CDZ Gun Control vs. Mental Health Care

[Christophera]

Then why the call to ban firearms?

I'm NOT calling for a ban on firearms. I would never ban firearms. I like my guns. I see no reason to ban firearms.

No, you certainly are not. But Pogo seems to be determined to call for disarming everyone in order to prevent some from using firearms for murders they might just as easily use knives, bats, or some other device for.

Huh?

When or where have I ever called for disarming anyone GW? Are you confusing me with someone else?

I've never made an argument like that here or anywhere else. I've gone out of my way to make the point that that approach is facile, unworkable and would be ineffective anyway.

If I've confused you with someone else, apologies.

I've articulated it in this very thread, as well as every other one I've posted in - this was the hot driving issue of the moment when I joined this site -- right after the Bob Costat/Jovan Belcher commentary and right before the Newtown and Webster shootings. It was what drove me here to make the points on gun violence, which I see as vitally important.

Two and a half years of not being listened to. Fuck.

This is why I'm losing interest in this board-- you can make any number of points, illustrations, documentations, link images, videos, books, quotes.... and nobody's listening. Just talking.

Yes, a board somewhere, someplace is needed that operates with reasonable standards is very much needed.

It's called accountability and it's pretty much everything in productive debate.

It is natural law that SOME debate be productive. It is the natural law purpose of moderation to encourage productive debate and discourage everything else or confine it to a non disruptive area.

But this private property with anonymous owners so things natural and lawful can be ignored. We all suffer.

 

[Sonny Clark]

Then why the call to ban firearms?

I'm NOT calling for a ban on firearms. I would never ban firearms. I like my guns. I see no reason to ban firearms.

No, you certainly are not. But Pogo seems to be determined to call for disarming everyone in order to prevent some from using firearms for murders they might just as easily use knives, bats, or some other device for.

Huh?

When or where have I ever called for disarming anyone GW? Are you confusing me with someone else?

I've never made an argument like that here or anywhere else. I've gone out of my way to make the point that that approach is facile, unworkable and would be ineffective anyway.

If I've confused you with someone else, apologies.

I've articulated it in this very thread, as well as every other one I've posted in - this was the hot driving issue of the moment when I joined this site -- right after the Bob Costat/Jovan Belcher commentary and right before the Newtown and Webster shootings. It was what drove me here to make the points on gun violence, which I see as vitally important.

Two and a half years of not being listened to. Fuck.

This is why I'm losing interest in this board-- you can make any number of points, illustrations, documentations, link images, videos, books, quotes.... and nobody's listening. Just talking.

Have you figured out a solution yet? What do you suggest that would work, that would end gun violence? Remember, you can't get guns off the streets, you can't keep people from getting guns, and you can't read minds to know who is going to go postal at any given minute. So, what is your solution?

 

[Sonny Clark]

I'm NOT calling for a ban on firearms. I would never ban firearms. I like my guns. I see no reason to ban firearms.

No, you certainly are not. But Pogo seems to be determined to call for disarming everyone in order to prevent some from using firearms for murders they might just as easily use knives, bats, or some other device for.

Huh?

When or where have I ever called for disarming anyone GW? Are you confusing me with someone else?

I've never made an argument like that here or anywhere else. I've gone out of my way to make the point that that approach is facile, unworkable and would be ineffective anyway.

If I've confused you with someone else, apologies.

I've articulated it in this very thread, as well as every other one I've posted in - this was the hot driving issue of the moment when I joined this site -- right after the Bob Costat/Jovan Belcher commentary and right before the Newtown and Webster shootings. It was what drove me here to make the points on gun violence, which I see as vitally important.

Two and a half years of not being listened to. Fuck.

This is why I'm losing interest in this board-- you can make any number of points, illustrations, documentations, link images, videos, books, quotes.... and nobody's listening. Just talking.

Yes, a board somewhere, someplace is needed that operates with reasonable standards is very much needed.

It's called accountability and it's pretty much everything in productive debate.

What would you suggest? Any ideas?

 

[Christophera]

You know how hard it is to get people committed or help? And even if you do, they can talk their way out of a facility, they are only there short term.

The same is true if someone is threatening your life. They have to actually try to take your life before the police can do anything, and then, many times it's too late.

We are so worried about individual rights, people are dying because of it....

People are NOT dying because of protecting rights, that's pathetic and silly. People are dying because we have crazy people living amongst us. We have people that believe they have nothing to lose by killing others. We have the depressed, the drug users, the lonely, the ones going through family issues, gang members, cults, those that have no hope for the future, and those that carry hatred in their hearts 24/7.

We're NOT mind readers. We never know when someone may go postal and take out a dozen innocent lives. We don't have the technology to know what people are thinking and feeling. We can NOT blame guns for mental disorders, depression, lost hope, excessive drug use, domestic issues that result in murder or violence, gangs, cults, and other anti-social and uncivil behavior and acts. Taking away guns will NOT solve the problem.

True, that's not even realistic. If God Herself came down ten minutes from now and declared "that's it, no more guns can be made, ever", we'd still have more than enough for every man, woman and child, literally. You can't control that.

Throwing legislation at this is just political posturing worded to look like "we're doing something". It's not. The issue is not legislative; it's cultural. What we need is value shift. Away from the mindless worship of death machines.

Speaking of death machines, I'm guessing you would also like to see all motor vehicles banned and never again produced.

Complete non sequitur.

Motor vehicles are transportation machines. Just as blenders are food-making machines or air conditioners are cooling machines. You can be hit by a car, have your arm gnarled in a blender or be hit on the head by an air conditioner falling out a window, but none of those actions would be consistent with what the machine is designed for.

I disagree. Many more die from legally owned and operated motor vehicles than legally owned and operated firearms annually. So why not an such dangerous and lethal Death machines?

It is likely you are exceeding the rational capacity of the average American with that very, dynamically correct statement. Certainly the average conservative and the common liberal, but they have no guidence, only their opposing directions with constraints defined by mutable social image.

 

[Pogo]

I'm NOT calling for a ban on firearms. I would never ban firearms. I like my guns. I see no reason to ban firearms.

No, you certainly are not. But Pogo seems to be determined to call for disarming everyone in order to prevent some from using firearms for murders they might just as easily use knives, bats, or some other device for.

Huh?

When or where have I ever called for disarming anyone GW? Are you confusing me with someone else?

I've never made an argument like that here or anywhere else. I've gone out of my way to make the point that that approach is facile, unworkable and would be ineffective anyway.

If I've confused you with someone else, apologies.

I've articulated it in this very thread, as well as every other one I've posted in - this was the hot driving issue of the moment when I joined this site -- right after the Bob Costat/Jovan Belcher commentary and right before the Newtown and Webster shootings. It was what drove me here to make the points on gun violence, which I see as vitally important.

Two and a half years of not being listened to. Fuck.

This is why I'm losing interest in this board-- you can make any number of points, illustrations, documentations, link images, videos, books, quotes.... and nobody's listening. Just talking.

Have you figured out a solution yet? What do you suggest that would work, that would end gun violence? Remember, you can't get guns off the streets, you can't keep people from getting guns, and you can't read minds to know who is going to go postal at any given minute. So, what is your solution?

SOL (sighing out loud)

What's the point. I've put it out a thousand times, nobody listens. Fuck it. It's a waste of time.

This is why we get no further than the superficial "ban guns/don't ban guns" bullshit -- because nobody wants to look any deeper into root causes. Far easier to square off in some superficial bullshit meaningless legislation arguments than to stop and look at who we are.

The overwhelming majority of gun violence is committed by males. The overwhelming majority of mass gun slayings is done by white males. Those should be two giant unignorable elephant-in-the-room clues right there. But noooo, let's talk gun bans so we don't have to go there.

Let's run Bob Costas one more time -- this was the buzz when I came here and it's still right on target....

Context: Early December, 2012: Gun violence was a hot topic; a football player had just that week taken a gun, killed his pregnant wife, then drove to his practice field, went to his coaches, thanked them for what they had done for him and then blew his head off in front of them. A week or two before, a guy in a Jacksonville convenience store parking lot found the car next to his playing their music too loud, opened fire into the car, killing one of the kids. A week after this broadcast, Adam Lanza took his mom's gun, snuffed her out in her bed, then went to his old school and slaughtered 20 kids and teachers including himself. Ten days after that, William Spengler set fire to his own house in Webster NY so he could ambush the responding firefighters...

​

and notice once again ... you can find this video in about a million uploads on YouTube, and every damn one of them calls it a "gun control rant" --- even though he never once mentions anything about gun control, gun restrictions, gun laws -- nothing. Because that's the only level this society seems to be able to handle. If it's not about gun bans, we don't want to hear it -- we'll just imagine it IS about gun bans, and go with that.

The buzz after this video, certainly including this board was "fire Bob Costas". As other media people talked about the issue, the corresponding buzz was "deport Piers Morgan" and "arrest David Gregory". Always a singular direction as shutting up any voices that dare challenge us to think about who we are. Oh no, we can't have that -- it interrupts the superficial bullshit we like to think is all we're capable of.

"All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest"

I've about had it wasting my breath on people who can't be bothered to listen. Y'all can deal with it or slaughter each other in your own ignorance.

 

[Pogo]

No, you certainly are not. But Pogo seems to be determined to call for disarming everyone in order to prevent some from using firearms for murders they might just as easily use knives, bats, or some other device for.

Huh?

When or where have I ever called for disarming anyone GW? Are you confusing me with someone else?

I've never made an argument like that here or anywhere else. I've gone out of my way to make the point that that approach is facile, unworkable and would be ineffective anyway.

If I've confused you with someone else, apologies.

I've articulated it in this very thread, as well as every other one I've posted in - this was the hot driving issue of the moment when I joined this site -- right after the Bob Costat/Jovan Belcher commentary and right before the Newtown and Webster shootings. It was what drove me here to make the points on gun violence, which I see as vitally important.

Two and a half years of not being listened to. Fuck.

This is why I'm losing interest in this board-- you can make any number of points, illustrations, documentations, link images, videos, books, quotes.... and nobody's listening. Just talking.

Have you figured out a solution yet? What do you suggest that would work, that would end gun violence? Remember, you can't get guns off the streets, you can't keep people from getting guns, and you can't read minds to know who is going to go postal at any given minute. So, what is your solution?

SOL (sighing out loud)

What's the point. I've put it out a thousand times, nobody listens. Fuck it. It's a waste of time.

This is why we get no further than the superficial "ban guns/don't ban guns" bullshit -- because nobody wants to look any deeper into root causes. Far easier to square off in some superficial bullshit meaningless legislation arguments than to stop and look at who we are.

The overwhelming majority of gun violence is committed by males. The overwhelming majority of mass gun slayings is done by white males. Those should be two giant unignorable elephant-in-the-room clues right there. But noooo, let's talk gun bans so we don't have to go there.

Let's run Bob Costas one more time -- this was the buzz when I came here and it's still right on target....

Context: Early December, 2012: Gun violence was a hot topic; a football player had just that week taken a gun, killed his pregnant wife, then drove to his practice field, went to his coaches, thanked them for what they had done for him and then blew his head off in front of them. A week or two before, a guy in a Jacksonville convenience store parking lot found the car next to his playing their music too loud, opened fire into the car, killing one of the kids. A week after this broadcast, Adam Lanza took his mom's gun, snuffed her out in her bed, then went to his old school and slaughtered 20 kids and teachers including himself. Ten days after that, William Spengler set fire to his own house in Webster NY so he could ambush the responding firefighters...

​

and notice once again ... you can find this video in about a million uploads on YouTube, and every damn one of them calls it a "gun control rant" --- even though he never once mentions anything about gun control, gun restrictions, gun laws -- nothing. Because that's the only level this society seems to be able to handle. If it's not about gun bans, we don't want to hear it -- we'll just imagine it IS about gun bans, and go with that.

The buzz after this video, certainly including this board was "fire Bob Costas". As other media people talked about the issue, the corresponding buzz was "deport Piers Morgan" and "arrest David Gregory". Always a singular direction as shutting up any voices that dare challenge us to think about who we are. Oh no, we can't have that -- it interrupts the superficial bullshit we like to think is all we're capable of.

"All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest"

I've about had it wasting my breath on people who can't be bothered to listen. Y'all can deal with it or slaughter each other in your own ignorance.

Sonny Clark
Can you please explain what the hell you find "funny" about that post?

There are times I joke, and there are times I toss in a pun or something to lighten the point.
This is neither of those times.

 

[gallantwarrior]

I

Then why the call to ban firearms?

I'm NOT calling for a ban on firearms. I would never ban firearms. I like my guns. I see no reason to ban firearms.

No, you certainly are not. But Pogo seems to be determined to call for disarming everyone in order to prevent some from using firearms for murders they might just as easily use knives, bats, or some other device for.

Huh?

When or where have I ever called for disarming anyone GW? Are you confusing me with someone else?

I've never made an argument like that here or anywhere else. I've gone out of my way to make the point that that approach is facile, unworkable and would be ineffective anyway.

If I've confused you with someone else, apologies.

I've articulated it in this very thread, as well as every other one I've posted in - this was the hot driving issue of the moment when I joined this site -- right after the Bob Costat/Jovan Belcher commentary and right before the Newtown and Webster shootings. It was what drove me here to make the points on gun violence, which I see as vitally important.

Two and a half years of not being listened to. Fuck.

This is why I'm losing interest in this board-- you can make any number of points, illustrations, documentations, link images, videos, books, quotes.... and nobody's listening. Just talking.

I understand your frustration with how so many threads get derailed. Generally, if one I'm interested in turns into a shit-slinging festival, I move on.

 

[gallantwarrior]

Alrighty, then...
The suggestion has been made that the root causes driving any specific demographic to commit these atrocities be identified. If we were able to do that, we'd have a greater chance of averting them. I venture to suggest that these causes are complex and multiple. I think we can safely identify the primary demographic as young, white males, most who are currently or had previously been treated with psychotropic drugs.
Unfortunately, politicians have highjacked the issue in order to advance their ideological agendas. This turns the issue into a hot button item and both sides of the bab/ don't ban dichotomy fail to consider any other discussion.

 

[RandallFlagg]

No, you certainly are not. But Pogo seems to be determined to call for disarming everyone in order to prevent some from using firearms for murders they might just as easily use knives, bats, or some other device for.

Huh?

When or where have I ever called for disarming anyone GW? Are you confusing me with someone else?

I've never made an argument like that here or anywhere else. I've gone out of my way to make the point that that approach is facile, unworkable and would be ineffective anyway.

If I've confused you with someone else, apologies.

I've articulated it in this very thread, as well as every other one I've posted in - this was the hot driving issue of the moment when I joined this site -- right after the Bob Costat/Jovan Belcher commentary and right before the Newtown and Webster shootings. It was what drove me here to make the points on gun violence, which I see as vitally important.

Two and a half years of not being listened to. Fuck.

This is why I'm losing interest in this board-- you can make any number of points, illustrations, documentations, link images, videos, books, quotes.... and nobody's listening. Just talking.

Have you figured out a solution yet? What do you suggest that would work, that would end gun violence? Remember, you can't get guns off the streets, you can't keep people from getting guns, and you can't read minds to know who is going to go postal at any given minute. So, what is your solution?

SOL (sighing out loud)

What's the point. I've put it out a thousand times, nobody listens. Fuck it. It's a waste of time.

This is why we get no further than the superficial "ban guns/don't ban guns" bullshit -- because nobody wants to look any deeper into root causes. Far easier to square off in some superficial bullshit meaningless legislation arguments than to stop and look at who we are.

The overwhelming majority of gun violence is committed by males. The overwhelming majority of mass gun slayings is done by white males. Those should be two giant unignorable elephant-in-the-room clues right there. But noooo, let's talk gun bans so we don't have to go there.

Let's run Bob Costas one more time -- this was the buzz when I came here and it's still right on target....

Context: Early December, 2012: Gun violence was a hot topic; a football player had just that week taken a gun, killed his pregnant wife, then drove to his practice field, went to his coaches, thanked them for what they had done for him and then blew his head off in front of them. A week or two before, a guy in a Jacksonville convenience store parking lot found the car next to his playing their music too loud, opened fire into the car, killing one of the kids. A week after this broadcast, Adam Lanza took his mom's gun, snuffed her out in her bed, then went to his old school and slaughtered 20 kids and teachers including himself. Ten days after that, William Spengler set fire to his own house in Webster NY so he could ambush the responding firefighters...

​

and notice once again ... you can find this video in about a million uploads on YouTube, and every damn one of them calls it a "gun control rant" --- even though he never once mentions anything about gun control, gun restrictions, gun laws -- nothing. Because that's the only level this society seems to be able to handle. If it's not about gun bans, we don't want to hear it -- we'll just imagine it IS about gun bans, and go with that.

The buzz after this video, certainly including this board was "fire Bob Costas". As other media people talked about the issue, the corresponding buzz was "deport Piers Morgan" and "arrest David Gregory". Always a singular direction as shutting up any voices that dare challenge us to think about who we are. Oh no, we can't have that -- it interrupts the superficial bullshit we like to think is all we're capable of.

"All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest"

I've about had it wasting my breath on people who can't be bothered to listen. Y'all can deal with it or slaughter each other in your own ignorance.

Poor little guy. I'll explain to you what is "funny". Been to the South side of Chicago on a weekend night? Yet you claim that the majority of murders are committed by "white males". BS. More murders are committed by blacks AGAINST blacks than all the nut jobs in the country COMBINED.

Frankly, I'm glad to see your frustration. Rather than preach your propaganda to those who aren't interested (like me), why not just stop?

 

[Pogo]

Alrighty, then...
The suggestion has been made that the root causes driving any specific demographic to commit these atrocities be identified. If we were able to do that, we'd have a greater chance of averting them. I venture to suggest that these causes are complex and multiple. I think we can safely identify the primary demographic as young, white males, most who are currently or had previously been treated with psychotropic drugs.
Unfortunately, politicians have highjacked the issue in order to advance their ideological agendas. This turns the issue into a hot button item and both sides of the bab/ don't ban dichotomy fail to consider any other discussion.

They have indeed so hijacked. It's pandering to the simplistic, because it's easier to bicker over "ban guns!!" versus "No, Second Amendment!!" than it is to dare touch the foundation of what drives it.

You're close here, but they're not necessarily young -- the latest one was -- but Spengler in my example was 62; Jim David Adkisson (Powell church shooting) was 58; James von Brunn was a month shy of 89. Psychotropic drugs appear some of the time -- but none of these above examples IIRC. So trying to pin it on drugs is another deflection.

What all of these shooters and pretty much any you can find, have in common is a power problem. Whether drugs are involved or not -- Harris and Klebold, the Luby's guy, Jared Loughner, these three men above, countless workplace slayings --- and the latest racist fuckbag in Charleston --- all men who felt themselves deprived of some kind of power and pervertedly saw the gun as the instrument that would fix that.

THAT idea is the root of the problem.

That they take the firearm to be their vehicle to power is of course dead wrong. But we can hardly act surprised that they would come to that conclusion -- they've been told that since birth. We all have. Our daily/nightly television says so. Our childhood comic books say so. Our movies and video games say so. Our childhood toys told us that, as soon as we were big enough to hold one in our hand. And of course our history of conquest, first our own continent and with that secure, our own planet. Check out our icons: war heroes, Indian killers, the cavalry "clearing" the Indians. We grow up from earliest childhood playing "cops and robbers" and "cowboys and Indians". Always the dichotomy, always the endless battle. And anyone who's any age from newborn to their mid-60s lives in a country that has been, for his/her entire life, at war somewhere. Continuously.

If all that ain't drumming in the continuous relentless message that you deal with a problem by shooting at it, I don't know what is. What would be shocking would be if NO ONE took that message to heart.

In a nutshell you could say these killers are simply doing what they've been told to do all their lives.

My question is --- why are we telling ourselves that?

 

[Pogo]

Huh?

When or where have I ever called for disarming anyone GW? Are you confusing me with someone else?

I've never made an argument like that here or anywhere else. I've gone out of my way to make the point that that approach is facile, unworkable and would be ineffective anyway.

If I've confused you with someone else, apologies.

I've articulated it in this very thread, as well as every other one I've posted in - this was the hot driving issue of the moment when I joined this site -- right after the Bob Costat/Jovan Belcher commentary and right before the Newtown and Webster shootings. It was what drove me here to make the points on gun violence, which I see as vitally important.

Two and a half years of not being listened to. Fuck.

This is why I'm losing interest in this board-- you can make any number of points, illustrations, documentations, link images, videos, books, quotes.... and nobody's listening. Just talking.

Have you figured out a solution yet? What do you suggest that would work, that would end gun violence? Remember, you can't get guns off the streets, you can't keep people from getting guns, and you can't read minds to know who is going to go postal at any given minute. So, what is your solution?

SOL (sighing out loud)

What's the point. I've put it out a thousand times, nobody listens. Fuck it. It's a waste of time.

This is why we get no further than the superficial "ban guns/don't ban guns" bullshit -- because nobody wants to look any deeper into root causes. Far easier to square off in some superficial bullshit meaningless legislation arguments than to stop and look at who we are.

The overwhelming majority of gun violence is committed by males. The overwhelming majority of mass gun slayings is done by white males. Those should be two giant unignorable elephant-in-the-room clues right there. But noooo, let's talk gun bans so we don't have to go there.

Let's run Bob Costas one more time -- this was the buzz when I came here and it's still right on target....

Context: Early December, 2012: Gun violence was a hot topic; a football player had just that week taken a gun, killed his pregnant wife, then drove to his practice field, went to his coaches, thanked them for what they had done for him and then blew his head off in front of them. A week or two before, a guy in a Jacksonville convenience store parking lot found the car next to his playing their music too loud, opened fire into the car, killing one of the kids. A week after this broadcast, Adam Lanza took his mom's gun, snuffed her out in her bed, then went to his old school and slaughtered 20 kids and teachers including himself. Ten days after that, William Spengler set fire to his own house in Webster NY so he could ambush the responding firefighters...

​

and notice once again ... you can find this video in about a million uploads on YouTube, and every damn one of them calls it a "gun control rant" --- even though he never once mentions anything about gun control, gun restrictions, gun laws -- nothing. Because that's the only level this society seems to be able to handle. If it's not about gun bans, we don't want to hear it -- we'll just imagine it IS about gun bans, and go with that.

The buzz after this video, certainly including this board was "fire Bob Costas". As other media people talked about the issue, the corresponding buzz was "deport Piers Morgan" and "arrest David Gregory". Always a singular direction as shutting up any voices that dare challenge us to think about who we are. Oh no, we can't have that -- it interrupts the superficial bullshit we like to think is all we're capable of.

"All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest"

I've about had it wasting my breath on people who can't be bothered to listen. Y'all can deal with it or slaughter each other in your own ignorance.

Poor little guy. I'll explain to you what is "funny". Been to the South side of Chicago on a weekend night? Yet you claim that the majority of murders are committed by "white males". BS. More murders are committed by blacks AGAINST blacks than all the nut jobs in the country COMBINED.

Perhaps there's still a slot open in remedial READING class... be sure to show 'em this, which is still sitting in the above post:

The overwhelming majority of gun violence is committed by males. The overwhelming majority of mass gun slayings is done by white males.

-- But thanks so much for the demonstration of why the Strawman is a logical fallacy.

 

[RandallFlagg]

If I've confused you with someone else, apologies.

I've articulated it in this very thread, as well as every other one I've posted in - this was the hot driving issue of the moment when I joined this site -- right after the Bob Costat/Jovan Belcher commentary and right before the Newtown and Webster shootings. It was what drove me here to make the points on gun violence, which I see as vitally important.

Two and a half years of not being listened to. Fuck.

This is why I'm losing interest in this board-- you can make any number of points, illustrations, documentations, link images, videos, books, quotes.... and nobody's listening. Just talking.

Have you figured out a solution yet? What do you suggest that would work, that would end gun violence? Remember, you can't get guns off the streets, you can't keep people from getting guns, and you can't read minds to know who is going to go postal at any given minute. So, what is your solution?

SOL (sighing out loud)

What's the point. I've put it out a thousand times, nobody listens. Fuck it. It's a waste of time.

This is why we get no further than the superficial "ban guns/don't ban guns" bullshit -- because nobody wants to look any deeper into root causes. Far easier to square off in some superficial bullshit meaningless legislation arguments than to stop and look at who we are.

The overwhelming majority of gun violence is committed by males. The overwhelming majority of mass gun slayings is done by white males. Those should be two giant unignorable elephant-in-the-room clues right there. But noooo, let's talk gun bans so we don't have to go there.

Let's run Bob Costas one more time -- this was the buzz when I came here and it's still right on target....

Context: Early December, 2012: Gun violence was a hot topic; a football player had just that week taken a gun, killed his pregnant wife, then drove to his practice field, went to his coaches, thanked them for what they had done for him and then blew his head off in front of them. A week or two before, a guy in a Jacksonville convenience store parking lot found the car next to his playing their music too loud, opened fire into the car, killing one of the kids. A week after this broadcast, Adam Lanza took his mom's gun, snuffed her out in her bed, then went to his old school and slaughtered 20 kids and teachers including himself. Ten days after that, William Spengler set fire to his own house in Webster NY so he could ambush the responding firefighters...

​

and notice once again ... you can find this video in about a million uploads on YouTube, and every damn one of them calls it a "gun control rant" --- even though he never once mentions anything about gun control, gun restrictions, gun laws -- nothing. Because that's the only level this society seems to be able to handle. If it's not about gun bans, we don't want to hear it -- we'll just imagine it IS about gun bans, and go with that.

The buzz after this video, certainly including this board was "fire Bob Costas". As other media people talked about the issue, the corresponding buzz was "deport Piers Morgan" and "arrest David Gregory". Always a singular direction as shutting up any voices that dare challenge us to think about who we are. Oh no, we can't have that -- it interrupts the superficial bullshit we like to think is all we're capable of.

"All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest"

I've about had it wasting my breath on people who can't be bothered to listen. Y'all can deal with it or slaughter each other in your own ignorance.

Poor little guy. I'll explain to you what is "funny". Been to the South side of Chicago on a weekend night? Yet you claim that the majority of murders are committed by "white males". BS. More murders are committed by blacks AGAINST blacks than all the nut jobs in the country COMBINED.

Perhaps there's still a slot open in remedial READING class... be sure to show 'em this, which is still sitting in the above post:

The overwhelming majority of gun violence is committed by males. The overwhelming majority of mass gun slayings is done by white males.

-- But thanks so much for the demonstration of why the Strawman is a logical fallacy.

Still Bullshit. How may weekends have gone by in that bastion of liberal thought - Chicago, where (on average) 30-35 black males are killed IN A SINGLE WEEKEND? To date? some 805 people. Either hold blacks to the SAME standard you are apparently holding "young white males" or don't. But your stats don't hold up. Nice try, however.

 

[Christophera]

Alrighty, then...
The suggestion has been made that the root causes driving any specific demographic to commit these atrocities be identified. If we were able to do that, we'd have a greater chance of averting them. I venture to suggest that these causes are complex and multiple. I think we can safely identify the primary demographic as young, white males, most who are currently or had previously been treated with psychotropic drugs.
Unfortunately, politicians have highjacked the issue in order to advance their ideological agendas. This turns the issue into a hot button item and both sides of the bab/ don't ban dichotomy fail to consider any other discussion.

They have indeed so hijacked. It's pandering to the simplistic, because it's easier to bicker over "ban guns!!" versus "No, Second Amendment!!" than it is to dare touch the foundation of what drives it.

You're close here, but they're not necessarily young -- the latest one was -- but Spengler in my example was 62; Jim David Adkisson (Powell church shooting) was 58; James von Brunn was a month shy of 89. Psychotropic drugs appear some of the time -- but none of these above examples IIRC. So trying to pin it on drugs is another deflection.

What all of these shooters and pretty much any you can find, have in common is a power problem. Whether drugs are involved or not -- Harris and Klebold, the Luby's guy, Jared Loughner, these three men above, countless workplace slayings --- and the latest racist fuckbag in Charleston --- all men who felt themselves deprived of some kind of power and pervertedly saw the gun as the instrument that would fix that.

THAT idea is the root of the problem.

That they take the firearm to be their vehicle to power is of course dead wrong. But we can hardly act surprised that they would come to that conclusion -- they've been told that since birth. We all have. Our daily/nightly television says so. Our childhood comic books say so. Our movies and video games say so. Our childhood toys told us that, as soon as we were big enough to hold one in our hand. And of course our history of conquest, first our own continent and with that secure, our own planet. Check out our icons: war heroes, Indian killers, the cavalry "clearing" the Indians. We grow up from earliest childhood playing "cops and robbers" and "cowboys and Indians". Always the dichotomy, always the endless battle. And anyone who's any age from newborn to their mid-60s lives in a country that has been, for his/her entire life, at war somewhere. Continuously.

If all that ain't drumming in the continuous relentless message that you deal with a problem by shooting at it, I don't know what is. What would be shocking would be if NO ONE took that message to heart.

In a nutshell you could say these killers are simply doing what they've been told to do all their lives.

My question is --- why are we telling ourselves that?

This my friend would be a cognitive distortion of all or "nothing thinking" or "overgeneralization".

"and the latest racist fuckbag in Charleston --- all men who felt themselves deprived of some kind of power and pervertedly saw the gun as the instrument that would fix that.

THAT idea is the root of the problem."

The real issue is that there is no effective mental health care that can deal with people issues on an emergency basis.

I there was, and media publicized it while county mental health facilities administered it probably 90% of those who would act out extreme violence using a gun would not. Maybe more, because it is a FACT, human beings have an instinct to survive.

RELIEF is what they seek. The proposed treatment here WILL provide that and a profound beginning as well as transition into effective treatment. That is why the senior director of the S.B.co mental health department had the medical doctor of the mental health department write and sign this letter in the departments behalf.

It is a defacto approval of the proposed treatment because director of such public departments DO NOT carry requests forward to the state they do not approve of.

After they did not provide the response of the state in writing, I knew the supervisors stopped them because it was against the morals of the church controlling government, so filed this FOIA request with the supervisors clerk of the board.

There was no response, and within three years the request was gone from the clerk of the boards records.

It's been refiled, the same, copied, originally stamped request now has another stamp on it!

ON EDIT:
BTW, for your reference, and others, here is a list of cognitive distortions. Such distortions are quite normal and common. From my research, all forms of media have been depicting them as normal in dialog to varying degrees for about 30 years. So this is a re education into being aware of the inadvertent uses of such things. It's a fact that critical thinking cannot be done with distortions.

These were created in the early 1990's by cognitive therapists by working with individuals that were unhappy with what they though about their lives. Cognitive therapy amounts to the therapist talking with the patient about what they think of their life and catching/correcting their uses of distortions!

COGNITIVE DISTORTIONS
1. All or nothing thinking: Things are placed in black or white categories. If things are less than perfect self is viewed as failure.

2. Over generalization: Single event is viewed as continuous failure.

3. Mental filter: Details in life (positive or negative) are amplified in importance while opposite is rejected.

4. Minimizing: Perceiving one or opposite experiences (positive or negative) as absolute and maintaining singularity of belief to one or the other.

5. Mind reading: One absolutely concludes that others are reacting positively or negatively without investigating reality.

6. Fortune Telling: Based on previous 5 distortions, anticipation of negative or positive outcome of situations is established

7. Catastrophizing: Exaggerated importance of self's failures and others successes.

8. Emotional reasoning: One feels as though emotional state IS reality of situation. ie.

9. "Should" statements: Self imposed rules about behavior creating guilt at self inability to adhere and anger at others in their inability to conform to self's rules.

10. Labeling: Instead of understanding errors over generalization is applied.

11. Personalization: Thinking that the actions or statements of others are a reaction to you.

12. Entitlement: Believing that you deserve things you have not earned.

 

[Pogo]

Alrighty, then...
The suggestion has been made that the root causes driving any specific demographic to commit these atrocities be identified. If we were able to do that, we'd have a greater chance of averting them. I venture to suggest that these causes are complex and multiple. I think we can safely identify the primary demographic as young, white males, most who are currently or had previously been treated with psychotropic drugs.
Unfortunately, politicians have highjacked the issue in order to advance their ideological agendas. This turns the issue into a hot button item and both sides of the bab/ don't ban dichotomy fail to consider any other discussion.

They have indeed so hijacked. It's pandering to the simplistic, because it's easier to bicker over "ban guns!!" versus "No, Second Amendment!!" than it is to dare touch the foundation of what drives it.

You're close here, but they're not necessarily young -- the latest one was -- but Spengler in my example was 62; Jim David Adkisson (Powell church shooting) was 58; James von Brunn was a month shy of 89. Psychotropic drugs appear some of the time -- but none of these above examples IIRC. So trying to pin it on drugs is another deflection.

What all of these shooters and pretty much any you can find, have in common is a power problem. Whether drugs are involved or not -- Harris and Klebold, the Luby's guy, Jared Loughner, these three men above, countless workplace slayings --- and the latest racist fuckbag in Charleston --- all men who felt themselves deprived of some kind of power and pervertedly saw the gun as the instrument that would fix that.

THAT idea is the root of the problem.

That they take the firearm to be their vehicle to power is of course dead wrong. But we can hardly act surprised that they would come to that conclusion -- they've been told that since birth. We all have. Our daily/nightly television says so. Our childhood comic books say so. Our movies and video games say so. Our childhood toys told us that, as soon as we were big enough to hold one in our hand. And of course our history of conquest, first our own continent and with that secure, our own planet. Check out our icons: war heroes, Indian killers, the cavalry "clearing" the Indians. We grow up from earliest childhood playing "cops and robbers" and "cowboys and Indians". Always the dichotomy, always the endless battle. And anyone who's any age from newborn to their mid-60s lives in a country that has been, for his/her entire life, at war somewhere. Continuously.

If all that ain't drumming in the continuous relentless message that you deal with a problem by shooting at it, I don't know what is. What would be shocking would be if NO ONE took that message to heart.

In a nutshell you could say these killers are simply doing what they've been told to do all their lives.

My question is --- why are we telling ourselves that?

This my friend would be a cognitive distortion of all or "nothing thinking" or "overgeneralization".

"and the latest racist fuckbag in Charleston --- all men who felt themselves deprived of some kind of power and pervertedly saw the gun as the instrument that would fix that.

THAT idea is the root of the problem."

The real issue is that there is no effective mental health care that can deal with people issues on an emergency basis.

I there was, and media publicized it while county mental health facilities administered it probably 90% of those who would act out extreme violence using a gun would not. Maybe more, because it is a FACT, human beings have an instinct to survive.

RELIEF is what they seek. The proposed treatment here WILL provide that and a profound beginning as well as transition into effective treatment. That is why the senior director of the S.B.co mental health department had the medical doctor of the mental health department write and sign this letter in the departments behalf.

It is a defacto approval of the proposed treatment because director of such public departments DO NOT carry requests forward to the state they do not approve of.

After they did not provide the response of the state in writing, I knew the supervisors stopped them because it was against the morals of the church controlling government, so filed this FOIA request with the supervisors clerk of the board.

There was no response, and within three years the request was gone from the clerk of the boards records.

It's been refiled, the same, copied, originally stamped request now has another stamp on it!

Sorry but that's still being distracted by a tangent.

There's no doubt mental illnesses and/or drugs play a part in many of these events, including this latest one. But the base motivation, and the societally-"approved" remedy for it, remain the same, drugs or no drugs.

The bottom line is this -- if we lived in a society where one's power problems were acted out by dressing like a clown and dancing on the street ........ if such clowns appeared in every TV cop show and video game and Hollywood movie history book and comic book and toy store and our vernacular language terms --- these same antagonists would be doing that, whether they were drug-addled or not.

But we have no such tradition. What we do have is a culture where one's power problems are acted out by firearm. Hence the results.

Some may indeed flip out because of drug interactions. But that has nothing to do with why they choose guns as their instrument. They make that choice because we keep telling them to.

 

[Christophera]

Alrighty, then...
The suggestion has been made that the root causes driving any specific demographic to commit these atrocities be identified. If we were able to do that, we'd have a greater chance of averting them. I venture to suggest that these causes are complex and multiple. I think we can safely identify the primary demographic as young, white males, most who are currently or had previously been treated with psychotropic drugs.
Unfortunately, politicians have highjacked the issue in order to advance their ideological agendas. This turns the issue into a hot button item and both sides of the bab/ don't ban dichotomy fail to consider any other discussion.

They have indeed so hijacked. It's pandering to the simplistic, because it's easier to bicker over "ban guns!!" versus "No, Second Amendment!!" than it is to dare touch the foundation of what drives it.

You're close here, but they're not necessarily young -- the latest one was -- but Spengler in my example was 62; Jim David Adkisson (Powell church shooting) was 58; James von Brunn was a month shy of 89. Psychotropic drugs appear some of the time -- but none of these above examples IIRC. So trying to pin it on drugs is another deflection.

What all of these shooters and pretty much any you can find, have in common is a power problem. Whether drugs are involved or not -- Harris and Klebold, the Luby's guy, Jared Loughner, these three men above, countless workplace slayings --- and the latest racist fuckbag in Charleston --- all men who felt themselves deprived of some kind of power and pervertedly saw the gun as the instrument that would fix that.

THAT idea is the root of the problem.

That they take the firearm to be their vehicle to power is of course dead wrong. But we can hardly act surprised that they would come to that conclusion -- they've been told that since birth. We all have. Our daily/nightly television says so. Our childhood comic books say so. Our movies and video games say so. Our childhood toys told us that, as soon as we were big enough to hold one in our hand. And of course our history of conquest, first our own continent and with that secure, our own planet. Check out our icons: war heroes, Indian killers, the cavalry "clearing" the Indians. We grow up from earliest childhood playing "cops and robbers" and "cowboys and Indians". Always the dichotomy, always the endless battle. And anyone who's any age from newborn to their mid-60s lives in a country that has been, for his/her entire life, at war somewhere. Continuously.

If all that ain't drumming in the continuous relentless message that you deal with a problem by shooting at it, I don't know what is. What would be shocking would be if NO ONE took that message to heart.

In a nutshell you could say these killers are simply doing what they've been told to do all their lives.

My question is --- why are we telling ourselves that?

This my friend would be a cognitive distortion of all or "nothing thinking" or "overgeneralization".

"and the latest racist fuckbag in Charleston --- all men who felt themselves deprived of some kind of power and pervertedly saw the gun as the instrument that would fix that.

THAT idea is the root of the problem."

The real issue is that there is no effective mental health care that can deal with people issues on an emergency basis.

I there was, and media publicized it while county mental health facilities administered it probably 90% of those who would act out extreme violence using a gun would not. Maybe more, because it is a FACT, human beings have an instinct to survive.

RELIEF is what they seek. The proposed treatment here WILL provide that and a profound beginning as well as transition into effective treatment. That is why the senior director of the S.B.co mental health department had the medical doctor of the mental health department write and sign this letter in the departments behalf.

It is a defacto approval of the proposed treatment because director of such public departments DO NOT carry requests forward to the state they do not approve of.

After they did not provide the response of the state in writing, I knew the supervisors stopped them because it was against the morals of the church controlling government, so filed this FOIA request with the supervisors clerk of the board.

There was no response, and within three years the request was gone from the clerk of the boards records.

It's been refiled, the same, copied, originally stamped request now has another stamp on it!

Sorry but that's still being distracted by a tangent.

There's no doubt mental illnesses and/or drugs play a part in many of these events, including this latest one. But the base motivation, and the societally-"approved" remedy for it, remain the same, drugs or no drugs.

The bottom line is this -- if we lived in a society where one's power problems were acted out by dressing like a clown and dancing on the street ........ these same antagonists would be doing that --- whether they were drug-addled or not.

But we have no such tradition. What we do have is a culture where one's power problems are acted out by firearm. Hence the results.

Not a distraction, absolutely focused on solution.

The only way to deem my post as a distortion is to be obsessed with discussion of the problem to a degree where there is and attempt to dismiss the solution, not too functional.

BTW, here is another distortion of "all or nothing thinking" you are trying to use. Try to avoid that, not functional for critical thinking.

"What we do have is a culture where one's power problems are acted out by firearm. Hence the results."

No.

Remember, accountability in this discussion is vital to saving lives. I've well proven that authority having the duty WILL not be accountable to even flooding laws controlling our legal access to information needed to compel the creation of effective mental health care. That letter I posted was 1999, the FOIA from April 2000.

Before that I subpoenaed arrest and booking records that would prove there was a mass insanity here where there were dozens of murders.

The sheriff department failed to appear on subpoena.

The subpoenaed records would have provided proof to psychology that direct treatment to the human mind was the only real way to create, OR prevent extreme behaviors.

 

[Pogo]

Alrighty, then...
The suggestion has been made that the root causes driving any specific demographic to commit these atrocities be identified. If we were able to do that, we'd have a greater chance of averting them. I venture to suggest that these causes are complex and multiple. I think we can safely identify the primary demographic as young, white males, most who are currently or had previously been treated with psychotropic drugs.
Unfortunately, politicians have highjacked the issue in order to advance their ideological agendas. This turns the issue into a hot button item and both sides of the bab/ don't ban dichotomy fail to consider any other discussion.

They have indeed so hijacked. It's pandering to the simplistic, because it's easier to bicker over "ban guns!!" versus "No, Second Amendment!!" than it is to dare touch the foundation of what drives it.

You're close here, but they're not necessarily young -- the latest one was -- but Spengler in my example was 62; Jim David Adkisson (Powell church shooting) was 58; James von Brunn was a month shy of 89. Psychotropic drugs appear some of the time -- but none of these above examples IIRC. So trying to pin it on drugs is another deflection.

What all of these shooters and pretty much any you can find, have in common is a power problem. Whether drugs are involved or not -- Harris and Klebold, the Luby's guy, Jared Loughner, these three men above, countless workplace slayings --- and the latest racist fuckbag in Charleston --- all men who felt themselves deprived of some kind of power and pervertedly saw the gun as the instrument that would fix that.

THAT idea is the root of the problem.

That they take the firearm to be their vehicle to power is of course dead wrong. But we can hardly act surprised that they would come to that conclusion -- they've been told that since birth. We all have. Our daily/nightly television says so. Our childhood comic books say so. Our movies and video games say so. Our childhood toys told us that, as soon as we were big enough to hold one in our hand. And of course our history of conquest, first our own continent and with that secure, our own planet. Check out our icons: war heroes, Indian killers, the cavalry "clearing" the Indians. We grow up from earliest childhood playing "cops and robbers" and "cowboys and Indians". Always the dichotomy, always the endless battle. And anyone who's any age from newborn to their mid-60s lives in a country that has been, for his/her entire life, at war somewhere. Continuously.

If all that ain't drumming in the continuous relentless message that you deal with a problem by shooting at it, I don't know what is. What would be shocking would be if NO ONE took that message to heart.

In a nutshell you could say these killers are simply doing what they've been told to do all their lives.

My question is --- why are we telling ourselves that?

This my friend would be a cognitive distortion of all or "nothing thinking" or "overgeneralization".

"and the latest racist fuckbag in Charleston --- all men who felt themselves deprived of some kind of power and pervertedly saw the gun as the instrument that would fix that.

THAT idea is the root of the problem."

The real issue is that there is no effective mental health care that can deal with people issues on an emergency basis.

I there was, and media publicized it while county mental health facilities administered it probably 90% of those who would act out extreme violence using a gun would not. Maybe more, because it is a FACT, human beings have an instinct to survive.

RELIEF is what they seek. The proposed treatment here WILL provide that and a profound beginning as well as transition into effective treatment. That is why the senior director of the S.B.co mental health department had the medical doctor of the mental health department write and sign this letter in the departments behalf.

It is a defacto approval of the proposed treatment because director of such public departments DO NOT carry requests forward to the state they do not approve of.

After they did not provide the response of the state in writing, I knew the supervisors stopped them because it was against the morals of the church controlling government, so filed this FOIA request with the supervisors clerk of the board.

There was no response, and within three years the request was gone from the clerk of the boards records.

It's been refiled, the same, copied, originally stamped request now has another stamp on it!

Sorry but that's still being distracted by a tangent.

There's no doubt mental illnesses and/or drugs play a part in many of these events, including this latest one. But the base motivation, and the societally-"approved" remedy for it, remain the same, drugs or no drugs.

The bottom line is this -- if we lived in a society where one's power problems were acted out by dressing like a clown and dancing on the street ........ these same antagonists would be doing that --- whether they were drug-addled or not.

But we have no such tradition. What we do have is a culture where one's power problems are acted out by firearm. Hence the results.

Not a distraction, absolutely focused on solution.

The only way to deem my post as a distortion is to be obsessed with discussion of the problem to a degree where there is and attempt to dismiss the solution, not too functional.

BTW, here is another distortion of "all or nothing thinking" you are trying to use. Try to avoid that, not functional for critical thinking.

"What we do have is a culture where one's power problems are acted out by firearm. Hence the results."

No.

Remember, accountability in this discussion is vital to saving lives. I've well proven that authority having the duty WILL not be accountable to even flooding laws controlling our legal access to information needed to compel the creation of effective mental health care. That letter I posted was 1999, the FOIA from April 2000.

Before that I subpoenaed arrest and booking records that would prove there was a mass insanity here where there were dozens of murders.

The sheriff department failed to appear on subpoena.

The subpoenaed records would have provided proof to psychology that direct treatment to the human mind was the only real way to create, OR prevent extreme behaviors.

You seem to keep wanting to nudge back to a factor that is common to SOME of the mass gun violence events, that being drug effects and/or mental health.

That's useful but only to the events that apply. I'm concerned with the factor that is common to ALL the gun violence events, whether mental health and/or drugs are involved or not. And that is the societal values of Gun Culture.

That's not "all or nothing" thinking; that's addressing an issue directly and universally rather than selectively.

 

[Christophera]

Alrighty, then...
The suggestion has been made that the root causes driving any specific demographic to commit these atrocities be identified. If we were able to do that, we'd have a greater chance of averting them. I venture to suggest that these causes are complex and multiple. I think we can safely identify the primary demographic as young, white males, most who are currently or had previously been treated with psychotropic drugs.
Unfortunately, politicians have highjacked the issue in order to advance their ideological agendas. This turns the issue into a hot button item and both sides of the bab/ don't ban dichotomy fail to consider any other discussion.

They have indeed so hijacked. It's pandering to the simplistic, because it's easier to bicker over "ban guns!!" versus "No, Second Amendment!!" than it is to dare touch the foundation of what drives it.

You're close here, but they're not necessarily young -- the latest one was -- but Spengler in my example was 62; Jim David Adkisson (Powell church shooting) was 58; James von Brunn was a month shy of 89. Psychotropic drugs appear some of the time -- but none of these above examples IIRC. So trying to pin it on drugs is another deflection.

What all of these shooters and pretty much any you can find, have in common is a power problem. Whether drugs are involved or not -- Harris and Klebold, the Luby's guy, Jared Loughner, these three men above, countless workplace slayings --- and the latest racist fuckbag in Charleston --- all men who felt themselves deprived of some kind of power and pervertedly saw the gun as the instrument that would fix that.

THAT idea is the root of the problem.

That they take the firearm to be their vehicle to power is of course dead wrong. But we can hardly act surprised that they would come to that conclusion -- they've been told that since birth. We all have. Our daily/nightly television says so. Our childhood comic books say so. Our movies and video games say so. Our childhood toys told us that, as soon as we were big enough to hold one in our hand. And of course our history of conquest, first our own continent and with that secure, our own planet. Check out our icons: war heroes, Indian killers, the cavalry "clearing" the Indians. We grow up from earliest childhood playing "cops and robbers" and "cowboys and Indians". Always the dichotomy, always the endless battle. And anyone who's any age from newborn to their mid-60s lives in a country that has been, for his/her entire life, at war somewhere. Continuously.

If all that ain't drumming in the continuous relentless message that you deal with a problem by shooting at it, I don't know what is. What would be shocking would be if NO ONE took that message to heart.

In a nutshell you could say these killers are simply doing what they've been told to do all their lives.

My question is --- why are we telling ourselves that?

This my friend would be a cognitive distortion of all or "nothing thinking" or "overgeneralization".

"and the latest racist fuckbag in Charleston --- all men who felt themselves deprived of some kind of power and pervertedly saw the gun as the instrument that would fix that.

THAT idea is the root of the problem."

The real issue is that there is no effective mental health care that can deal with people issues on an emergency basis.

I there was, and media publicized it while county mental health facilities administered it probably 90% of those who would act out extreme violence using a gun would not. Maybe more, because it is a FACT, human beings have an instinct to survive.

RELIEF is what they seek. The proposed treatment here WILL provide that and a profound beginning as well as transition into effective treatment. That is why the senior director of the S.B.co mental health department had the medical doctor of the mental health department write and sign this letter in the departments behalf.

It is a defacto approval of the proposed treatment because director of such public departments DO NOT carry requests forward to the state they do not approve of.

After they did not provide the response of the state in writing, I knew the supervisors stopped them because it was against the morals of the church controlling government, so filed this FOIA request with the supervisors clerk of the board.

There was no response, and within three years the request was gone from the clerk of the boards records.

It's been refiled, the same, copied, originally stamped request now has another stamp on it!

Sorry but that's still being distracted by a tangent.

There's no doubt mental illnesses and/or drugs play a part in many of these events, including this latest one. But the base motivation, and the societally-"approved" remedy for it, remain the same, drugs or no drugs.

The bottom line is this -- if we lived in a society where one's power problems were acted out by dressing like a clown and dancing on the street ........ these same antagonists would be doing that --- whether they were drug-addled or not.

But we have no such tradition. What we do have is a culture where one's power problems are acted out by firearm. Hence the results.

Not a distraction, absolutely focused on solution.

The only way to deem my post as a distortion is to be obsessed with discussion of the problem to a degree where there is and attempt to dismiss the solution, not too functional.

BTW, here is another distortion of "all or nothing thinking" you are trying to use. Try to avoid that, not functional for critical thinking.

"What we do have is a culture where one's power problems are acted out by firearm. Hence the results."

No.

Remember, accountability in this discussion is vital to saving lives. I've well proven that authority having the duty WILL not be accountable to even flooding laws controlling our legal access to information needed to compel the creation of effective mental health care. That letter I posted was 1999, the FOIA from April 2000.

Before that I subpoenaed arrest and booking records that would prove there was a mass insanity here where there were dozens of murders.

The sheriff department failed to appear on subpoena.

The subpoenaed records would have provided proof to psychology that direct treatment to the human mind was the only real way to create, OR prevent extreme behaviors.

You seem to keep wanting to nudge back to a factor that is common to SOME of the mass gun violence events, that being drug effects and/or mental health.

That's useful but only to the events that apply. I'm concerned with the factor that is common to ALL the gun violence events, whether mental health and/or drugs are involved or not. And that is the societal values of Gun Culture.

That's not "all or nothing" thinking; that's addressing an issue directly and universally rather than selectively.

That would be an "overgeneralization" that is not accurate. Firstly its not culture. Culture is about needs. I realize the word has been misused so long it feel normal to join in. No one needs guns that much that often.

It is a SOCIETY that has been covertly manipulated to think that violence is a solution to any difficult personal problem which one cannot deal with.

WRONG!

That is a dysfunctional, dangerous, illegal position.

The only reason such thinking can continue is that ALTERNATIVE ways of addressing the problem are NOT AVAILABLE.

I have offered basic proof that is because the authority of courts and society refuse to follow laws and be accountable to the public trust.

Look what happened when I tried to inform a reporter of a local paper about a 206 lawsuit I filed agains the county in an effort to get this experimental treatment available from the mental health department.

Within 6 weeks 17 reporters and editors were gagged, resigning and fired.

Take the trouble to copy and paste the external redirect url and see the initialed "received" letters to local papers. No story was ever published.

Santa Barbara Secrets of media-Newspress independent county public defender.

Check the links to the lawsuit. REALIZE, that the us district court of th e9th circuit secretly REMOVED a 125 year old court rule that was vital to pro se civil rights plaintiffs rights and access to courts.

 

[Pogo]

They have indeed so hijacked. It's pandering to the simplistic, because it's easier to bicker over "ban guns!!" versus "No, Second Amendment!!" than it is to dare touch the foundation of what drives it.

You're close here, but they're not necessarily young -- the latest one was -- but Spengler in my example was 62; Jim David Adkisson (Powell church shooting) was 58; James von Brunn was a month shy of 89. Psychotropic drugs appear some of the time -- but none of these above examples IIRC. So trying to pin it on drugs is another deflection.

What all of these shooters and pretty much any you can find, have in common is a power problem. Whether drugs are involved or not -- Harris and Klebold, the Luby's guy, Jared Loughner, these three men above, countless workplace slayings --- and the latest racist fuckbag in Charleston --- all men who felt themselves deprived of some kind of power and pervertedly saw the gun as the instrument that would fix that.

THAT idea is the root of the problem.

That they take the firearm to be their vehicle to power is of course dead wrong. But we can hardly act surprised that they would come to that conclusion -- they've been told that since birth. We all have. Our daily/nightly television says so. Our childhood comic books say so. Our movies and video games say so. Our childhood toys told us that, as soon as we were big enough to hold one in our hand. And of course our history of conquest, first our own continent and with that secure, our own planet. Check out our icons: war heroes, Indian killers, the cavalry "clearing" the Indians. We grow up from earliest childhood playing "cops and robbers" and "cowboys and Indians". Always the dichotomy, always the endless battle. And anyone who's any age from newborn to their mid-60s lives in a country that has been, for his/her entire life, at war somewhere. Continuously.

If all that ain't drumming in the continuous relentless message that you deal with a problem by shooting at it, I don't know what is. What would be shocking would be if NO ONE took that message to heart.

In a nutshell you could say these killers are simply doing what they've been told to do all their lives.

My question is --- why are we telling ourselves that?

This my friend would be a cognitive distortion of all or "nothing thinking" or "overgeneralization".

"and the latest racist fuckbag in Charleston --- all men who felt themselves deprived of some kind of power and pervertedly saw the gun as the instrument that would fix that.

THAT idea is the root of the problem."

The real issue is that there is no effective mental health care that can deal with people issues on an emergency basis.

I there was, and media publicized it while county mental health facilities administered it probably 90% of those who would act out extreme violence using a gun would not. Maybe more, because it is a FACT, human beings have an instinct to survive.

RELIEF is what they seek. The proposed treatment here WILL provide that and a profound beginning as well as transition into effective treatment. That is why the senior director of the S.B.co mental health department had the medical doctor of the mental health department write and sign this letter in the departments behalf.

It is a defacto approval of the proposed treatment because director of such public departments DO NOT carry requests forward to the state they do not approve of.

After they did not provide the response of the state in writing, I knew the supervisors stopped them because it was against the morals of the church controlling government, so filed this FOIA request with the supervisors clerk of the board.

There was no response, and within three years the request was gone from the clerk of the boards records.

It's been refiled, the same, copied, originally stamped request now has another stamp on it!

Sorry but that's still being distracted by a tangent.

There's no doubt mental illnesses and/or drugs play a part in many of these events, including this latest one. But the base motivation, and the societally-"approved" remedy for it, remain the same, drugs or no drugs.

The bottom line is this -- if we lived in a society where one's power problems were acted out by dressing like a clown and dancing on the street ........ these same antagonists would be doing that --- whether they were drug-addled or not.

But we have no such tradition. What we do have is a culture where one's power problems are acted out by firearm. Hence the results.

Not a distraction, absolutely focused on solution.

The only way to deem my post as a distortion is to be obsessed with discussion of the problem to a degree where there is and attempt to dismiss the solution, not too functional.

BTW, here is another distortion of "all or nothing thinking" you are trying to use. Try to avoid that, not functional for critical thinking.

"What we do have is a culture where one's power problems are acted out by firearm. Hence the results."

No.

Remember, accountability in this discussion is vital to saving lives. I've well proven that authority having the duty WILL not be accountable to even flooding laws controlling our legal access to information needed to compel the creation of effective mental health care. That letter I posted was 1999, the FOIA from April 2000.

Before that I subpoenaed arrest and booking records that would prove there was a mass insanity here where there were dozens of murders.

The sheriff department failed to appear on subpoena.

The subpoenaed records would have provided proof to psychology that direct treatment to the human mind was the only real way to create, OR prevent extreme behaviors.

You seem to keep wanting to nudge back to a factor that is common to SOME of the mass gun violence events, that being drug effects and/or mental health.

That's useful but only to the events that apply. I'm concerned with the factor that is common to ALL the gun violence events, whether mental health and/or drugs are involved or not. And that is the societal values of Gun Culture.

That's not "all or nothing" thinking; that's addressing an issue directly and universally rather than selectively.

That would be an "overgeneralization" that is not accurate. Firstly its not culture. Culture is about needs. I realize the word has been misused so long it feel normal to join in. No one needs guns that much that often.

It is a SOCIETY that has been covertly manipulated to think that violence is a solution to any difficult personal problem which one cannot deal with.

WRONG!

That is a dysfunctional, dangerous, illegal position.

The only reason such thinking can continue is that ALTERNATIVE ways of addressing the problem are NOT AVAILABLE.

I have offered basic proof that is because the authority of courts and society refuse to follow laws and be accountable to the public trust.

Look what happened when I tried to inform a reporter of a local paper about a 206 lawsuit I filed agains the county in an effort to get this experimental treatment available from the mental health department.

Within 6 weeks 17 reporters and editors were gagged, resigning and fired.

Take the trouble to copy and paste the external redirect url and see the initialed "received" letters to local papers. No story was ever published.

Santa Barbara Secrets of media-Newspress independent county public defender.

Check the links to the lawsuit. REALIZE, that the us district court of th e9th circuit secretly REMOVED a 125 year old court rule that was vital to pro se civil rights plaintiffs rights and access to courts.

I'm afraid you're rambling aimlessly. I'm sure there's a valid point about something somewhere buried in all that but it's got nothing to do with the issue here.

Are you related to Emily? Just wondrin'.

 

[gallantwarrior]

Alrighty, then...
The suggestion has been made that the root causes driving any specific demographic to commit these atrocities be identified. If we were able to do that, we'd have a greater chance of averting them. I venture to suggest that these causes are complex and multiple. I think we can safely identify the primary demographic as young, white males, most who are currently or had previously been treated with psychotropic drugs.
Unfortunately, politicians have highjacked the issue in order to advance their ideological agendas. This turns the issue into a hot button item and both sides of the bab/ don't ban dichotomy fail to consider any other discussion.

They have indeed so hijacked. It's pandering to the simplistic, because it's easier to bicker over "ban guns!!" versus "No, Second Amendment!!" than it is to dare touch the foundation of what drives it.

You're close here, but they're not necessarily young -- the latest one was -- but Spengler in my example was 62; Jim David Adkisson (Powell church shooting) was 58; James von Brunn was a month shy of 89. Psychotropic drugs appear some of the time -- but none of these above examples IIRC. So trying to pin it on drugs is another deflection.

What all of these shooters and pretty much any you can find, have in common is a power problem. Whether drugs are involved or not -- Harris and Klebold, the Luby's guy, Jared Loughner, these three men above, countless workplace slayings --- and the latest racist fuckbag in Charleston --- all men who felt themselves deprived of some kind of power and pervertedly saw the gun as the instrument that would fix that.

THAT idea is the root of the problem.

That they take the firearm to be their vehicle to power is of course dead wrong. But we can hardly act surprised that they would come to that conclusion -- they've been told that since birth. We all have. Our daily/nightly television says so. Our childhood comic books say so. Our movies and video games say so. Our childhood toys told us that, as soon as we were big enough to hold one in our hand. And of course our history of conquest, first our own continent and with that secure, our own planet. Check out our icons: war heroes, Indian killers, the cavalry "clearing" the Indians. We grow up from earliest childhood playing "cops and robbers" and "cowboys and Indians". Always the dichotomy, always the endless battle. And anyone who's any age from newborn to their mid-60s lives in a country that has been, for his/her entire life, at war somewhere. Continuously.

If all that ain't drumming in the continuous relentless message that you deal with a problem by shooting at it, I don't know what is. What would be shocking would be if NO ONE took that message to heart.

In a nutshell you could say these killers are simply doing what they've been told to do all their lives.

My question is --- why are we telling ourselves that?

First, without access to firearms, people like these would find some other way to assert their "power" some other way. So the problem does not lie with their chosen tool, but rather in the reason why they feel powerless and needful to assert themselves. You have a point about the saturation in media and entertainment that glorifies violence as a means to express oneself. But if you dare propose reining in the media/entertainment industries, the same dichotomy that hijacks the ban/don't ban argument inevitably drag out their First Amendment protections. Funny in that case, the parties who advocate banning firearms are usually the ones who demand that freedom of speech be preserved at all costs. Those who would protect the 2d Amendment right to bear arms are often the ones calling for some controls on what is published and who the information is made available to.
So we come back to the problem, how do we identify people with these violent, destructive tendencies before they act on them? And having identified them, how should we deal with them?

 

[Pogo]

Alrighty, then...
The suggestion has been made that the root causes driving any specific demographic to commit these atrocities be identified. If we were able to do that, we'd have a greater chance of averting them. I venture to suggest that these causes are complex and multiple. I think we can safely identify the primary demographic as young, white males, most who are currently or had previously been treated with psychotropic drugs.
Unfortunately, politicians have highjacked the issue in order to advance their ideological agendas. This turns the issue into a hot button item and both sides of the bab/ don't ban dichotomy fail to consider any other discussion.

They have indeed so hijacked. It's pandering to the simplistic, because it's easier to bicker over "ban guns!!" versus "No, Second Amendment!!" than it is to dare touch the foundation of what drives it.

You're close here, but they're not necessarily young -- the latest one was -- but Spengler in my example was 62; Jim David Adkisson (Powell church shooting) was 58; James von Brunn was a month shy of 89. Psychotropic drugs appear some of the time -- but none of these above examples IIRC. So trying to pin it on drugs is another deflection.

What all of these shooters and pretty much any you can find, have in common is a power problem. Whether drugs are involved or not -- Harris and Klebold, the Luby's guy, Jared Loughner, these three men above, countless workplace slayings --- and the latest racist fuckbag in Charleston --- all men who felt themselves deprived of some kind of power and pervertedly saw the gun as the instrument that would fix that.

THAT idea is the root of the problem.

That they take the firearm to be their vehicle to power is of course dead wrong. But we can hardly act surprised that they would come to that conclusion -- they've been told that since birth. We all have. Our daily/nightly television says so. Our childhood comic books say so. Our movies and video games say so. Our childhood toys told us that, as soon as we were big enough to hold one in our hand. And of course our history of conquest, first our own continent and with that secure, our own planet. Check out our icons: war heroes, Indian killers, the cavalry "clearing" the Indians. We grow up from earliest childhood playing "cops and robbers" and "cowboys and Indians". Always the dichotomy, always the endless battle. And anyone who's any age from newborn to their mid-60s lives in a country that has been, for his/her entire life, at war somewhere. Continuously.

If all that ain't drumming in the continuous relentless message that you deal with a problem by shooting at it, I don't know what is. What would be shocking would be if NO ONE took that message to heart.

In a nutshell you could say these killers are simply doing what they've been told to do all their lives.

My question is --- why are we telling ourselves that?

First, without access to firearms, people like these would find some other way to assert their "power" some other way.

Of course they would. That's what I said in my clown comparison.

So the problem does not lie with their chosen tool, but rather in the reason why they feel powerless and needful to assert themselves.

?? Huh?

Does not follow. If the way to deal with one's power issues were to dress up like a clown, those issues wouldn't be resulting in mass slayings. Or ANY slayings. So the chosen tool is exactly the point here.

You have a point about the saturation in media and entertainment that glorifies violence as a means to express oneself. But if you dare propose reining in the media/entertainment industries, the same dichotomy that hijacks the ban/don't ban argument inevitably drag out their First Amendment protections.

Again, it does not follow that "reining in the media/entertainment industries" is the only way to address it. That's just reverting back to the same old "let's pass a law and ban it" mentality as the "let's ban guns" mentality.

Nobody reaches for a gun because it's legal or illegal. They reach for a gun because they want what it delivers. That desire is what needs to change. And you don't legislate desire. Can't be done. Think more originally than that. Laws are not the answer to everything. They just ain't.

Seventy-five years ago smoking cigarettes was pervasive. It was everywhere. People did their TV shows smoking. They smoked around their kids. They smoked while eating. Doctors did it, and then recommended a brand. It was "cool" because some movie action figure did it.

That cultural "coolness" is gone now. No doctor will tell you what brand you should be smoking. You won't see the practice on T or in a move except in a rare exception of a very bad guy character. It is in short socially disapproved.

That happened outside the realm of the Law. And it's more powerful than the Law.

So we come back to the problem, how do we identify people with these violent, destructive tendencies before they act on them? And having identified them, how should we deal with them?

I see it as two separate questions. Do these people need to be identified? Of course they do, and they deserve addressing in whatever way is effective. But simultaneous with that we've got this value problem, which applies to everybody whether they're mentally ill or not.

We have violence because we have (certain) violent people. That is true everywhere around the world.
But we have GUN violence (specifically) because we have a collective gun fetish.

And that needs to go, yesterday.

We'll still have violence from violent people. There's no way around that basic human flaw. But it would manifest in other ways with other tools. We wouldn't have an epidemic of self-styled Rambos and copycats and wannabe video game action figures mowing down people out of a love of carnage... if the culture didn't dictate and perpetuate that it's "cool" to do so.