Quote:It's a lengthy debate and I'm already spending more time on it than I should currently but it is what it is.


What makes the comment awful?


We had a shooting here a couple of weeks ago.


He had a permit to carry, did everything right with his gun in how he obtained it. No prior criminal record that I'm aware of.


I'm of the belief that there was something mentally wrong with him that caused him to shoot a person. I'm of the belief that the Charleston killer also has mental problems that likely played a large role in the events inside that church.


Do you disagree? I can tell you restricting guns would not have prevented either incident. Do you know where this local shooting took place? At a mall, where they do not allow guns.


You can't keep a gun out of a mentally ill person's hand.

I misunderstood your context, and apologize for jumping down your throat like that. I took your comment to mean that you believed that a person who is mentally ill (we're talking about 40 million+ Americans), armed or unarmed, is inherently more of a threat to society than a "sane" person with a gun.

 

Mental illness and guns is a touchy subject for me. I lost a cousin, who was deeply depressed (but undiagnosed) to suicide by firearm. There were details surrounding the suicide that led family members to believe that he might have killed himself to prevent himself from killing someone else. I'm strongly in favor of denying the right to purchase firearms to anyone with a history of mental illness, including clinical depression, and forcibly "buying back" (confiscating with payment) any weapons they may currently own, then making it a felony punishable by a guaranteed prison term for them to possess a firearm on their person, in their house, in their car, whatever, for the remainder of their life.

 

Of course, that would deny the right to bear arms to more than 40 million Americans, which I'm sure the far right and the NRA would jump all over as a Second Amendment violation. It's fun to kick around hypothetical solutions to a very real problem right up until someone tries to implement one, isn't it? And what about the undiagnosed? I wouldn't be opposed to requiring a psychiatric evaluation before a license to purchase a firearm (yes, I believe firearm owners should have to acquire and carry a license for their weapons, and weapons should be registered under that license) is granted, but that would be costly and almost certainly result in the NRA kicking and screaming about how you're taking the right to bear arms away from the middle class. It would certainly help us identify the sociopaths (even given that being a sociopath does not necessarily make you mentally ill) who aren't caught by medical records, though.

 

Not to pick on you directly, Scarecrow, but something I've seen a lot of that drives me nuts is the association of mental illness with white terrorists. News outlets--left and right--like to talk about the "troubled past" and "mental factors" that drive white terrorists to do these things. If the Charleston shooter's name had been Mohammad al-Roof, I promise you that those same news networks would be decrying his "radical views" and fully demonizing him. To the networks' credit, they're not sugar-coating his radical views at all, just using the unfair stigma of mental illness to mitigate them some. Either all terrorists are radical or all terrorists are mentally ill; take your pick, MSNBC. Don't tell me that a guy who picks up a gun is mentally ill, but a guy who straps a bomb to himself and walks into a cafe is motivated only by religious fervor. I can see what you're doing on my leg. It's not rain.

 

Given the nature of my personal experience with mental illness, and with what happens when mental illness and guns meet, I get jumpy when someone suggests that mental illness makes one more prone to violence. My apologies for that, Scarecrow. Do I really think anything I've just suggested will be written into law? No. The gun lobby would never support it, and the NRA has so many Congresspeople in the chamber of their gun that measures taking guns off the street would never pass. Would any of what I said above prevent someone who is so motivated from getting their hands on a gun and committing an act of terrorism with it? Probably not, and you pro-gun guys can quote me on that over and over again until you're blue in the face. What it would do is make it that much harder for that one person in ten million who has the perfect blend of mental illness/sociopathic tendencies and intent to get their hands on a gun, and it makes it that much more likely that they're taken off the streets before they can use said gun.

 

Ok, right-wing. Tear me apart. Tell me how everything I've said is stupid and doesn't address any issues, just takes away the right of 'Murricans to own guns. I don't know if I can be any more clear on my position on keeping guns out of the hands of those with mental illness, those with intent and motivation, and sociopaths.

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