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The picture that’s emerging is of a disturbed, lonely young man who had vowed revenge on humanity, especially college sorority girls who refused his attention.
Mr. Shifman said the family had called police several weeks ago after being alarmed by YouTube videos "regarding suicide and the killing of people."
Describing the shootings as "premeditated mass murder," Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said authorities were analyzing a disturbing YouTube video posted that shows a young man describing plans to shoot women that appears to be connected to the attack.
"It's obviously the work of a madman," Sheriff Brown said.
Elliot has always been troubled and couldn’t express himself,” the source tells us.
“His parents did everything they could to help him. It seemed that Elliot suffered from extreme paranoia and heard voices, but it was impossible to properly diagnose because he just wouldn’t talk. Having been prescribed psychiatric medication, Elliot refused to take it.
“Before moving from L.A. to Santa Barbara, he had been seeing a mental health professional for years, and his parents got a team of doctors for him to continue to see after his move. Their hearts break for the victims and their families.”
The elephant in the room nobody, least of all the mainstream media, want to acknowledge or add it to the public discussion, least it detract from their popular "America's love affair with violence & guns/ban guns" narrative-
For those of us who came of age in the 1970s, one of the most shocking aspects of the last three decades was the rise of mass public shootings: people who went into public places and murdered complete strangers. Such crimes had taken place before but their rarity meant that they were shocking.
Something changed in the 1980s: these senseless mass murders started to happen with increasing frequency. Why did these crimes go from extraordinarily rare to commonplace?
For a while, it was fashionable to blame gun availability for this dramatic increase. But guns did not become more available before or during this change. Instead, federal law and many state laws became more restrictive on purchase and possession of firearms, sometimes in response to such crimes. If gun availability does not explain the increase of mass public murders, what else might?
At least half of these mass murderers (as well as many other murderers) have histories of mental illness.
In the 1960s, the United States embarked on an innovative approach to caring for its mentally ill: deinstitutionalization. The intentions were quite humane: move patients from long-term commitment in state mental hospitals into community-based mental health treatment.
If people have a problem with guns than push for a repeal of the 2nd amendment.
No amount of law can prevent deaths like what happened in California Friday night. Heck even with repeal of the 2nd amendment you are still looking at 4 people dead out of 6 caused by non gun death (1 blunt trauma death by getting run over and 3 stabbing death).
The guy passed a police wellness check as well last month.
Federal law says that a court has to declare you "mentally defective".
The rules are very narrow here.
Massive background checks without changing the law on mental illness won't do a damn bit of good.
I agree. Even if they do allow mental health background checks it won't stop the mentally ill from getting their hands on a gun or from going on mass killing sprees. They will find other ways to cause harm.
In a truly open and free society we simply cannot protect everybody from potential harm at all times. But we can go back to institutionalizing the mentally ill instead of using jails to informally house them, which we're doing now.
My brother is 41 years old. We can't control where he lives. We can't let him live with us.
We can't just "move to another country." Have you ever looked into that option seriously?
Finally - he's had a full and complete physical evaluation - several in fact. He has brain damage. It is irreparable and irreversible.
The whole POINT of this thread is that our mental healthcare system is BROKEN.
But it's not for lack of money.
There really is a problem when it comes to families trying to help a mentally ill family member -- and worse for those mentally ill who have no family.
It's impossible to get someone into therapy if they don't choose to be -- drug addicts and alcoholics are pretty much left to die because you cannot force them to go to rehab.
It's very difficult -- families will try to take care of their relative -- but that can become very disruptive and dangerous for them. When they seek help, they can't get it -- unless the adult relative agrees -- but the worst cases won't agree.
But -- there is no other country that has as many anti-depressants, and other psychotropic drugs being prescribed. Therapists are all the vogue now -- at no time in history have so many children been in therapy of some kind.
It's not so much a lack of mental health but ineffective mental health. And also we need to ask ourselves -- why is there all this mental illness in the first place? Other countries don't seem to have as many whackos.
The elephant in the room nobody, least of all the mainstream media, want to acknowledge or add it to the public discussion, least it detract from their popular "America's love affair with violence & guns/ban guns" narrative-
For those of us who came of age in the 1970s, one of the most shocking aspects of the last three decades was the rise of mass public shootings: people who went into public places and murdered complete strangers. Such crimes had taken place before but their rarity meant that they were shocking.
Something changed in the 1980s: these senseless mass murders started to happen with increasing frequency. Why did these crimes go from extraordinarily rare to commonplace?
For a while, it was fashionable to blame gun availability for this dramatic increase. But guns did not become more available before or during this change. Instead, federal law and many state laws became more restrictive on purchase and possession of firearms, sometimes in response to such crimes. If gun availability does not explain the increase of mass public murders, what else might?
At least half of these mass murderers (as well as many other murderers) have histories of mental illness.
In the 1960s, the United States embarked on an innovative approach to caring for its mentally ill: deinstitutionalization. The intentions were quite humane: move patients from long-term commitment in state mental hospitals into community-based mental health treatment.
These crimes are not new nor have they gone up in number with respect to our population. There are more of them because there are more of us but proportionally I don't believe they've increased. Normally I'm not a fan of Wikipedia but I'll make an exception here because they have a nice table showing mass killings in the last century.
"Guns aren’t even the most lethal mass murder weapon. According to data compiled by Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, guns killed an average of 4.92 victims per mass murder in the United States during the 20[SIZE=2]th[/SIZE] century, just edging out knives, blunt objects, and bare hands, which killed 4.52 people per incident. Fire killed 6.82 people per mass murder, while explosives far outpaced the other options at 20.82. Of the 25 deadliest mass murders in the 20[SIZE=2]th[/SIZE] century, only 52 percent involved guns."
I attended a parade a while back where a member of the mental health contingent was carrying a sign that said, "Support Mental Health".
As she approached, I gave her a thumbs down - and she got really angry.
It really WAS a bad joke on my part.
How many here are anti mental health?
When it is used and abuse for political propose like it was in the Soviet Union...Or used to deny people their rights in the name of politician or profit, you bet you ass I oppose it.
The elephant in the room nobody, least of all the mainstream media, want to acknowledge or add it to the public discussion, least it detract from their popular "America's love affair with violence & guns/ban guns" narrative-
For those of us who came of age in the 1970s, one of the most shocking aspects of the last three decades was the rise of mass public shootings: people who went into public places and murdered complete strangers. Such crimes had taken place before but their rarity meant that they were shocking.
Something changed in the 1980s: these senseless mass murders started to happen with increasing frequency. Why did these crimes go from extraordinarily rare to commonplace?
For a while, it was fashionable to blame gun availability for this dramatic increase. But guns did not become more available before or during this change. Instead, federal law and many state laws became more restrictive on purchase and possession of firearms, sometimes in response to such crimes. If gun availability does not explain the increase of mass public murders, what else might?
At least half of these mass murderers (as well as many other murderers) have histories of mental illness.
In the 1960s, the United States embarked on an innovative approach to caring for its mentally ill: deinstitutionalization. The intentions were quite humane: move patients from long-term commitment in state mental hospitals into community-based mental health treatment.
I attribute a lot of it to the violence seen on some video games.
With several, Sandy Hook and now the Santa Barbara shootings, it seems violent video games were played a lot and in the case of Sandy Hook it was nearly non-stop.
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