while i think something needs to be done with assualt and high capacity round situations,i wll also always believe that people are the problem before objects. The problem is,how do you decide who is to not be around the objects? Right now,unless you have a record ,odds are you can get a gun. Once certain people with disabilities start getting labeled,an advocacy group will come to their aid and we will end up right in the same gridlock this country always ends up in. People are relied upon to be the judge of their own family and this mother clearly failed. Also,how much control and monitoring of your everyday life do you want?
Calling the police because there is a weird, mentally ill guy living with his mom who is a gun enthusiast is going to do absolutely nothing. There are no laws being broken. And show me a town WITHOUT nutjobs in it.
I don't have an answer for where to draw the line for what makes someone too crazy. That's where we need to focus our energy IMO. Spend money on medical research and scanning. As a society we could be more well educated on mental health and reports from teachers, doctors, coaches, police, neighbors, etc could be what triggers investigations from such an agency just like child abuse cases. I mean it seems pretty clear that in this particular case everyone knew he was a real whacko.
That's what needs to change. We need to be more aware and proactive as a society. If every town has a nut with a gun we have a real big problem.
Every town has a nut with a gun. It's just a question of what kind of nut they are and whether or not the conditions they live in will set them off or not.
problem with that also,is that some people will use that kind of accusation to to get back at people etc. Also,for as many nuts as communities have,they have the un happy old lady down the street that likes to snarl at everyone and complain to the police etc about everything. imagine how this would work. I think the only answer on that side is to do amuch better job of dealing with these people in school when they are young. But the more our schools grow,the less of these programs we have and everyone is expectd to be herded like sheep
If we really go this route that we need to implement a massively intrusive, inefficient and largely futile and ineffective mental health screening regimen to determine who is too crazy and who isn't, instead of going with the obvious and simple solution of getting rid of most of the guns, I propose we finance it by implementing a 600% tax on the purchase of firearms and ammo. No reason to gut existing government expenditures. Your move, Grover.
People can do the same today with child services. I don't know what measures have been taken to limit that, if any, but that's where I would look for a guideline. Agree schools should be the #1 place to deal with/identify mental illness. Problem in this case, was the kid was home schooled, wasn't he?
Just to follow up on this: the guy who did this was clearly crazy in retrospect. He had been flagged by his neighbors as kind of strange beforehand. How exactly do you get from that kid might have a problem to declaring him crazy and confiscating his mother's guns? You're talking a level of government oversight to get to where you want to go that would have absolutely enraged you a month ago. The expense of that oversight would be obscene. Put another way: how would you like to have to undergo a full battery of psychiatric tests before you were allowed to purchase a gun? Those records to be stored in the public record so that anybody who complained about you could be satisfied that you had passed the evals? Ok, I'm guessing you might be willing to go there with great reluctance if you were really a gun fancier. How would you like every person in your family to be required to do the same before any of you could purchase a gun? How would you feel about being turned down because your 14 year old son was judged to be a threat due to being a teenager who had authority problems? There's no way to go at this problem from the mental health angle. You have to go at it from the guns angle. That's what can be controlled.
Getting rid of most of the guns is neither obvious nor simple. We don't need to be "massively intrusive" to improve our mental health awareness and recogniztion as a society. It would be "massively intrusive" to really get rid of all the guns though because without sending in police to every building to search and remove fire arms you're only going to see guns returned from teh law abiding portion of society.
They had to know... they local gun community knew both him and her. I wouldn't go as far and call her a monster like Hobbes did but to act as if she has no blame in this is irresponsible. Everybody knew he had issues and she still took him to the range and taught him about weapons.
Just the very mention of gun control has set off a purchasing frenzy. I know it sounds like the same old song and dance,and this is the kind of argument as a metal head growing up i would write school papers disputing,but if you look at our movies,music,games,tv...we have a fixation on violence,and everyones favorite tool is the gun. Some people can handle it as entertainment(i have an xbox and enjoy some of these games),and some people cannot. Our society is getting angrier every day,the entertainemnt is getting more graphic and violent,prescription drugs are easily given to put issues aside to not have to hands on deal with them,and its a recipe for disaster. Its not like the same people who would initiate gun control are any help,they like to glorify their own violence by letting us watch bombings on live tv. The type of entertainment sold to us is usally a direct representation of the society we live in,and lets face it,these are not exactly the best of times.
if someone is accused of being a problem,think about how much money is going to have to be spend to prove either way. Thats not a purchase by our gov with a return,so either they will want no part of it,or it will be a badly innacurate system. I think he was home schooled,because of the fear of ridicule. I also read the kid was a satanist and had a website for it. Not sure ,but that sounds like a bunch of bs rumour.
didnt this kid also live on his own? how could they deny the mother guns even if he was labeled mental?
Think about how much money the government spends to protect children from abusive parents. You're talking about spending a lot of money either way if you want to address the problem. Personally I'd rather focus on the real problem.
I believe that is some of the misinformation the media spread during the crisis. I believe the guy lived with his mother. I could be wrong of course since the media is where I got this information.
The real problem is that high powered weapons are easily available in our society. This feeds into the high homicide rates we have, it feeds into the high number of law enforcement that are killed and wounded and it feeds into the easy availability of high powered weapons to the criminal element as well.
Do you get more dead when a crazy person kills you with a high powered rifle than you do when a crazy person kills you with a 22 pistol? I see their obviously needs to be a line drawn on what types of weapons are available to the public. That line is debatable, I personally don't care to engage in it unless you're going to tell me I can't keep my modest hunting guns. The problem is the crazy people with guns, not how powerful those guns are.
i think he means high round capacity weapons. If a guy is planning on walking in somewhere with a six shooter,because he couldnt get a huge clip,that in itself is a deterent imo. Because there is more of a chance someone does something. Its not a complete solution,but a start.
That's certainly true. But we can make a determination with certainty that some kinds of inanimate objects are too dangerous to let loose on the public. We do this with motor vehicles, ceiling fans and blenders for fucks sake. We can weed out unnecessarily destructive guns. There have been a number of good ideas on how to do so in this thread. Its much more problematic trying to figure out which person is too dangerous. People have rights. Until someone actually commits the evil act, its too hard to discern who the evil ones actually are.
