Gun control, the mentally ill and/or crazy, and what to do? What do we agree we can do right now?

[xxxsdesdexxx]

I played the, so-called, "Violent" video games most of my life and also watched the so-called, "Violent" movies most of my life as well and I have not killed anybody. If it wasn't the video game(s) it was the movie(s), if it wasn't the movie(s) it was their upbringing, if it wasn't their upbringing it was their friends, if it wasn't their friends it was something else. What it really is, is that they are mentally ill and/or crazy.

I'm all for gun control, I'm for limiting the sizes of magazines and clips, I'm for eliminating the gun show loophole which would eliminate the exemption of private sellers needing to run background checks on their buyers, I'm for making sure that all fire arms are registered, I'm for requiring that all gun owners have special gun safes/lockers that use some sort of biometric device for access, I'm for trigger locks on all guns, I'm for the implementation of a federal law which supersedes all state laws allowing people to walk around with guns wherever they please since walking around with a gun does nothing but intimidate others and can has the potential of escalating situations which would otherwise be non life threatening brawls to deadly ones -- I would of course exempt active police from this -- , I'm for "smart gun" technology such as fingerprint recognition on the handles of guns, I'm fine with a police officer at every school and for a tax on all guns either with a registration or annual fee to pay for it, and I'm for increased access to mental health that is sensible and that actually works rather than what we currently have.

I think the most difficult thing we have to deal with is how to address those who are mentally ill and/or crazy. Some of them will be beyond help, and others could be helped but how? There's no easy solution. What are we going to really do? We aren't going to completely eliminate mass shootings and killings, but that isn't an excuse for inaction. We have to do all of the aforementioned things and we need to get serious on how we deal with those who are mentally ill and/or crazy.

[cantbeserious]

1. Step One - National Single Payer Health Care - To Provide Assistance To All That Need Help

eom

[xxxsdesdexxx]

6. I am completely with you on the national single-payer health care

It would address so many of our problems. Increased access to mental health services, access to health care by those who cannot afford it, reduced per person costs due to preventative health care rather than reactive health care (i.e. waiting for the heart attack or giant cancerous lump), reduce per person costs due to the increase in the volume of customers, elimination of the middle man for-profit insurance industry, lower prescription drug prices due to higher negotiating power, elimination of egregious charges such as $50.00 for a pair of gloves or $50.00 for a single aspirin tablet because hospitals will no longer be passing on costs to other customers when they're trying to recoup their losses from patients who cannot afford to pay their bills. There's so many reasons to do it and I cannot wait until it happens. It's not a matter of if it will happen, it's a matter of when it will happen.

[cantbeserious]

2. Step Two - Outlaw Assault Weapons

eom

[Recursion]

9. Doable, and pointless

We probably will. That won't do what you think it does (Connecticut already did, for instance, and the gun was still legal), but it's something we can do.

[cantbeserious]

3. Step Three - Ban Private Sales Of Firearms Without A Background Check

eom

[Recursion]

10. Harder to accomplish, but probably doable

We might have to involve the states, but that wouldn't be a bad thing

[cantbeserious]

4. Step Four - Repeal The 2nd Amendment - So Eventually All Firearms Can Be Rendered Illegal

eom

[Scuba]

5. Step 5: Stop pretending gun violence in America is limited to those with mental health problems.

[tj_crackersnatch]

7. Tax and Regulate

all existing guns. Tax on a sliding scale so that the poor can still keep their guns: however the more guns you hoard the more you pay out the nose. Tax everything associated with guns.

[Recursion]

8. Private sales and high-capacity magazines

As far as I can tell, at least on the political spectrum that DU represents, that's what there's pretty broad consensus of what is both possible and somewhat effective

[Denninmi]

11. First of all, it's kind of offensive to say "crazy".

At least use please use proper terminology, such as psychotic.

Why do you automatically equate mental illness with "crazy"? Mental health problems come in many forms, only a relatively few of them are associated with conditions one might colloquially label as "crazy", such as psychosis-induced hallucinations.

I was diagnosed recently with a mental illness, but I'm as rational as anyone else.

I'm bipolar, or possibly suffer from PTSD per my latest diagnosis. I find it pretty offensive for anyone to say that they "have to deal with those who are mentally ill". It implies that we aren't capable of doing anything for ourselves. Uh, if I can manage to work full time in a law office dealing with complex issues relating to probate and tax law, I think I'm capable of "dealing with" myself. At least my clients seem happy, well, at least grateful, when I get them out of serious trouble with the IRS, which is something I do 2-3 times a week. Given the complex, often disorganized nature of the IRS, your government at work, this can be quite a challenge, yet I seem capable of rising to that challenge. I am also capable of rising to the challenge of drafting rather complex court filings and pleadings, of drafting estate plans, and of doing corporate work such as incorporations, corporate sale/transition documents, employment and noncompete agreements, retirement plan documents, real property sales documents, and so forth.

I don't recall anyone else being there to dial the phone when I made my initial appointment with a psychiatrist. Certainly no one held my hand the first day of the "partial hospital program" I attended for three weeks in September, although frankly as scared as I was it might have helped.

One thing I noticed, among both the public and some healthcare providers, in both mental health and "regular" health fields, is that they tend to treat people with psychiatric conditions as stupid, which is both degrading and often inaccurate. People with bipolar syndrome, for example, tend to skew above national averages in intelligence.

[meow2u3]

15. Not everybody with mental illness is psychotic; in fact, most are not

There is a "sliding scale" of degrees of mental illness.

The mildest are the temporary, stress-related "adjustment disorders", which by definition last no more than 6 months. Then come the phobias and other anxiety disorders such a panic disorders.

The ones who've been afflicted since they were kids range from ADHD to childhood anxiety to conduct disorder (budding sociopaths), all the way to autism.

The most severe are the mood disorders such as major depression and bipolar disorder; psychotic disorders, which include schizophrenia and delusional disorder, f.k.a., paranoia; and the major personality disorders, such as sociopathy/psychopathy/antisocial, borderline (emotionally unstable), narcissistic, and paranoid personalities. These people should not own guns, period, because they're a danger to themselves, others, or both.

[Denninmi]

16. I see the broad brush stereotyping continues.

Please enlightened me, exactly how am I a danger to myself or others?

[meow2u3]

18. Most people suffering from mental illness are NOT dangerous

Only a small minority is.

[Daemonaquila]

12. What's sensible to me -

* require proper securing of guns - you mentioned a number of good ideas

* create tort legislation that is much like the dram shop act - if you don't properly secure weapons, or get sloppy on background checks, YOU are responsible for the actions of the shooter who illegally accessed your weapons.

* a background check registry, like getting pre-approved to buy a house - if someone wants to buy from another private party, they'd better have a current certification from the registry that the seller can verify online.

* uniform national gun laws and databases. What they'll be is up for debate, but the current patchwork even among cities and counties, is dumb.

[HereSince1628]

13. Risk analysis involves identifying and understanding contributing factors

Last edited Tue Dec 25, 2012, 11:22 AM - Edit history (1)

The front end of the process of risk management involves something like these steps:

--Some factors contributing risk will be more important than others in reducing the occurrence of the hazard.

--Some of those factors are more available to management than others

--Some of manageable factors will not create conflicts with other values, including legal rights that preclude their application as proposed.

---From the remainder choices some can be chosen to be implemented.

I have a personality disorder, I want a reduction in gun violence so I too am interested in managing the contribution of mental illness to that violence...if it can be managed in manner that really reduces the hazard and doesn't come with unacceptable costs and collateral damage.

With respect to mental illness, the public poorly understands mental illness. People see it as a category largely devoid of meaningful internal distinctions. Even in this thread it's approached as an amorphous category.

Americans don't understand which mental illnesses or subcategories of mental illness represent risks that are large enough and available enough to be managed in a way that will reduce overall risks of violence in society----an estimated 2/3s of people with mental illness do not seek treatment, and so are generally unavailable to clinical interventions.

If DU is any model, reducing gun violence is being argued as more important than any other potential conflicting values. Although the vitriol is against gun owners and much of the discussion is about the 2nd amendment, the attitude is "whatever it takes". There seems to be little concern for the potential collateral damage that "whatever it takes" could demand. There seems to be very little respect for the legal rights of people with different mental disorders with different risks of social violence. All of us are being conflated to be equally dangerous with recent mass murderers. No one wants to be pushed into an ill-defined category and suspected of criminal activity by association. Even the mentally ill.

Mentally ill are discriminated against in the US. As a mentally ill person I've felt it's cold shoulder. I can tell you that many mentally ill have anxiety about being unfairly treated as a homogenous class, even though a very small percentage of mentally ill persons commit violence in society. That is to say we worry about having the right of equal protection that is provided to undiagnosed persons.

Many mentally ill don't think very highly of violating the privacy of our medical records. Or sending a computer program rummaging thought them to find billing codes arbitrarily chosen as containing potentially dangerous persons. That is to say we have anxiety about being treated fairly with access to due process, like equal protection a 14th Amendment protection for all citizens.

Society has an interest in lowering the occurrence of gun violence in society, it should be done with some focus on the risks that are available for management and with an eye to mitigating unreasonable damage to the parts of society it grinds against.

[easttexaslefty]

14. Please, don't use the word "crazy"

It's an insult to those with a mental illness, like me, for instance. The proper term for a person who loses touch with reality is psychotic.

[lunatica]

17. If you want to call someone crazy, start with Wayne LaPierre

He may not have ever killed anybody, but he sure stands by those who have.

And when he can't defend them he says they're crazy. So do you. But if you were to pay attention the vast majority of gun homicides which are in the thousands per year are done by so-called sane people.

[cliffordu]

19. How about giving me a tattoo so I can be easily identified

and denied the entrance to gun stores and shows.

That'll take care of the problem

[slackmaster]

20. The only thing I care about right now is what's for breakfast

I think eggs would be nice.

[courseofhistory]

21. We need much better access

and much better treatment, trained personnel, etc.

My son has had bi-polar and schizophrenia since age 17 and he exhibited symptoms much earlier in life. He has been in the mental health care stystem in TX (which sucks) and now in Colorado which is a lot better than in TX. But he wouldn't have gotten help without me advocating for him. The rest of his family abandoned him, including his bio father.

I had fought many people getting him help, contatcted legislators, other advocates, doctors, etc. and got him the help he finally needed about 15 yrs. ago (he's now 40 and living with me). But had he been on his own, the system would have let him down completely because the few times he was on his own, he quit his meds, had no way to get to the clinic to get them (and they could have cared less about seeing to it) and deteriorated completely.

I'm now 65 and very tired. I had him come live with me in CO 4 years ago and he is doing prett well considering his illness. He's on the proper medications which took institutionalizing him to get him long term care. Even then, I talked weekly with doctors and personnel at the state hospital and visted often to make sure everything that could be done for him was being done.

Then serendipitously I saw a movie about a young woman who was schizophrenic and who had a friend she met at the hospital who was also. They both went on a drug trial (based on a true story) for a "miracle medicatin" called clozapine or clozaril. Both women became almost totall well but there was a monthly blood test requierd to check the red blood cell counts because in some pataients the medication can cause serious anemia. The one girl was found to have developed the life threatening anemia and had to go off the clozaril. She rapidly deteriorated and her frined who was still able to take it had to watch her desent.

I suggested the medication to the doctors where my son was and they tired it. it worked for him and he gets his monthly blood test--has been for 15 years now. Each person gets "well" to a point that varies from individual to individual but my son is at least able to live fairly normally but still can't work and do a lot of things some others have been able to do.

The point is that the medical health care profession is very bad in this country and lacks knowledge, training, genuine concern and caring and a lot more. MUCH has to be done to fix it and so far not much has been changed for the better.

I wrote a book during the time he was institutionalized and chronicled his illness somewhat like a diary and all the obstacles I had to overcome for him since he couldn't do it himself. In the 15 yrs since, things haven't changed much at all. As I said, the system is better here in CO but even it could use some major changes and help.

What people can do is advocate, advocate, advocate. Write, call, demand action through representatives, medical professionals, newspapers, media, etc. Join NAMI and learn about some of the things you can do to try to help better the system and get help to people who can't help themselves. Mental illness is debilitating and many can't even bring themselves to do ordinary things, much less go and actively seek treatment.

The public and families need educating also. As an example, the Newton shooter should never have been around guns, never have learned to shoot or had access to them. His mother made that one huge mistake that cost so many so dearly.

NAMI http://www.nami.org/template.cfm?section=your_local_nami

Mental Health America http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/

Mental Health Advocacy Coaltion http://www.mentalhealthadvocacy.org/