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Fun fact: none of the school shootings could have been prevented w a law screening out people mentally unstable to have guns since none of the shooters actually owned guns. But they were available by other means.
Mental illness in the USA needs more understanding, less stigma and more funding for treatment. But let's not make it the scapegoat for the sake of saving gun availabilit in the USA.
Up to 3xs more suicides than homicides are completed w guns in the USA each year. It is the most lethal method if suicide. Most of the "successful suicides" in the "low gun tolerance" state I'm in are by youth who do not own guns, but someone in the family does.
Lock your guns up, hide them, take the bullets out, no matter. Everyone in your home is still more at risk for suicide by firearm.
I'm sure many of you think you could spot the signs of suicidal it in a family member. Sorry, no one can do this with 100% accuracy. My cousin s dad is a psychiatrist yet my cousin still killed himself at age 21 in the backyard w his dad's gun right after breakfast and cheerful morning banter one day.
Besides the irrational rate of homicides, it makes me sad to live in a place where so many people seem to love guns and "our rights" over their own family safety.
Someone w a gun may stop another w a gun, but why does that first person need a gun? S/he needs it because everyone else has one. I'd rather we be proactive and eliminate as many guns as possible than be reactive and "need" guns.
Because I'd rather see less people kill themselves (and others.) I value life over guns.
Funny.....0001% of guns in this country are ever used for killing...including suicides and yet the gun grabbers are all in a tizzy about wanting to ban every one of them...
More children are killed each year by falling TVs/furniture than guns...are you going to go house to house and insist everyone nail down their furniture?
I don't know about the .0001% of guns killing people but I that is irrelevant. Sometimes one guns kill many. I'm sure only .0000001% of nuclear weapons have killed anyone (only 2 did that i know of) but would you feel safe handing them out for anyone to carry? What if we all had a mental health check first?
And let's just stop this BS furniture statistic right now please.
On this of the top 25 causes of death- firearms is not just one category. It is category #22, #10 and #5. And in case you have any Questions re #5- cause of death by intentional self harm: "men choose more lethal methods, like hanging and shooting themselves, than women." I would've liked to see them list out the inflictions, but I know from prior research that firearm death is #1 death via self harm.
(#18 is a fall involving furniture, btw. And mostly correlates to seniors tripping.)
Funny.....0001% of guns in this country are ever used for killing...including suicides and yet the gun grabbers are all in a tizzy about wanting to ban every one of them
Not every one, and not from everyone. But does any civilian really need an assault rifle or other similar weapons? Hunting rifles, handguns and the like should be plenty for those who feel their Constitutional rights are being violated.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PoppySead
If we really care to reduce crime in our country we need to look at the other areas we know could lower it like poverty, unemployment, health care, economy. Those issues create the atmosphere that breeds crime.
Don't you know? People are supposed to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and beg for charity from churches. They shouldn't ask for help, though, for what they need to pull themselves out of poverty, such as education, employment, housing and health care.
Because American gun nuts cannot wrap their heads around the slippery slope fallacy. They absolutely believe that if we restrict the insane from buying firearms, we will eventually restrict EVERYONE from buying firearms.
And then Charles, William and Harry will show up with three muskets and take back the United States. That's the thought process, near as I can tell.
We already DO restrict the insane from owning guns. Where Moderator cut: language do you people get the idea that any old person can buy a gun? There is a background check, if you've been committed and diagnosed with mental illness you won't get the gun. The problem is that a lot of mental health facilities don't release their records.
There are 20,000 gun laws on the books in the U.S. Why don't we work on enforcing them before we write any more?
What you either fail to realize (or choose to ignore) is that people were trying to ban the most popular semi automatic rifle in the country, for everyone. THAT is why us gun owners were up in arms about it. That is a direct infringement on the right for law abiding citizens to bear arms, yet politicians who swore to uphold the constitution were trying to do so anyway.
Not every one, and not from everyone. But does any civilian really need an assault rifle or other similar weapons? Hunting rifles, handguns and the like should be plenty for those who feel their Constitutional rights are being violated.
It is not about need. People don't need cars that go over the speed limit or that accelerate to the speed limit in 3.5 seconds, but they can have them all the same. Part of living in a free country, if you don't like it you are free to move somewhere else.
Why do people blame guns instead of mental illness?
Both sides, pro and anti, need to put aside their prejudices, sit down at the table and look at ALL of the factors/evidence. Isolation is a big one. A lot of these younger mass shooters felt so isolated and persecuted by their peers. Medications and drugs can also play into the picture. Availability of firearms in their situations also played a part. Home situations. Mental health of the shooter. Amount of violence they were exposed to. There are so many factors to consider that probably came together to create the "perfect storm" in these situations and it all needs to be picked apart and looked at.
Where Moderator cut: language do you people get the idea that any old person can buy a gun? There is a background check, if you've been committed and diagnosed with mental illness you won't get the gun.
I can go commit a felony, and then I can go to any gun show in the Southwest and buy a gun from some dude selling them in the parking lot at the gun show. I have an idiot uncle who does just that -- he buys guns on the cheap and then takes them to gun shows and sells them to random people at a profit. He doesn't care about the misery that he is potentially inflicting on society. He's no better than a meth dealer, as far as I'm concerned. EDIT -- But he sure loves to talk about his 2nd amendment rights. He thinks that his amateur arms dealings are constitutionally protected.
The laws that we have only apply to law abiding citizens. Gun shows and private sales are the wild west, quite literally. We need to rein in the craziness that happens at gun shows.
What we need is for gun sales to have the same amount of regulation as vehicle sales. I can't sell my car without a paper trail, why should I be able to sell firearms anonymously?
Because its easier to blame the tool then the issue. Treating mental issues will cost BILLIONS of dollars. Easier to ban guns and easier to deal with that, then the true issue.
NONE of the gun control advocates will admit the truth. None of them. At first it was: Assault weapons. We don't want to ban private ownership of guns. Not we, we want simple hunting control measures.
Then, when the facts have come out handguns are the primary weapons used in mass murders, they don't look back. Ban guns period. Their agenda is right there for anyone to see; which is why there is so much resistance to it. They want an inch, but take a mile.
They SAY they want simple controls; yet, when the next massacre occurs, and those controls are in place, they will want (as they do now) a total ban.
Gun control advocates want nothing more then to ban the private ownership firearms. Until that goal is met, they are nothing but lying hypocrites.
Wow.
I'm a gun control advocate, though I'm currently very interested in a man who carries a concealed weapon (so don't be accusing me of being unwilling to look at the issue from another perspective).
No one would argue that mental illness or serious mood disorders are present in every mass shooting in the US in the last decade or so (someone would have to remind me how many have we've had, because I've lost count). But what about the domestic violence cases involving guns that occur EVERY SINGLE DAY somewhere in the US? In most of these cases, an individual (usually a male), with no history of violence or mental illness or criminal activity, suddenly "loses it" one day - perhaps due to a marital or family dispute, fallout of divorce, etc - grabs a gun and kills at least one person (before often shooting himself).
Is mental illness a factor is every one of those cases as well? I say no. I say that the issue of mental illness is a red herring argument. After all, if mental illness is the main factor in all gun violence cases in the US, then wouldn't other western countries have similar gun violence rates (and just to be clear, NO, they don't. Not even close. The US is in a league of its own)?
Other countries are having financial difficulties where families struggle just like they do in the US. Other countries have divorce. People in other countries watch the same movies, listen to the same music, play the same violent video games, and have become more secular and "morally relativistic." People in other countries suffer from mental illness, depression and other mood disorders and have violent tendencies. And yet, the gun violence rates in every other western country is a fraction of what it is in the US.
So what variable is present in the US mix that isn't present in that of Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand or Japan? What could it possibly be?
Is is at all conceivable that it is the easy accessibility to guns in the US, and to handguns in particular? Is there any chance at all that easy access to compact but powerful weapons could have some impact on the gun violence rates of a country?
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