I don't think anyone would argue that mentally ill people should have access to guns. If you read his manifesto the fucking guy would fly into rages and throw coffee on strangers/shoot them with super soakers filled with orange juice, this is not the picture of a guy that is able to keep it together. I can buy the fact that he could fool a cop he's meeting for the first time, but why didn't his family or all these psychiatrists he was supposedly seeing have him locked up in a padded room years ago?
I'm so sick of reading these things, we want to learn all the facts so we can prevent this kind of thing from happening again LOL whatever these people don't know anything. That's what they always say. When will people learn that some people are wired that way and it isn't preventable?
Yeah, psychiatry is definitely a joke. There has been a history of people that have stopped taking SSRIs going homicidal and suicidal, there's no coincidence that every one of their commercials has suicidal thoughts disclaimers and many of them mention "having thoughts of hurting yourself or others." I'd bet that this kid was a fruit loop before, came off his meds and went full psycho. Yet you never hear about any of this after murders happen in the press, it's all video games and bullying. http://harqueb.us/?p=2795 I cross checked the incidents on this list a year ago and was able to confirm all but about 5 of them.
A correlative argument about an over-prescribed medication; except cycling off SSRIs, like other medication, as you know has withdrawal symptoms that include worsening of depression and suicidal thoughts.
What could have been done? Every time that an attempt has been made to restrict gun ownership or gun rights in any way the NRA has jumped into the fight and put so much pressure on congress that the measure has been defeated or watered down to the point that it doesn't mean anything.
I've read that it doesn't actually require cycling off of them to cause those symptoms, only that cycling off improperly amplifies them. But with such severe withdrawal symptoms, how did they get approved by the FDA in the first place? $$$$$$$$$
BTW, it is possible at this point to make a gun that can only be fired by its owner. It's possible to make a gun that transmits the identity of the person that fires it if they are in range of a cell tower or any open WiFi connection. It's possible to make bullets that can be traced directly back to the person who fired them unless they are largely obliterated at the point of contact. What do you want to bet the NRA would go apeshit if any of those innovations were proposed for common use?
The main reason why they're still on the market is because they're under researched and we don't know how exactly they affect the brain. SSRIs are the psychiatrist's go-to drug (along with lithium and increasingly moreso antipsychotic mood stabilizers like geodon or abilify). In some cases SSRI usage will exacerbate symptoms but that typically is the individual's drug interaction (the psychoatrist would be responsible for noting symptoms after administration and the decision to stop usage), or as some doctors will say, SSRIs don't work for everyone. It is very rare for a patients use to "transform" from normal to abnormal a year into treatment, for example. And if it does happen it would probably be because the dosage is incorrect, some individuals build a tolerance more than others.
They got approved because it would have cost millions of dollars to actually test them properly but it only cost $50K in contributions to a bunch of congressmen to get the testing process watered down to the point that it is next to useless.
A fact that isn't well-known: psychiatric medication has a very limited efficacy by itself; however, in conjunction with therapy, the treatment effectiveness more than quadruples. Seeing a psychologist is just as important, if not moreso, than seeing a psychiatrist. Most frustratingly, there is typically little cooperation/communication between a patient's psychologist and psychiatrist.
Without the therapy you can't keep a patient on their meds reliably. That's the benefit of therapy and meds. When somebody is telling a patient that they have to take their meds on a regular basis they're more likely to do so.
You could have just stopped at "they're under researched." For a drug to be the "go-to drug" for psychiatrists who don't know how exactly they affect the brain is so far down the road of irresponsibility as to be borderline criminal, and yet they hand them out like candy to anyone that complains of anxiety or depression.
Well, that'd be incomplete. They're under researched, SSRIs are recommended for treatment of many different symptoms and disorders so the over prescribing is inherent, but most importantly the entire field of psychology is underfunded and underdeveloped. IMO too many people don't take psychology seriously and it exacerbates these problems.
No argument. The problem is that psychiatry is both massively overfunded and massively overadvertised.
Padded room requires a big government, like NY State 50 years ago. There's no money to properly evaluate psychiatric risks and potentially lock them up at this point. That train left the station in the 60's. Then even assuming you are willing to go back to 50-70% tax rates to fund that big government you have the problem that civil liberties and mental health was decided in the courts in favor of civil liberties two generations ago in the 60's. When I worked with people at Pilgrim State Psychiatric Center in NY in the early 90's the place was already a ghost town. 30,000 in-patients had dwindled to about 3,000 by that point. The only people they kept were the ones who required a constant 3-on-1 outside of their rooms and a very carefully controlled room to avoid hurting themselves or others. When the doctors and nurses I worked with saw a patient detail coming down the hall they'd get out of the way, stepping into an office or even turning around and walking the other way until the hallway was clear. That's how dangerous you had to be to remain as a long-term in-patient in a NY mental health facility at that point. This guy would never have met the criteria. The only way he was getting in-patient treatment anywhere was if his parents pushed for committing him, a move likely to fail in court, and if they were willing to pay the $100K+ a year cost of keeping him committed.
Why would you be concerned about being identified as the person who fired a gun? What would bother you about having your gun fireable only by you? I think Big Brother is a horrific waste of resources and largely ineffective to boot but I don't see why accurately identifying people who shoot other people is a problem. It would also allow for really stiff sentences for unregistered guns. Lots of states and municipalities already have Saturday Night Special type laws in which possession of an unregistered gun leads to automatic jail time. Why would encoding that in the law not be a good thing?
I guess the only solution is to take any form of weaponry away from the general public for their own good, right? In your perfect world, we'd all be eating with plastic sporks.
