I'm going to have to disagree with you there. I think point of the article is that mentally ill people are already horribly stigmatized, and that assigning the blame from mass shootings solely to the mentally ill stigmatizes them further. This stigmatization makes it more difficult for mentally ill people to get the treatment they need because of the ramifications of what might happen if people found out. The easiest example a mentally ill person is the homeless guy on the street, screaming at what appears to be nothing. It's easy to see someone like that needs help. It's the person who is seemingly "normal" who ends up buying a pistol and either blows his brains out, or shoots a bunch of people after being brainwashed by fake Facebook posts, that needs help. They aren't getting it because the stigma of being labeled mentally ill scares the hell out of them. They think that if they get help, their guns will be taken away. This story in Rolling Stone on a suicide epidemic in Wyoming was really eye opening to me in terms of mental health and the availability of guns. I think that due to the ease of using a gun, it's places the power of life and death into the hands of those that it shouldn't. Yes, mental illness is something that every society should do something about. And, making mental illness the sole cause of mass shootings is damaging to those that are actually mentally ill does more to hurt those with mental illness than it does to help. As the article says, hate isn't a mental illness. Hate drives people to do things that people who aren't in the throes of hatred commit. Gang members will shoot a member of another gang without a thought. Mobs of white people have been lynching people of color in America and I doubt any of you would say they were mentally ill. If gun control and therapy stops a father from taking his own life and ruining the lives of his family, isn't that worth it? Or maybe it stops one parent from shooting another in a drunken rage, or a gun is brandished to keep someone in an abusive relationship. Saying we don't need gun control because it won't stop mass shootings is like saying we don't need seatbelts because you aren't very likely to be hit by a drunk driver.
Mental Illness can be very transient, and sometimes fully justified. That doesn't mean it's not a mental illness, and I think that lack of understanding just speaks to how little people really know about or understand what mental illness is. It's all kinds of shades of grey, with some UV thrown in for good measure.
A mass shooter (ak-walmart type) is mentally ill. Full stop. Someone who has mental illness is not a de facto mass shooter. I get that mentally ill people don't want to be stigmatized by having people believe that mass shooters had mental illness, but sorry, they do/did. It's a hugely generic term that covers a shitload of stuff. It's kind of like saying that men don't want to be stigmatized that some of them are bad fathers, so we have to say that bad fathers aren't men. Sorry, doesn't work out that way.
The way I read that article is that it was a follow up phone interview and the guy was afraid his phone was tapped.
That's the thing though. Unless I'm reading you incorrectly, your belief that all mass shooters are mentally ill is misplaced. Hate is not a mental illness. Hatred is why a bunch of jihadists flew planes into the World Trade Center. Hatred drove the 9/11 attackers to learn how to fly a jetliner, get weapons past security, hijack the planes and get financial backing from out of country sources without detection, over a period of months. If getting guns was more difficult in America, you would see more planes being slammed into buildings. Instead, you see things like the San Bernardino shooting, done by 2 people who bought a gun from a private seller for a few hundred dollars with no background check. With minimal to no training, they were able to fire those guns into a crowd of innocent people for at least a few minutes without interruption. There wasn't a word regarding the mental health of the shooters before, during and after. They hated America and wanted to harm as many Americans as they could. Why is it so difficult to believe that there are people who could have the will to fly planes into buildings suddenly wouldn't have the will to buy easily available firearms to kill as many people as possible?
Not "all", but most that make the news, yes, I think they have something wrong with them, and I call that mental illness. And why is it so hard for you to see that maybe that hate triggers or takes advantage of a mental illness? I hate a few things, but you don't see me acting on it. Again, it's NOT FUCKING NORMAL for people to kill each other in that way. That's why it's in the news. I don't care if it's due to religious manipulation/brainwashing, an environmental view they've been raised in, hatred, or a chemical imbalance, why are they acting on it by killing people? "Mental illnesses are health conditions involving changes in emotion, thinking or behavior (or a combination of these). Mental illnesses are associated with distress and/or problems functioning in social, work or family activities." https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/what-is-mental-illness Right from the American Psych Society. If you have a hate on so bad that you go and kill a bunch of people, how is that not falling under their definition of a mental illness? Can't think of a better example of "problems functioning in social activities".
Official coroner's report on Epstein is death by suicide, hanging. At this point I'm starting to think that there really just a bunch of fucking idiots running the jail and it was an actual fuckup of epic proportions, rather than some kind of shady conspiracy involving hitmen and bribes. One of those "don't blame on conspiracy what can be explained by human stupidity" kinda deals.
I will concede that in some of these cases, mental health is absolutely a factor, and it's easier for mentally ill people to be warped by hate. What I take issue with is the knee jerk reaction that when a mass shooting happens, the shooter was mentally ill. Especially when the shooter is associated with white supremacy. You don't have to be mentally ill to kill one person, let alone a lot. History has tons of examples of people killing each other wholesale over all sorts of causes. Second, "normal" is subjective. What is normal for you is not normal for someone else, and vice versa. If an unaccompanied female relative of yours was caught wandering around the Middle East without her head covered, it would be absolutely within someone's "normal" train of thought to punish her for that and act on it. Just because you and I think it's ridiculous to beat or even behead a woman for missing headwear, doesn't make it ridiculous for someone who grew up in that environment.
I always found it comical that someone who commits a mass shooting wouldn’t be considered mentally ill. Yeah yeah I understand lucidity and all that, but still. If you’re inclined to kill innocent people, I don’t believe that’s mentally fit, lucid or not.
It's starting to look like a real possibility, but the timing of some of these events is still hard to explain by mere random stupidity. Eg, his cellmate was transferred the same day the names of several prominent figures were publicly identified by a witness. We might never know the truth. I still haven't seen anything released about the camera feeds that's credible. If there wasn't one in Epstein's cell they should still be all over the prison. If there's no footage showing anything suspicious, or evidence of tampering that probably rules out a wet work team.
I know the emphasis is always on major personality disorders are always the focus, schizophrenia being the lightning rod. I still think the thug who can spray bullets at a crowd of rivals or the radicalized nut have such a lack of human empathy they fall on the spectrum of sociopaths. Im sure a deeper dive on these lone wolf white supremacist you'd see they probably had long running issues, fucked up child hoods, and a plethora of the indicators of mental illness.They don’t have to be yelling at invisible government agents and smearing feces on kittens, to have mental illness effect them to the point of indiscriminate violence. Most work place shootings, the going postal phenomenon, shootings are usually super acute nervous breakdowns, as are a lot of suicides. Another clear mental illness issue as well. My biggest beef is that instead of focusing on the issues that cause people to harm and self harm the easy scapegoat is guns. Banning assault rifles, magazines, what ever new scary accessory isn't the "well it's not perfect but something needs to be done, it might solve 90% of the problem" is a a solutions that is next to useless, like a .002% solution. 300 deaths a year to all forms of rifles, 30 thousand people commit suicide a year, you really telling me banning assault rifles will help with that? Banning guns that 10s of millions law abiding citizens use for what ever reasoning is wrong and the fear of them is insanely misguided given the true numbers involved in assault rifle deaths. Red flag laws and actually funding mental health institutions, be it community centers or state run institutions, would go a hell of a lot further to prevent suicides, mass shootings, and....and... some of the other major issues we face, homelessness and drug addiction. Tackling mental health in what ever rubber meets the road form would be miles ahead of emotional fear mongered gun banning legislation.
Must have been under a rock, because today I learned that Mila Kunis used to (still does?) expertly troll mike pence:
You can’t put that toothpaste back in the tube. You guys are a gun country. And they aren’t going away. They’re not disco records, there will never be a Comiskey Park Gun bonfire. Most gun owners are safe and responsible and I picture banning guns as an insult to them. But tit for tat: take maybe a few of those billions spent on weapons and start funnelling it into mental health. Like, pronto. Trump will have plenty of firepower left over to illegally bomb Syria again.
The government isn’t making firearms and distributing them to people. Those are private companies, so I dont see them changing their business strategy and opening private mental institutions. But the government they did shut down mental health facilities in the 80s and 90s and now those chickens are roosting. Oh right, this board doesn’t like connecting mental health with violence, lest someone be offended by it.
Welcome to another round of "there is no scenario in which this is a good look": So the options are as follows: Trump just canceled a meeting with a legitimate agenda because Denmark won't sell Greenland. The meeting was never about anything other than Greenland, and we lied to the Danes to get the meeting. There never was a meeting, and Trump is making shit up on Twitter again. Pick your favorite, none of them are good.