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No Way To Prevent This, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
- Thread starter LightningCrash
- Start Date
I would attribute it to assholes. Plain and simple.
Sent from my meh, using my meh.
Sent from my meh, using my meh.
You can't say definitively, but let's take Jared Loughner's case. Most likely his case wouln't have happened, because he'd have been institutionalized for violent schizophrenia. It's possible that Adam Lanza would've been the same way, though with less certainty.
I have first hand experience with this and in that era. My uncle was schizophrenic. He spent several stints in Eastern State Mental Hospital in Miami, OK. He was the nicest guy in the world, when he was on his meds. When he got to thinking he was all better and went off his meds, you didn't want to be anywhere near him. It was 'effin scary as hell.
Back then it was possible to get someone with a dangerous mental condition off the streets before they hurt themselves or someone else. Post 1980's, it's MUCH more difficult. From the street officer to the FBI, everyone I work with who has to work with EDP's knows it's an uphill battle. Detain the subject for safety, call COPES, wait forever for some underpaid counselor(s) to come and do a brief assessment, during which the subject has had time to calm down and recognize that if they don't play nice in front of the counselor, they'll go on a 72 hour hold at someplace like Laureate and so on... So they straighten up for the counselors and avoid the hold. Absent a criminal act to lock them up at county on, they're released own recognizance. How many subsequent calls are made after that? LOTS.
Further, the homeless population EXPLODED once they turned out all the mental institutions. People who couldn't function in society were suddenly without a viable support structure. They were sent back to families ill equipped to handle them. Most couldn't hold down jobs, maintain normal healthy relationships and simply preferred to walk away. They went to the streets and never left. they become a danger to themselves, passeerby and their fellow homeless. It's truly sad how we've failed these people.
I'm not saying I'm for locking everyone up against their will, but the system we have now is truly broken. It serves no one's best interests. We should try to do better.
And if the Aurora shooter's shrink(who was caught giving herself, friends, and family meds) or the campus police had called in instead of blowing off the threats he made when he left the school it might not have happened.
And if Lanza's shrink hadn't been busy screwing patients(he destroyed Lanza's files and fled the country) maybe he'd been paying more attention and that wouldn't have happened.
Anybody see the long list of schools fined for violations of the Clery Act(reporting crimes and threats to outside authorities) recently? Didn't Jared Loughner's school fail to report him to outside authorities? Maybe we need to look at all parts of the system?
I blame it on crazy people that should be in a mental hospital.
Can't lock them up for making threats if nobody reports their threats, on the other hand Miller threatened to shoot up a Gov. office and they didn't lock him up, on the other hand(running out of hands) remember how Brandon Raub was locked up and held when he didn't make direct threats?
It's not too tough to lock people up for making threats...
http://www.techifire.com/10-facebook-posts-that-got-people-arrested.html
Yet we seem to be looking for a way to lock up people who haven't made threats while we ignore some who make threats and others who don't report them, could that be part of the problem?
The homeless rate in America is staggering. Some of these are people who just don't want to be around others, many are drug/alcohol addicts but many are there because they have serious mental issues. As mentioned already, these people have literally been dumped onto the street because there is nowhere else to put them. LEO's pick them up for various crimes but after processing they are dumped back into the streets. Mental illness is a part of life, pushing these people under bridges or into abandoned buildings and alley's so the rest of society doesn't have to see them and feel bad, has serious repercussions.
We live in a nation where blue collar workers see their cost of living keep rising while their pay rates don't. They have to constantly wonder what bill gets paid this month and which gets passed on until next month. They deal with not being able to put their kids through college because that cost continues to rise out of reach just like a gallon of milk. They deal with this as they watch the companies and corporations they work for post record profits and pay record bonuses to top level staff all while America's poverty rate steadily climbs to it's highest point since 1956. You can't make a better example of "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer"...it has to affect people. That's just one of a thousand things in the US that American's have a right to be angry about.
Combine all that with someone who's unstable and likely to be angry about all the real things plus all the imaginary things brought on by their mental illness and it's a recipe for disaster. Wikipedia lists "mass attacks" by country and you can see that in every country where guns are difficult to come by, that these attacks still occur, they just use other methods such as poisoning, bombs, knives/machetes and driving through crowds (in addition to several other methods). Removing a method of killing does not remove the intent. It didn't work in any country anywhere on Earth and it wouldn't work here.
I'll guarantee that 99% of all the people on this forum who currently serve or have served as a LEO has dealt with domestic calls where one or the other person involved attacked the other with a kitchen knife or a pair of scissors or a shoe or something other than a gun, usually with the intent to kill (not premeditated but "heat of the moment"). If guns are the source of violence, as most anti-gun people would have us believe, why does violence not only exist but also thrives all over this nation in homes where there are no guns? In the absence of a gun does violent behavior cease to exist or even decrease in some degree? No, not at all.
I'd like to see how many of these people who believe that guns are the cause of these violent attacks would put their lives up to task to prove their point. We can find some person who is mentally ill and give them a reason to want to kill the "anti-gun" test subject. Then we will put them both in an enclosed area where our angry mentally ill subject will be given a kitchen knife, a pair of scissors, a baseball bat and a beanie baby but no gun. If the angry mentally ill subject who wants to kill the "anti-gun" subject says "dang it...I was going to kill you but they wouldn't give me a gun", I will reconsider my position.
There are a lot of reasons why we have these kinds of violent situations in America, ranging from demographics to civil discontent but I think most reasonable Americans would agree that we need to reevaluate how we deal with mental illness in our country. Judging from what we have learned about the people who have committed these atrocities afterwards, it's clear that we have failed, as a nation, to care for these people who aren't capable of living on their own. Instead of placing blame on an inanimate object as our anti-gun people are, we need to demand our government start looking at the real problem of mental illness in America. How much taxpayer money has been wasted funding unconstitutional gun control propaganda that could have been spent building an infrastructure to care for these people instead of dumping them into the streets to commit these crimes. I think these people have proven that just sweeping them under the carpet is both irresponsible and dangerous.
In addition, as Billy Bob brought up, we need to be more proactive in identifying and reporting behavior that sends up the proverbial "red flag" also. Nobody wants to be the one to bring that kind of attention on someone else because if it turns out to be unnecessary, it's going to be pretty uncomfortable if you are neighbors or coworkers or even family but if the price for not doing it is what our country has been paying then we just need to find a way to make it work. In my neighborhood everyone keeps to themselves and folks seem to prefer it like that but we've also had some serious crimes here also that may not have occurred if it wasn't so private.
We live in a nation where blue collar workers see their cost of living keep rising while their pay rates don't. They have to constantly wonder what bill gets paid this month and which gets passed on until next month. They deal with not being able to put their kids through college because that cost continues to rise out of reach just like a gallon of milk. They deal with this as they watch the companies and corporations they work for post record profits and pay record bonuses to top level staff all while America's poverty rate steadily climbs to it's highest point since 1956. You can't make a better example of "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer"...it has to affect people. That's just one of a thousand things in the US that American's have a right to be angry about.
Combine all that with someone who's unstable and likely to be angry about all the real things plus all the imaginary things brought on by their mental illness and it's a recipe for disaster. Wikipedia lists "mass attacks" by country and you can see that in every country where guns are difficult to come by, that these attacks still occur, they just use other methods such as poisoning, bombs, knives/machetes and driving through crowds (in addition to several other methods). Removing a method of killing does not remove the intent. It didn't work in any country anywhere on Earth and it wouldn't work here.
I'll guarantee that 99% of all the people on this forum who currently serve or have served as a LEO has dealt with domestic calls where one or the other person involved attacked the other with a kitchen knife or a pair of scissors or a shoe or something other than a gun, usually with the intent to kill (not premeditated but "heat of the moment"). If guns are the source of violence, as most anti-gun people would have us believe, why does violence not only exist but also thrives all over this nation in homes where there are no guns? In the absence of a gun does violent behavior cease to exist or even decrease in some degree? No, not at all.
I'd like to see how many of these people who believe that guns are the cause of these violent attacks would put their lives up to task to prove their point. We can find some person who is mentally ill and give them a reason to want to kill the "anti-gun" test subject. Then we will put them both in an enclosed area where our angry mentally ill subject will be given a kitchen knife, a pair of scissors, a baseball bat and a beanie baby but no gun. If the angry mentally ill subject who wants to kill the "anti-gun" subject says "dang it...I was going to kill you but they wouldn't give me a gun", I will reconsider my position.
There are a lot of reasons why we have these kinds of violent situations in America, ranging from demographics to civil discontent but I think most reasonable Americans would agree that we need to reevaluate how we deal with mental illness in our country. Judging from what we have learned about the people who have committed these atrocities afterwards, it's clear that we have failed, as a nation, to care for these people who aren't capable of living on their own. Instead of placing blame on an inanimate object as our anti-gun people are, we need to demand our government start looking at the real problem of mental illness in America. How much taxpayer money has been wasted funding unconstitutional gun control propaganda that could have been spent building an infrastructure to care for these people instead of dumping them into the streets to commit these crimes. I think these people have proven that just sweeping them under the carpet is both irresponsible and dangerous.
In addition, as Billy Bob brought up, we need to be more proactive in identifying and reporting behavior that sends up the proverbial "red flag" also. Nobody wants to be the one to bring that kind of attention on someone else because if it turns out to be unnecessary, it's going to be pretty uncomfortable if you are neighbors or coworkers or even family but if the price for not doing it is what our country has been paying then we just need to find a way to make it work. In my neighborhood everyone keeps to themselves and folks seem to prefer it like that but we've also had some serious crimes here also that may not have occurred if it wasn't so private.
Well you're not wrong, but the system is set up to reward those who pass the buck. If the system is working against doing it the right way and everyone around you is doing it, you either go with the flow or leave the field with a bloody forehead. That's no way to fix things.
Right.
Well you're not wrong, but the system is set up to reward those who pass the buck. If the system is working against doing it the right way and everyone around you is doing it, you either go with the flow or leave the field with a bloody forehead. That's no way to fix things.
That sounds kind of defeatist, I've always seen you as a rational logical problem solver. One has to wonder if true accountability instead of more equal might be a true deterrent to change things?, or are we beyond that point?
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