Gun violence. Is it the guns or is it the criminals?

[[DHT]Osiris]

Because of politics.

Excellent answer! And has there been any evidence in a half century that we're going to come to a political solution to the problem?

 

[dank69]

You say certainly, and I don't know why you're so certain. We've had zero movement aside from bump stock bans in like half a century.

Imagine what half a century of mental health education could have done.

...

Yes, certain. Addressing guns requires legislation focused only on guns. Addressing mental health would require legislation on multiple different aspects of our lives, many of which are just as contentious as the gun issue. Things like universal healthcare and eliminating poverty would go a long way to improving mental health on a wide scale, but here we are moving backwards on both issues.

 

[Pens1566]

Excellent answer! And has there been any evidence in a half century that we're going to come to a political solution to the problem?

You responded before I added additional info.

The '94 assault weapons ban is great local evidence that limiting guns works.

 

[Pens1566]

Yes, certain. Addressing guns requires legislation focused only on guns. Addressing mental health would require legislation on multiple different aspects of our lives, many of which are just as contentious as the gun issue. Things like universal healthcare and eliminating poverty would go a long way to improving mental health on a wide scale, but here we are moving backwards on both issues.

And it only touches on a fraction of the overall gun deaths.

 

[HomerJS]

Trick question. We've never been serious about gun control.

Although the closest would be the attempt on Reagan.

You are closer to the time period. Keep going back

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Yes, certain. Addressing guns requires legislation focused only on guns. Addressing mental health would require legislation on multiple different aspects of our lives, many of which are just as contentious as the gun issue. Things like universal healthcare and eliminating poverty would go a long way to improving mental health on a wide scale, but here we are moving backwards on both issues.

We sure are, and those things also have higher levels of support than gun control, if I'm not mistaken. So if we can't even get traction on things with higher approval numbers, why go after the things with the lower approval numbers?

 

[dank69]

You are closer to the time period. Keep going back

yep, when the Black Panthers started posting up outside polling places with weapons the country started seriously considering more firearm regulation.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

You responded before I added additional info.

The '94 assault weapons ban is great local evidence that limiting guns works.

I'd argue that the only reason it passed was because it was allowed to expire. That's a different discussion, though.

 

[Pens1566]

You are closer to the time period. Keep going back

NFA? I guess Tommy guns aren't really a thing anymore ...

 

[Brainonska511]

I'm meaning it in an over-arching sense, as in 'some bloke who's otherwise normal might snap under the right conditions' shouldn't be considered 'ok' by normal mental health standards.

Yeah, that's not how mental health diagnoses and monitoring for it work. Someone that briefly lashes out in anger isn't going to always be clinically ill.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Yeah, that's not how mental health diagnoses and monitoring for it work. Someone that briefly lashes out in anger isn't going to always be clinically ill.

Correct! They are not going to be diagnosable as having a clinical illness. My contention is that's a gap in mental health awareness that we need to get over.

 

[fskimospy]

You think improving the mental health of our species is a low ROI? That's a bold position.

The guns clearly isn't the easy part since we're here discussing it, despite shit like columbine, sandy hook, pulse, etc.

We don't know how to cure mental illness but we do know how to limit gun ownership.

Since curing mental illness isn't an option let's go with the tried and true method.

 

[HomerJS]

yep, when the Black Panthers started posting up outside polling places with weapons the country started seriously considering more firearm regulation.

Winner! Yet fat chuckle heads brandishing AKs in a restaurant (my previous picture) doesn't raise an eyebrow.

Don't sidetrack on the definition of brandishing. You know my intent.

 

[SMOGZINN]

So you're fine with people who want to kill others, but are just deterred by difficulty?

Do you have a plan to make people not want to kill each other? I don't think anyone else in the history of man has come up with such a plan. Well, maybe one person did, but a group of people got together and crucified him.

You think improving the mental health of our species is a low ROI? That's a bold position.

That matters on how you intend on going about it. If you propose to make systematic changes to our entire society so that more people have better outcomes, then no. That would have a very high ROI. I can even propose a place to start. How about outlawing guns so fewer people become traumatized by mass shootings?

If on the other hand you are talking about reactive measures like therapy, then Yes. It takes a lot of resources to even marginally improve one person's mental health, and even then, you will fail about 70% of the time. You simply cannot help someone until they are ready to ask for help, and most never will.

We 100% need to improve our mental health system in the US, but even if we went all in on mental health it would barely change the gun violence problem. Mostly you would just be working on the people traumatized by gun violence and not the ones committing it.

The guns clearly isn't the easy part since we're here discussing it, despite shit like columbine, sandy hook, pulse, etc.

Solving big problems is never easy. We need to make drastic changes, and we can't even agree on what those changes should be much less convince people to go along with it. But removing guns from people's hands is a solid thing we can do that we will know is having an impact. Every gun we remove is one that will never kill someone again. You can't say the same thing about putting someone in therapy.

 

[fskimospy]

Do you have a plan to make people not want to kill each other? I don't think anyone else in the history of man has come up with such a plan. Well, maybe one person did, but a group of people got together and crucified him.


That matters on how you intend on going about it. If you propose to make systematic changes to our entire society so that more people have better outcomes, then no. That would have a very high ROI. I can even propose a place to start. How about outlawing guns so fewer people become traumatized by mass shootings?

If on the other hand you are talking about reactive measures like therapy, then Yes. It takes a lot of resources to even marginally improve one person's mental health, and even then, you will fail about 70% of the time. You simply cannot help someone until they are ready to ask for help, and most never will.

We 100% need to improve our mental health system in the US, but even if we went all in on mental health it would barely change the gun violence problem. Mostly you would just be working on the people traumatized by gun violence and not the ones committing it.



Solving big problems is never easy. We need to make drastic changes, and we can't even agree on what those changes should be much less convince people to go along with it. But removing guns from people's hands is a solid thing we can do that we will know is having an impact. Every gun we remove is one that will never kill someone again. You can't say the same thing about putting someone in therapy.

One other thing to note is Sandy Hook, Columbine, etc. are not really even the problem. While they are awful, traumatic events most gun violence is the slow grind of a person shot here, a person shot there.

 

[HomerJS]

Do you have a plan to make people not want to kill each other? I don't think anyone else in the history of man has come up with such a plan. Well, maybe one person did, but a group of people got together and crucified him.

Where we want to start is not to make it easy. Example, what if magazine size/number of magazines was limited. Remember the Las Vegas shooting 60 killed over 500 injured? There may have still be deaths, but the number would have been FAR lower.

 

[Pens1566]

Where we want to start is not to make it easy. Example, what if magazine size/number of magazines was limited. Remember the Las Vegas shooting 60 killed over 500 injured? There may have still be deaths, but the number would have been FAR lower.

Right. I can legally get 100rd drums and bump stocks TODAY. No questions asked.

 

[nakedfrog]

You say certainly, and I don't know why you're so certain. We've had zero movement aside from bump stock bans in like half a century.

Certainly has been more movement than that at state level.

 

[Moonbeam]

Making rash decisions is 100% part of human nature.

How do you know this? Personally I find such statements to be rash. Have you gotten a handle on the nature vs nurture conundrum?Are you asserting as fact things you can’t possibly know? Is what you are saying possibly arrogant bigotry?

Isn’t it a possibility that what you call man nature and what unenlightened psychologists describe as human characteristics simple descriptions of human beings as we observe them within their culture, the conditioned state their culture imposes on them? Would you say that pre China dominated Tibet contained on average the same level of suppressed violence as say what we here in the US experience. It is just so easy to project what you feel inwardly as truth about the world.

Please remember that I love you for your bitter contempt for the world you see because it represents deep honesty to me. The contempt you feel for the world is a mirror of contempt for how you were made to feel about it in proportion to how your culture made you feel about yourself.

Without expressing contempt for the world around you you would not be aware of how you feel and most people don’t have the courage even to do that. They lead quiet lives of desperation instead of raging against the dying light.

But consider taking another step. What if you were born a god and crucified and that by the realization that in your world it could not have been otherwise, there is nothing left but surrender and acceptance, the death of ego, and the resurrection promised thereby.

Oh my Beloved, wherever I look it appears to be Thou.

To know in ignorance what your nature is, is also like pronouncing your own fate. Why do people say things like just my luck or why do bad things always happen to me or once bitten twice shy. Challenge conventional wisdom. Look for what is hidden and what is concealed.

The beauty of contempt is that it tells us what we need to forgive.

 

[Moonbeam]

Go try to eat some shit out of the toilet and tell us how easy it is.

Chances are high that as a young child you managed to do so fresh from the source. There are reasons why people call each other shit and why it’s not served as a main course. But it does make roses grow.

 

[Moonbeam]

Go try to eat some shit out of the toilet and tell us how easy it is.

Don’t you think it is human nature to stick your fingers in your ass and smell them? Do you always wash afterwards before you eat? What the difference between toe jam and a ripe French triple cream? Why did Napoleon insist his lover not bathe before sex?

And speaking of toilet shit, don’t you ever just reach in and straighten a long one out that turned sideways blocking a proper flush? Easier to wash a hand than a plunger and generally a lot more handy. Just mind the drips between toilet and sink.

 

[pmv]

The argument was valid. I was told that the reason people kill each other with firearms was because it was easy, I provided an absurd counterpoint to show that was a fallacious argument. I wasn't even the one that brought up cyanide tablets, I was just pointing out that they don't have an intended use aside from the one we protect the population from (suicide). If you want to attack the argument, please feel free to do so.

Bringing up 'cyanide tablets' just reminds me of the way that restricting the sales of of non-prescription pain-killers has been shown to reduce the suicide rate. Even just restricting the number of pills you can sell in a single pack, or requiring the pills to be individually packaged (meaning that to gulp down a fatal quantity of them you'd have to first spend time popping them out of their blister packs one-at-a-time) seems to have an effect. Generally people value convenience, even when it comes to self-annihilation.

 

[Moonbeam]

Bringing up 'cyanide tablets' just reminds me of the way that restricting the sales of of non-prescription pain-killers has been shown to reduce the suicide rate. Even just restricting the number of pills you can sell in a single pack, or requiring the pills to be individually packaged (meaning that to gulp down a fatal quantity of them you'd have to first spend time popping them out of their blister packs one-at-a-time) seems to have an effect. Generally people value convenience, even when it comes to self-annihilation.

Seems to me that what the big offenders really want is company.

 

[nakedfrog]

Bringing up 'cyanide tablets' just reminds me of the way that restricting the sales of of non-prescription pain-killers has been shown to reduce the suicide rate. Even just restricting the number of pills you can sell in a single pack, or requiring the pills to be individually packaged (meaning that to gulp down a fatal quantity of them you'd have to first spend time popping them out of their blister packs one-at-a-time) seems to have an effect. Generally people value convenience, even when it comes to self-annihilation.

There's also the large drop in suicides when the UK switched from coal gas to natural gas a few decades back as an example.

 

[pmv]

You think improving the mental health of our species is a low ROI? That's a bold position.

You are using a very slippery definition of "mental health" here. You are at risk of going full Moonbeam.

In any case, the treatments for 'mental health' conditions, even defined much more restrictively than you are doing here, are really not terribly effective. The whole topic is not very well understood, even if some people sometimes pretend otherwise. But you seem to be using it some fuzzy sense of "making human beings behave in a completely rational and moral manner at all times".