OldLady
Diamond Member
- Nov 16, 2015
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I'd like to see a definitive line on all sides promoting that we "do something" when "x-occurs."Oh -You've lost me. ERPO is about individuals exhibiting homicidal/suicidal behavior. One person at a time. I'm not sure how statistical rarity of mass shootings factors into that at all.There's also a huge problem here with Mental Health being anyone's ringer, to begin with.I agree with you. I have worked with a lot of people with a "mental health" SSI disability. Most of them are not dangerous in the least. However, those mentally incompetent enough to lose their rights? That's a real high bar in a court of law, and if they can't be trusted to make decisions for themselves, they don't need to be trusted with a decision about who to shoot, either.one of the first things trump did when he got the keys to the white house:
Trump blames 'mental illness' for shootings, but rolled back Obama regulation on gun sales
Christopher Wilson
Senior Writer
Yahoo NewsAugust 5, 2019
In the wake of this weekend’s mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, President Trump was quick to point to mental illness as a cause, echoing a Republican talking point that emerged in interviews and social media posts on Sunday.
“Mental illness and hatred pull the trigger, not the gun,” said Trump in a speech Monday morning from the White House. He said the country “must make sure that those judged to pose a grave risk to public safety do not have access to firearms, and that, if they do, those firearms can be taken through rapid due process.”
But in his first full month in office, Trump signed a bill rolling back an Obama-era regulation that would have made it more difficult for people with mental illnesses to purchase firearms. The rule would have used Social Security records to add about 75,000 names to the database used in background checks of gun buyers (from licensed firearms dealers). People receiving supplemental-income support for mental disability and those found unfit to handle their own financial affairs would have been precluded from purchasing firearms. While the rule went on the books just before Trump took office in January 2017, compliance was not mandatory until December 2017.
[...]
Trump blames 'mental illness' for shootings, but rolled back Obama regulation on gun sales
Of those 75,000, have any done anything to justify their names being added to a data base of any kind?
Some of a psychotropic drugs' side effects, are: manic, violent behavior.
Now - in some cases, these psychotropic side-effects occur in one in 2-million folks... that experience this side effect, so we deem the drugs okay to use. I'd agree with doing that, statistically. It's so rare, that it's not right at all to limit the other 1, 999, 999 other folks that won't experience this sort of side effect.
But I'm employing the same logic within the gun debate. It's very rare, even more rare than the statistic of folks that experience violent side-effects on these drugs, for someone to become a mass shooter. Not only that, but most of the folks are either pre-determined to have had a mental illness, or determined as much after the shootings. Something like 94% of shooters? (I'm going off memory)
So - we have a problem that really might be impossible to resolve. I guess we can employ mitigating factors. I dunno if there's any good answer.
To be more clear - - - my point was that if I were to address the camp that wants to point to mental health as one of the underlying factors of mass shootings (which I'd agree with, they're all mentally ill)...
I'd say it's worth-noting/consideration that one of the ways we ADDRESS mental health is to prescribe medications... which have manic/violent behavior listed as some of their side effects.
So the statistics are... that the side effects rarely occur............and we USE the fact that they're rare to justify continuing to approve of giving the Meds....
Mass shootings are also rare, even rarer than these medicinal side effects.
I wonder how many shooters were, or have been in the past, on any psychotropic medications? I'd love to know that percentage, I'm sure it's out there somewhere.
Aiming high, if we really want to address the issue of people needlessly dying - we can look to statistics and tackle the issues in order...beginning with the ones that'd give us our biggest statistically (positive) outcome...but there's got to be a line drawn...not some vague line but a definitive line...as to how far we'd go to limit freedoms to prevent deaths or other negative outcomes. I think the right is usually on "your liberty ends where it negatively effects mine," as the line they draw. It makes good sense to me, but I'd like to see a definitive line on all sides promoting that we "do something" when "x-occurs."
That would be great. If the Red Flag law was national, it would be a lot easier to discuss particulars, because all 17 states that have such a law have different versions. Some limit reports to family members or law enforcement, some restrict it to law enforcement only. Others include school administrators and mental health professionals.