Pills or Guns (but not both)

Pills or Guns
(but not both)​

​

An Alternative to "Gun Control"​

[Source: "An Alternative to Gun Control" - LonelyMachines.org]

I read this a week ago and it keeps coming back to me as I try to avoid the sick feeling that comes from the typical do-nothing talking heads waving the bloody shirt and rockstar-ifying the most recent killer.

I'm tempted to agree with the blog post I linked. I haven't followed it all the way down the rabbit hole of consequences and implementation, but I'm overwhelmingly for putting the onus on individuals and not inanimate objects.

Control people, not things. No, it won't stop violence in the inner city (nothing like this would and nobody really cares about Chicago anyway), but it would finally start to put a focus on high risk people instead of pieces of metal and plastic. Guns laws (and the bullshit concept of "gun control") in the US are like an M.C. Escher work painted by someone that knows absolutely nothing about the topic, breaking things down into useless subcategories and arbitrarily demonizing particular design features as a part of the grand effort to somehow keep bad guys from doing bad things while essentially preventing good people from defending themselves, putting food on their table and enjoying a sport. Gun laws geared toward stopping mass shootings don't work--have never worked--and we really need to go in a new direction if we're mature enough to finally admit that people are committing these crimes, not grandpa's squirrel rifle or the Glock that a happy-pill-popping Satan-worshipper bought prior to his murder spree.

I know this type of suggestion worries people about their privacy and 4th Amendment type things, so we should talk about that, too... and maybe smack the government's hand away from our collective cookie jar a little stronger in the future.

Part of the mental health discussion that America needs to have is very real damage we're causing to society by solving so many of our first world problems with pills.

What are your thoughts on the matter, TFP?


[not sure if this belongs in politics or not, mods feel free to move as necessary]

 

It's far, far easier for focus-on-the-next-election politicians to tell law-abiding citizens what they can and cannot have as opposed to shouldering the burden of mental health and opening up that can of worms at any level of government.

"See, we passed a law against things because the laws we passed against people committing evil acts hasn't stopped them from doing them."

The logic always escapes me.

 

Kicking a useless political football back and forth over cosmetic features like black plastic handles or tiny little nubbins under the barrel that do nothing, all because of a particular type of crime that makes up a vanishingly small percentage of gun crime overall, lets multi-millionaire politicians from both major parties keep everyone distracted from the real source of our violent crime problem: generational poverty, wealth and income inequality, failed policies like the "war on drugs", our for-profit incarceration industry, and our abysmal mental healthcare (and social welfare in general) systems.

None of which either major party wants us to look at too closely... largely because they both continue to enrich themselves off of these problems.

America doesn't have a "gun" problem, we have economic and social problems expressed through gun violence... just like other less developed countries with the same economic and social issues we have. The problem is everyone insists on comparing us to Sweden instead of South America.

 

Crazy people with guns are a bad thing.

Mental health care costs money and even the most trivial of gun control issues gets people's panties in a wad. (Why is closing the gun show loophole such a bad thing?)

If I were dictator, we'd address both. In the current political climate, I expect we'll do nothing ... again.

 

"Gun Show Loophole" is a nonsense buzzword ignorant people sometimes use to describe person-to-person sales.

As shown in the OP, most nutjobs fill out their forms state/fed and get a background check. It's totally legal.

 

IMO, it is too simplistic to blame all, or even, most mass shootings on mental illness.

Are teens who have been bulled and come back and shoot up a school mentally ill? An unemployed person facing financial and family stress and responds with a shooting spree? Stressed, yes. Emotional Yes. Neither are mentally ill.

Universal background check wont prevent mass shootings but it is still good public policy, relatively easy to implement, widely supported by the public (90%) and no threat to lawful gun owners.

The broader issue is to prevent or lessen gun accidents, injuries, suicides, and homicides based on expanded research on the wide range of issues that cause gun violence and practical solutions

The problem is that the Republicans in Congress have effectively banned federally funded research through CDC for 20+ years on the claim that such research is a "threat to the Second Amendment." It is inexcusable bordering on criminal

GOP keeps in place funding ban on gun violence research.

 

Useless buzzword. Please define for the sake of the discussion.

...

The problem with "gunshow loophole" and "universal background check" is that they're bandied about by people that have absolutely no idea how guns are actually purchased in the US.

 

I would refer to the post-Sandy Hook bill that was blocked by Republicans in the Senate.

All sales at gun shows (not just authorized dealers) and all internet sales but exemptions for "family transfers."
--- merged: Oct 5, 2015 at 7:55 PM ---
Summary of S. 22 (113th): Gun Show Background Check Act of 2013 - GovTrack.us

 

I am so tired of the inevitable debates that happen after each highly publicized mass shooting.

Let me make some emphatic points about this.

(1) The overall homicide rate in America is declining toward historic lows.
I don't think anyone can dispute that.

(2) The number of mass shooting incidents is up significantly.
Source. Source.

(3) The NRA has won the gun debate.
A large portion of the voting public has been convinced that access to guns is critical to human freedom. Hence, there is absolutely no political will to enact even the slightest additional restriction on gun purchase, ownership, or carry. Further, if a Republican is elected president in 2016 or 2020, and gets a few Supreme Court appointments, the absolutist interpretation of the Second Amendment will prevail, and all but a few current restrictions on firearms will be swept away.

Hence, there is absolutely no point discussing "gun control" as if it were a genuine policy option. From here on, all change in U.S. gun laws will be in the direction of LESS restriction.

(4) Still, that's no excuse to spread misinformation about it.
* Gun rights advocates like to say that the gun-controlled UK is more dangerous than the US -- but the US homicide rate is more than quadruple the UK rate.
* Gun control advocates claim or imply that (any specific regulation) would reduce crime and violence -- but that's absurd.
* Gun control advocates often play games with statistics, conflating "gun deaths" (which include suicides) with murders.
* Gun rights advocates like to say that the US city with the strictest gun laws (no question, that title belongs to New York City) has the most murders -- but NYC's murder rate ranks 20th among the 25 largest US cities. Source.

Fun facts about NYC that neither side wants you to know: New York has a high crime rate, but gun control keeps the murder rate quite low. That's because NYC has a hundred-year head start on restricting access to guns. That's also because NYC has an unusually immobile criminal class, which has been forced to employ less lethal weapons like knives. And it's also because NYC has more police per square inch than any other large city in the Western world. Those advantages are not available to other US cities.

(5) The mental health system is almost completely irrelevant to mass shootings.
It is impossible to accurately predict whether a given individual will commit violent acts or not. Sure, mental health services are starved for funds in many places, and better funding would alleviate a lot of human suffering, but it's not an "answer" to violence.

-----------------------

So what can be done? I do have a practical suggestion, which I will write up and post soon, perhaps as a separate thread.

 

I learned how to shoot when I was ten, went hunting often, taught my daughters when they were only a little older.
I have owned guns and have no problem with them.
What I do have a problem with is idiots with guns, mentally ill people with guns and kids with guns.
It doesn't seem like having to take a class and go to a range if you want to own a gun would be a problem.
Knowing the laws concerning the use of your weapon and knowing how to use it properly seem like a no brainer.
If you own a gun and have kids, you bloody well better have it locked up.
I was raised to never play with guns, wasn't even allowed to have toy guns because you didn't point a gun at someone, all guns were loaded and if you pointed it at something you intended to kill it.
It might be worth looking into having insurance, just like a car.

 

Replying to street pattern's post:

1. Actually acting as though the crime rate is worse than ever before and building up mass hysteria is one of the major problems right now, and why people are so obsessed with plastic handles on rifles even though more people are punched to death than killed with rifles.

2. The rate of mass shootings is actually steady IF you don't use a definition of "mass shooting" specifically designed to get the result you want. This is while the actual overall violent crime rate is still dropping precipitously. Now what may be happening is that mass shooting events are shifting from being primarily gang/family crimes to media baiting shootings because of the way coverage is being handled.

3. The NRA didn't so much win as the anti-gun side lost. When it had the chance to do something substantive the pulled an Own Goal and went after cosmetics. The fabrication of mass hysteria over plastic handle shape is the other side's response to the NRAssholes' fetishism. I think if anti-gun people weren't pulling the arguments-are-soldiers/religious loyalty to the party thing they'd be even more pissed at their own side after being shown just how absurdly useless and stupid these cosmetic bans are.

4a. The UK has less homicides but far more violent crime in general. Violence in the US is more lethal but significantly lower overall. The US also as I said before doesn't have the social and economic policies most other advanced industrial democracies have.

4b. The overwhelming majority of US gun crime is committed with already illegally trafficked firearms. You could flat out magic-away every legally owned gun in the country and accomplish almost dick. Media baiting spree killings on the other hand could be helped with reform to our mental healthcare system as a majority of the people who've committed recent spree killings have had a history of mental health issues, often including being reported for violent and/or anti-social behavior. Cho for example is a textbook case of the system failing to lock someone up long after he should have been, same for rodgers who was already on meds and whose own parents called the police on him nearly catching him during the planning stage, same for the columbine shooters... the list goes on. There's also the uncomfortable fact that virtually every single one of our spree killings has taken place in a supposedly "gun free zone". Clearly that law has about a 0% success rate.

4c. Indeed they do. They also often include "lawful intervention" (sometimes under other names) to include clean police shootings as "gun deaths", which is taking openly lying to a whole new level.

4d. Actually I'd say Chicago. Overall however the point stands that gun restrictions or ownership and violent crime rates are a shit poor correlation compared to the other factors I mentioned previously. Given how the numbers are all over the place I'm willing to call it all but spurious.


Gun rights advocates like to say that the gun-controlled UK is more dangerous than the US -- but the US homicide rate is more than quadruple the UK rate.
* Gun control advocates claim or imply that (any specific regulation) would reduce crime and violence -- but that's absurd.
* Gun control advocates often play games with statistics, conflating "gun deaths" (which include suicides) with murders.
* Gun rights advocates like to say that the US city with the strictest gun laws (no question, that title belongs to New York City) has the most murders -- but NYC's murder rate ranks 20th among the 25 largest US cities.

 

Nope. New York is the only place in America with anything resembling a European-style gun regime. The key is NYC's hundred-year head start. Only around 10% of households there have guns, which means burglars don't find them.

Chicago's law is completely ineffective, given that its immediate suburbs are uncontrolled compared to the city. Chicago and Washington both have gun shops in lenient jurisdictions conveniently accessible via local mass transit.

But that's not as big of a lie as claiming DETROIT as the most restrictive city -- I saw that claim yesterday. Detroit has no local gun restrictions whatsoever, and Michigan is a shall-issue state.

No, the numbers are very simple and the correlation is crystal clear. Remember that crime and murder rates are strongly correlated with population density. NYC has by far the highest population density in the nation, and a murder rate lower than the national average. No other place in the U.S. has any kind of effective gun restriction compared to New York. So the correlation is extremely strong, but (as I explained above) completely irrelevant.

Prediction: when New York's gun laws are struck down, which seems inevitable at this point, the murder rate there will rise past the national average.

 

Going back to the OP, as someone who has been on SSRI's it should disqualify you from owning a gun or purchasing a gun while on them and for two years after. If you were to profile who the shooters are as single white males with little financial success and have social interaction issues, I would be in favor of having more restrictions placed on them or an outright ban.

I know I should have been banned from owning guns of any sorts, and should have been investigated to see if I was lying about not owning guns or having access to them in my 20's. Because it doesn't take much of a leap to go from "I want to end my life" to "I want to end my life and take as many other people with me" or to take out specific people. The problem is that you will never really know when that will happen, or if it would happen at all.

I do wonder how many thousands of guys fall into the poor, shy, single white male category though? And how many of them have access to semi-auto guns or handguns with large clips?

 

I think OP was joking. Even if he weren't, that kind of proposal is likely to have unintended consequences. And any regulation that affects firearms is politically dead anyway.

I think that exact category -- depressed single males with social interaction issues -- has grown tremendously in this generation due to cultural and technological issues. It is now possible to grow up with very little in-person social interaction. See 4chan's r9k or the foreveralone subreddit for lots of evidence of the misery this causes.

One possible approach to addressing this problem is already being done in India: teach social skills in school, starting in kindergarten.

I myself was so isolated growing up that, as I started 10th grade in high school, I had trouble doing basic things like carrying on a conversation with another person. To ask a girl out would have been far beyond my abilities.

Fortunately, my high school, completely by accident, helped solve this problem. For an hour a day, I was in a classroom with a dozen people I generally liked -- with nothing to do but socialize. It was a wrenching and transformational experience for me.

If that hadn't happened, maybe I would have found something else, but it's hard to imagine that I would have deliberately sought it out.

 

I'm not going research it (sue me), but I'm certain the numbers would support my thoughts.

The percentage of "rampage shooters" who actually owned the firearms they used is minute compared to the percentage of law abiding gun owners.

The percentage of "rampage shooters" who had/found access to but didn't actually own the firearms they used is minute compared to the percentage of law abiding gun owners.

The percentage of "rampage shooters" on SSRIs is minute compared to the percentage of people on SSRIs who do not become "rampage shooters."

What does that mean? Rampage shootings are going to happen. Gun control and/or the monitoring of people on SSRIs will be very nearly, if not completely, inaffective in stopping rampage shooting. Yes, difficulty in obtaining guns might help in the case of someone who suddenly snaps and acts out impulsively, but not so much in the case of someone who plans a shooting spree.

 

And that is kind of why there needs to be targeted gun control. Mainly for law abiding gun owners to prevent their guns from being accessed by teenage and young adult males that might live in the house with them, if they have the same profile as 99% of the other shooters (the Colorado theater guy was way off the deep end). Women and older men aren't the problem with mass shootings.

Yes, elementary and middle schools need to start identifying lack of inter-personal social skills as a problem and deal with it for those students.