's household. Had that law been in place and followed by Nancy Lanza, Sandy Hook would've never happened. Her son, Adam, was clearly troubled, and there is no reason in the world that she couldn't have stored those weapons in a secured environment outside of her home.
Nothing will probably eliminate mass shootings, but the US has to put some programs in place, so they're not so frequent. That is, of course, if we don't want to live in armed camps. Schools are already arming personnel. I wouldn't be surprised if malls, stadiums, and other public gathering places aren't next. I live in a small town between Cleveland and Youngstown, and there are armed guards at grocery stores in both cities.
I don't see it as a basic mental health problem. There are a lot of countries with a lot of people in them that have a lot of mental health issues and the rate of public space shootings are minimal at most - the issue is guns and attitude first and formost.
A report came out that reported that the USA has had 31 school shootings since Columbine - during that same period of time there have been 14 in the rest of the world combined. The world has billions of people in it - the USA is a smidgeon - the question therefore isn't broken down to mental health (which is only one piece of it) it's broken down into what laws, rights, attitude, politics and punishment the rest of the world has that make it less likely to die while shopping in a mall than being in the USA.
Another report states that there has been one mass shooting in a public space for every month since 2009 - measure that up to any other western country and it just isn't happening.
People wring their hands in horror when ten people in Mexico show up piled high in a house from a mass shooting...and yet a bunch of little kids are mowed down and the hand wringing stops. A drone takes out a wedding party and innocent civilians are killed - people scream - a guy goes into a mall and wipes out and injures almost a hundred people - a month later it's over - .
4,000 people killed in Syria and people clamor for US intervention - yet you have 25 times more injuries and death by gun violence in the USA and it's a hands off scenario.
Of course my thoughts don't change anything - but a gun in the hand of a mental health patient is always going to be more of an issue than a mental health patient not being able to have access to a gun and when you live in a country where there are more guns than people - addressing mental health alone is the least effective measure. sw
Here is one of the article - interesting that the US has sent war ships to Russia in case they are the victim of terrorists - and to think that you would allow civilian terrorists to continue to shoot up people throughout the USA is really nonsensical. The 'rights' around gun ownership can be altered or ammended at will - other people in other countries still have guns and they still have mentally ill people but they still aren't going into the crowds and shooting innocents to the same degree that Americans are. It was declared that the USA could never have a universal health care system and yet it is happening.... sw
December 15, 2012 policymic
It is the story of our times — someone walks into a public space, a theater, a mall, a school, armed with a gun, motivated by hate, by hurt, by some irrational form of desperation, and starts shooting. They come not to kill a specific person or persons, but to stage a dark and warped act of terror. They don’t care about the people on the receiving side of their hateful infliction, or their loved ones, their hopes and dreams. It's selfish and its beyond disturbing. For hours now, we've heard the details, the motives, the locations, the timeline, but all I want to hear about is the victims. I want to know about those 20 young children, all between 5 and 10. I want to know what they wanted to be when they got older, what their favorite school subject was, what they wanted most for Christmas. This world was robbed on Friday, and is every time we suffer this kind of loss. The next Dr. King, the next Steve Jobs, the next Gandhi may have all perished in the gunfire of a Connecticut schoolroom that morning. A parent should never have to bury his or her own child.
There have been 31 school shootings since Columbine. School shootings in every other country in the world COMBINED since that time is 14. We've created complex systems and over-funded programs to monitor foreign terrorists in every country, but somehow we've overlooked the terrorists at home. No one ever knows how these people got their guns or why they were given a pass on psychological evaluations. Somehow, in this complicated, brilliant, and resourceful society, where we can design a way to share cell phone content by touching two phones together, we can’t decipher the reasons these shootings keep happening nor a way to make it stop. As social critic George Carlin once said, "we have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, yet more problems," in other words, we're missing something; we're moving ahead, but all while falling backwards.
This is not a free country. A free country is one whose children feel safe. The countries we've been involved closely with over the past decades: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Bosnia, etc. — we were motivated to get involved because of our distaste for violence, our horror at seeing innocence slaughtered, a desire to pass on the flame of freedom to nations dictated by fear. Just last week, President Obama proclaimed, 'The world is watching' to Syria's president Assad, as the revelations of the lengths his regime may go to destroy its own people worsened. It's time for the rest of the world to say to us, 'We are watching.' Forget about nation building and removing terror from everywhere else except here. It's time to fix this place we all call home, it's time we hugged our children more and our guns less.
It's not the guns. Nothing to do with guns. America has been gun toting since it's formation. No one was shooting up anything. What's different today? A medicated population could be a major factor.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhO0Pul_FcE
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sammies and dis-member, might it be a matter of chicken-or-egg? It could be that at-risk individuals are already under observation and medical care when they have their break.
