I’m not saying your pseudo-quote represents my stance on the drinking-and-driving issue, because it doesn’t, but:
I’m fairly certain that if we discovered alcohol today, it’d have a hell of a time getting itself approved by the FDA, and, if it did, it’d probably be prescription only.
And that’s all I’ll say about alcohol, because anything else would unacceptably derail this thread.
FREEOME!
Why you hate America, AsteriskCGY, isn’t “risk” IN YOUR NAME?
No, no, no. Comedy = Tragedy + Time; therefore, Tragedy = Comedy - Time.
So Humans + Guns = Comedy - Time, so:
Humans + Guns + Time = Comedy!
So I’m sure this will all work out hilariously given enough time, what with the number of humans and the number of guns.
Right?
“I’ll start believing in responsible drinking and driving when drunk driving deaths stop happening.”
FTFY
Her open carry permit was already revoked for irresponsible conduct with the gun. She should have been forced to turn over the weapon until she could re-qualify for it. Being stupid with guns in public is clear enough grounds if not for confiscation or at least keeping weapons in law enforcement custody until they prove themselves to be safe and responsible enough to get possession of them back.
It depends on your purpose. If you are trying to kill your kids (or have them kill each other) and claim it was an accident, then it does the job nicely.
A situational emotional crisis without a prior history of psychological problems is not ‘mental illness’.
Mental illness is chronic. Stuff like recurrent depression. Recurrent mania. Vacillating between both. Both at the same time. Aural hallucinations and voices in your head that tell you you’re no good or that you should kill yourself. Social anxiety so bad you never leave the house. Depression so bad you never leave the house. Both. Bursts of panic that come out of nowhere.
People with mental illness are, on the whole, far more likely to kill themselves than the general population and actually slightly less likely to be homicidal.
People without such history are not immune to these states of mind. It’s just that it takes a lot of psychological and/or physical stress to induce them. In their everyday lives, these people would pass a psychological intake just fine, which is why gun reform targeting the ‘mentally ill’ is total, utter BS.
It could be useful, and interesting, to require anyone with a gun to undergo testing for psychopathic indicators.
I would probably actually have respect for the NRA if they would loudly start going hey this person they are NOT what we want for the face of gun ownership in 'murrica. They are a stain responsible ownership.
My kid wonders why if I am not against guns per se why we don’t have any, well mostly because they scare the hell out of me, (well maybe not that as much as I have a great amount of respect for what they can do to me an others when not paying attention, much in the same way as I more than capable of working on the wiring in the house I would rather let the pros do it.) and it is a tool that is not required for the house and therefore I don’t have one. Jeez even when I lived in a rather rough neighborhood of St. Louis I never felt the need for a gun.
And as I see more and more of this I really think we just need to change our culture more than change the laws cause as long as 'murrica/freedum/gunz/etc appeals to people not many laws are going to fix that.
So I am confused. this article is from 2009 and a different family albeit both are blonde
No, no, no.
This was clearly a sick, deranged individual who would have killed her daughters with whatever she had at hand. If she didn’t have a gun, what would have stopped her from grabbing a knife from a kitchen drawer and stabbing her daughters to death? You have to treat the underlying problem of mental health. Guns aren’t the problem. Mental health is. We must keep the family and the mentally ill like her in our thoughts and prayers. Maybe God will cure the crazy and end the scourge of insane whack jobs killing other people.
Amen.
Imagine if this kind of logic were used every time there was a car accident. “Higher gas tax would not have prevented this injury, so we shouldn’t raise the gas tax” “Seatbelts would not have prevented this fender bender, so we shouldn’t require seatbelts” “This engine fire had nothing to do with how well trained the driver was, so we shouldn’t require that drivers be schooled in the care of their cars”
Of course, you might be right. The country might clamp down on firearms, we might require background checks without loopholes, licensing and training for firearm possession, tax and regulate them to a european level, and we still might see this kind of thing happen. I’m eager to take that chance.
Prevalence of mental illness is 100% among gun owners, as the desire to own a gun is indeed a mental illness. They’ll probably argue with me about this, but then it’s quite common for people with mental illnesses to think they’re sane.
Hashtag, “Not all gun owners!”
Mental illness has nothing to do with it, it’s about money. Most gun owners are well behaved, otherwise shootings would be far more common than they are. If addiction to money is considered a mental illness, then it’s the ones blocking regulation in congress that need treatment. Most gun owners are happy to submit to a higher level of regualtion than what we have now. It’s just the noisy ones causing trouble. and since money is speech, the ones making the money are the ones making noise.
I think that you underestimate how fundamentally irrational the human brain is.
If “mainstream white conservative Christian” is a “mental illness,” then we’re all mentally ill. Or, at least, in that case, our natural state of being is a trend towards “mental illness” from birth, which a very few people have extracted themselves from.
We all have cognitive biases that prevent us from thinking rationally, and mainstream religion has evolved, not to introduce mental illness into people, but to exploit the irrationality that is already present. We’re all equally vulnerable; some people are just very good at examining their own thought processes and weeding out the irrationalities.
I’m not one of those people who can weed out the irrationality easily. Last night, I came across something which wasn’t at all religious in significance, but it triggered a memory from my religious days, which triggered a strong feeling of being called back to my old faith. I had to spend about a half-hour (while also washing dishes) reminding myself exactly why that particular deity, and especially why that particular religious denomination, does not deserve my worship. It was scary just how tempting it was to give up and return to the fold, and how much more effort it took than it should have to force my mind back to rationality.
We’re all fundamentally broken, especially when emotions become involved. Calling basic human nature “mental illness” devalues the term.
Nearly perfect, you could only have added something like “The tragedy is too fresh to discuss gun policies.”
Last month it really dawned on me that, whether you label it mental illness, or criminality, or social deviance, or merely, cognitive bias… There is no such thing as undistorted thought. Proving oneself sane is impossible because sanity is a null concept. There is only behaviour that passes scrutiny, and behaviour that doesn’t. It’s kind of terrifying if I think about it too much.
checking before hand is good, but ongoing, recurring licencing and checks is critical.
See, I wouldn’t mind this line of argument if it was then followed up with “and so the NRA announced today they are spending six hundred million dollars to help mental health professionals,” but they don’t. That’s someone else’s job, we need all our dues to go elsewhere.
Ugh, you are correct. It came up in context on another social platform and I had assumed it was new news today.
