Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms

Yes. I find it sad that in a lot of ways for too many people that war is not over.

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::blink blink::

Because, if we had been able to stop him from getting a gun, he would have been able to stab all those 9 people? Or he would have been dedicated enough to get a PhD and make Sarin gas all on his own?

Or it’s just that we’re not concentrating enough on policing racist thoughts, that once we eliminate racism and misogyny and transphobia and a tolerance for unethical games journalism that violent impulses will just drift away on the breeze of yesterday’s bad dream?

Yeah, he did what he did because he’s a racist. But if he was a racist with a knife, or a fork, or a nail-studded baseball bat he wouldn’t have been able to kill 9 people in such a short period of time.

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The treason part doesn’t bother me. The slavery part does. The southern elites had no commitment to state or local autonomy, they only went to war for slavery and their own power.

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A lot of people have, and do, elsewhere. Why not discuss that, here?

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Yes. Sometimes.

Sometimes blaming “lone nuts” is a way of avoiding acknowledgement and discussion of gun control
[looks at watch]


“You can have all the background checks you want
 but crazy people will be able to get their hands on guns”

Ah, right on time.

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I may be being pedantic (if someone uses the word pedantic, they are >:D), but I was just answering your direct question. That’s all.

Yes white power groups are at the heart of this, but I can’t help thinking that all the people who do these things are somehow not all there otherwise they would not do that kind of thing even if part of a radical movement.
Cause when I read how in ww2 for the German army had to basically keep execution squads blotto drunk and on the duty for a very short time even when they were shooting the hated other tells me most of us just can’t do that kind of thing.

Indeed, I’m certainly not saying that white supremacy and not being all there are mutually exclusive.

Why not discuss that, THERE?

Totally got that. Just seems like a lot of lather for one example.

And you alone offered one. Other folks just said ‘lots of people’
 which I have to say, isn’t accurat. It’s been just one or two, and then a whole lotta strawmen filling out those ranks.

Not straw men put up by you, just to be clear. :slight_smile:

I try. I can’t always handle the slurs, victim-blaming, etc. on news sites though.

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The only straw men I put up are the ones in the backyard on Beltane that I light on fire and prance around with elk horns while nak


I’ve said too much.

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Also on topic, (Rick) Perry said that he wasn’t sure if the shooting was an act of terror, but that it was indeed a “crime of hate.”

He also suggested that confessed shooter, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, may have been “medicated.” One of Perry’s platforms is the issue of opioids he alleges are being handed out too easily to ex-military members.

(â•ŻÂ°â–ĄÂ°ïŒ‰â•Żïž” ┻━┻

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Your parties sound like a good time.

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Do they have cops in them?

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The use of ‘mental illness’ in responses to spree killings (aside from being selective, as noted) seems unbelievably lazy.

It’s pretty much a “Wow, he just went off and shot all those people, that’s crazy. He must be crazy.” That’s the sort of ‘diagnosis’ that your stereotypical medieval exorcist would have been unimpressed by. Sure, his theory that demonic possession was what ailed you was nonsense; but he would probably actually have some interest in ‘which demon, or type?’ which is more diagnostic granularity than ‘crazy’ is.

There certainly are instances of mental illness leading to otherwise-inexplicable violence(mostly the ‘relatively severe break with reality due to psychosis or paranoia leads to violence that seems reasonable due to the patient’s pathologically inaccurate available inforrmation; but purposeless otherwise’); but that’s vastly more precise, explanatory, and actually-related-in-some-way-to-mental-illness than the ‘Well, that’s crazy; next?’ position, which is at best an assertion of the impossibility of discerning an actor’s motivations and at worst a direct refusal to acknowledge them, even when he goes to the trouble of explaining them in an elaborate manifesto ahead of time.

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I’ve been hesitant to respond to this for several reasons.

Firstly, I arrived after that thread got closed, and I’d prefer not to press-my-luck by re-creating that discussion, because that could close down this thread. Secondly, I didn’t want to make this about any one poster or any one phrase. I too sometimes let a “crazy” or “deranged” or “unhinged” slip from my tongue.

In general, working to de-stigmatize mental illness and reduce abelist language are evergreen issues that I think help all of us be more articulate, thoughtful, and inclusive in our speech. So, I left out quoting people in order to focus on the casual ways we let euphamisms for mental illness stand-in for actions we don’t understand and for people we fear.

Still, Sir Platanoides, you’ve several times now opined that you only saw one instance where someone invoked mental illness. By my reading, I saw many, by many posters. Again, I’m not desiring point out any of these people, because in general I think most of these were casual, off-hand remarks. But here goes, copy-pasta:

"not getting the psychiatric care they should've received"
"I'd be surprised if the rate of psychosis among suicide bombers wasn't much higher than in the general population."
"perhaps mental illness makes some more prone to adopting fringe ideologies"
"This guy may be a lone wolf nutcase" 
"I hold out that it could have easily already been mentally unstable"
"the lone nut usually just has it all in his head"
"I'd contend that just about anyone who goes on a random shooting rampage, especially as a loner, is mentally ill."
"He's a murderer, and probably crazy, too, it seems to me."
"certainly I see that the crime and hate and murder are symptomatic of mental illness"
"Mental health issues are race-blind, anybody can get one."
"That does not make the killer any less crazy in head."
"He could also be mentally ill."
"perhaps extreme racism is a type of mental illness"
"They seem mostly harmless but like any group some members are wackadoo."
"And, well yes, killing bunch of people because of the colour of their skin (or their religion, or their gender, etc...) is a crazy thing to do in that it is not rational, not actually justifiable according to rational thought -- and in that sense someone who does it could be said to be "crazy.”"

The casual manner in which euphemisms for mental illness are thrown about only create more stigma. Speculating about Roof’s mental wellness adds little to the understanding of this case, or the broader phenomena of mass shootings. It’s not a matter of tone-policing, it’s a matter of accuracy.

A 2001 study looked specifically at 34 adolescent mass murderers, all male. 70 percent were described as a loner. 61.5 percent had problems with substance abuse. 48 percent had preoccupations with weapons. 43.5 percent had been victims of bullying. Only 23 percent had a documented psychiatric history of any kind—which means 3 out of 4 did not.

Even if we had a perfect mental health care system, that is not going to solve our gun violence problem. If we were able to magically cure schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression, that would be wonderful, but overall violence would go down by only about 4 percent.

Even in this thread, we use the phrase “people who do these things are somehow not all there” to communicate the belief that what failed in this case was something in Roof’s brain. Maybe is wrong with his brain, maybe not, I don’t think we know that yet.

But what’s clear to me is that he had a failing of the heart. He was full of hatred, and despicably acted upon it. And there was a failing of his community - friends and family that knew of his threats, of his plans, and didn’t intervene. Did they not love him enough? Did they also hate who he hated?

We have plenty of words for the failings we know: cruel, inhuman, despicable, horrific, incomprehensible, reprehensible, beyond belief, heartless, cold-blooded. They work just fine, or better, in communicating just how impossible it is for most of us to understand what Roof did, and why.

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I’m not sure where this should go since there are several on this topic but it is related.

It struck me as I read his “manifesto” that he says: “We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet.”

While obviously this awful thing still happened, it seems a positive comment that he couldn’t find any IRL racists to join him.

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