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Maybe psychologists and therapists can decide who has the violent tendency, and put their patients' names in the national data base. This will make it at least a little bit harder for the severely mentally ill to obtain firearms legally.
"Had the officers sensed something awry during their April 30 visit, they might have searched Rodger’s home. They would have found his three semiautomatic handguns, dozens of rounds of ammunition and a draft of his 137-page memoir-manifesto. They would have read about his plot for a “Day of Retribution” — when, as Rodger wrote, he planned to “kill everyone in Isla Vista, to utterly destroy that wretched town.”
But the deputies did not look. They concluded that Rodger seemed “quiet and timid . . . polite and courteous,” Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
My point above, is that he's probably not the only person to show "warning signs". I'd guess there are others... and that most of those others, despite the "warning signs" they are giving out, will never grab a weapon and start killing people. They'll live out their lives as "somewhat kooky" people, and die in their beds at age 90 without ever having harmed a soul.
Wouldn't it be flat wrong to lock up such people?
How do you tell the dozens of "slightly kooky" people who will never harm anyone, from the occasional Elliot Rodger who will? Before Rodger grabs the gun, and looks no worse than the other manifesto-writers?
Answer: We cannot tell them apart. And that's why this problem has no solution.
My point above, is that he's probably not the only person to show "warning signs". I'd guess there are others... and that most of those others, despite the "warning signs" they are giving out, will never grab a weapon and start killing people. They'll live out their lives as "somewhat kooky" people, and die in their beds at age 90 without ever having harmed a soul.
Wouldn't it be flat wrong to lock up such people?
How do you tell the dozens of "slightly kooky" people who will never harm anyone, from the occasional Elliot Rodger who will? Before Rodger grabs the gun, and looks no worse than the other manifesto-writers?
Answer: We cannot tell them apart. And that's why this problem has no solution.
I don't think we need to lock anybody up, however,
Maybe psychologists and therapists can decide who has the violent tendency, and put their patients' names in the national data base. This will make it at least a little bit harder for the severely mentally ill to obtain firearms legally.
That would be my opinion at least.
I learned from a grief therapist that the first thing you do when somebody talk about hurting themselves or other people is to take away their firearms. Will taking firearms away prevent suicide and homicide, I don't know. But this is what the professionals have suggested.
And that is why the people insisting that we "tighten gun laws" or "keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill", are solving nothing, but only creating more problems.
And that is why the people insisting that we "tighten gun laws" or "keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill", are solving nothing, but only creating more problems.
The funny thing is that we (California) already have the most ridiculous gun laws. But several mass shootings took place in California.
I feel incredibly sad for this father, wish there is something somebody can do to prevent this type of thing from happening over and over again.
I guess people just don't want to tell him, "Sorry, your son just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time."
His son was statistically much more likely to have been killed by a drunk driver or someone texting while driving. Per the CDC, more than 9 people are killed every day in the US and more than 1,060 injured in a crash involving a reported distracted driver.
And that is why the people insisting that we "tighten gun laws" or "keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill", are solving nothing, but only creating more problems.
I don't have that low of an opinion of the ability of Americans to say they could not come up with solutions that would help mitigate the problems.
I don't have that low of an opinion of the ability of Americans to say they could not come up with solutions that would help mitigate the problems.
Despite their 0-for-everything record of having actually ever successfully done so?
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