Colorado Shooting - for gun-phobes

[Runscott]

David Brooks recently wrote an op-ed (New York Times) that does a decent job of countering the call for gun-control, and also the position of some of you that we should turn a blind eye to mental illness and focus on executions:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/op...ef=davidbrooks

[Runscott]

lol - this is what happens to water cooler topics when you do not put them in the vintage baseball card forum

But I refuse to revisit that clusterfvck of a thread.

[tiger8mush]

Hi Scott, unfortunately your link above doesn't work for me.

My general thoughts:

1) i'm in favor of SOME gun control, but believe in general that guns should be allowed
2) we shouldn't turn a blind eye to mental illness
3) we should execute this guy

Where do i draw the line? i don't know. but this was planned over many months. He was sane enough to do this stuff secretly and not get arrested beforehand. We can't do 110% background check on every person that looks/acts weird. If every person that commits a crime gets mental treatment and put on drugs in order to function normally, we'll soon be an entire nation on drugs in order to function how society or the gov't wants us to function. I know, I exaggerate, and I blabber on, and at times i may be non-sympathetic, but if you have urges to do mass destruction over many months and don't get your fix by just playing video games or maybe paintball, and then you act upon them, you aren't fit for a free society. Some people can be & should be helped. Not this guy. So are we gonna use him like a guinea pig now and see what meds over the next 25 years will help or hurt him? Or can we just end his life for the 71 people he directly injured/killed and countless others whose lives he's shattered for losing loved ones?

BTW, just to keep blabbering on, where will the money come from to do MORE mental illness checks and tests and drug treatments? More taxes? Or maybe less money spent on foreign wars (yes I'm a Ron Paul fanboy) so that we CAN put more money into helping our own country first?

(I know its tough to read to read internet postings, but all of my words are meant to be very humble and open for calm debate - I'm a rational person that can be reasoned with )

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by tiger8mush

Hi Scott, unfortunately your link above doesn't work for me.

My general thoughts:

1) i'm in favor of SOME gun control, but believe in general that guns should be allowed
2) we shouldn't turn a blind eye to mental illness
3) we should execute this guy

Where do i draw the line? i don't know. but this was planned over many months. He was sane enough to do this stuff secretly and not get arrested beforehand. We can't do 110% background check on every person that looks/acts weird. If every person that commits a crime gets mental treatment and put on drugs in order to function normally, we'll soon be an entire nation on drugs in order to function how society or the gov't wants us to function. I know, I exaggerate, and I blabber on, and at times i may be non-sympathetic, but if you have urges to do mass destruction over many months and don't get your fix by just playing video games or maybe paintball, and then you act upon them, you aren't fit for a free society. Some people can be & should be helped. Not this guy. So are we gonna use him like a guinea pig now and see what meds over the next 25 years will help or hurt him? Or can we just end his life for the 71 people he directly injured/killed and countless others whose lives he's shattered for losing loved ones?

BTW, just to keep blabbering on, where will the money come from to do MORE mental illness checks and tests and drug treatments? More taxes? Or maybe less money spent on foreign wars (yes I'm a Ron Paul fanboy) so that we CAN put more money into helping our own country first?

(I know its tough to read to read internet postings, but all of my words are meant to be very humble and open for calm debate - I'm a rational person that can be reasoned with )

Thank you very much for posting. A lot of what follows is repeats of what I've posted previously, but I can tell from your response that you missed quite a bit of that - understandably, as it was long-winded, as is the following.

Until you've had direct involvement with mental illness, you're not going to understand that "sane enough" does not mean you are in your right mind. I've tried to rebut such comments several times, and no one on the board has gotten it - to them, if someone is able to think straight, then they are sane, which is not necessarily true. But I'll briefly try. Try to imagine that one day you are functioning with someone else's mind, but you still think it's your own, because it's basically an altered reality. It's a bad mind - still has all your basic intelligence, but now you are MORE creative, think FASTER...and are very angry (anger is the key ingredient to manic attacks for young men in their '20s). Then you get your mind back. You're astounded and embarrassed at anything you did while operating with this 'different' mind. Fortunately, you and others will generally get what you would like without worrying too much about lethal injection, as the person will generally commit suicide once they realize what they have done. So, a great ending that's nice and clean, and no one has to concern themselves about dealing with the unpleasantness of mental illness. I am not saying that this is the diagnosis for the Colorado killer, but based on what you (and others) have written, if it WERE the diagnosis, you'd still go for a quick execution.

I find the following statement very curious: "where will the money come from to do MORE mental illness checks and tests and drug treatments?". Funding comes after public awareness. There is currently no worthwhile public awareness. If there were, you'd find the money - the 'pool' would simply be reallocated. It's not like building a new baseball stadium.

You would probably have to take money from something really important such as war, and apply it to something very unpleasant, that no one wants to think about (much easier to label people as evil or angry).

But here's an example: what if people all of a sudden became aware that a new disease (we'll call it AIDS) was killing lots of people? Well, anti-gays would refuse to support it because it doesn't affect them directly, and there is a stigma associated with gay sex (yeah, just like the stigma associated with mental illness). They' say "let them take care of it - they brought it on themselves". Then let's say that the anti-gays found that this disease was affecting THEM and their CHILDREN. All of a sudden, this new public 'awareness' would result in money being found.

Up through the '70s, the mentally ill were considered a nuisance or a danger, and were locked up in institutions to protect the sane - not to help the patients. That was a problem, but like retirement homes, provided a convenient places for family members to dump their burdensome loved ones, so it all worked out for everyone...except the mentally ill. Releasing them to the streets was NOT a good solution, but we found that most of them mixed in well with the bums and drug addicts, and it didn't affect us directly, so we were generally okay with Reagan's solution.

The good news for you is that you don't have to help fund as many institutions - YEA!!! The bad news is that you have to deal with those bothersome schizophrenics on the streets , but at least they aren't costing you much. Wait - I forgot about the repeated 72-hr observations at the hospital, the drugs and alcohol they use to self-medicate on the streets, the constant arrests...I guess they are costing you money. I apologize personally for their behavior, but you should thank me for loving my family member and keeping them out of your hair, fighting the system the entire way. In my own personal case, I am positive that it would have been cheaper for you ('you' representing Joe Taxpayer), if there had been more funding. In almost all circumstances, fixing a problem BEFORE it manifests itself is cheaper to everyone than fixing it after the fact.

But more funding would require 'Public awareness' that it would actually help society to do more research, have more psychiatric facilities and doctors, education for policemen and jailers, court systems with the ability to 'judge' the mentally ill without the ignorance that they currently operate under. But again, all of this would require that your own family members (and those of countless other Americans) be affected directly by mental illness - that's the kick in the ass that has to happen. Hopefully that doesn't happen to you or your loved ones. Catch-22

Thanks for reading this. I realize that it's still easier to ignore such problems, and honestly, I ignored it for years while living in the nice sane suburbs. But it has been tougher over the last 6 years, as there are annoying crazy people all around me in downtown Seattle. Now that it's hit my family, I know that they are also human beings, but trying to survive without the comfort of the nice, clean, well-functioning brain that you and I possess. Some of them could be helped, but only if they have advocates to push them down that road, and only if they have places to get treatment and people to diagnose them. As long as they are just 'crazy' people, they are screwed. More funding would mean fewer of them on the streets, and more of them at home with their families, functioning like you - not doing drugs, working jobs, PAYING TAXES , but most importantly - living the best lives they possibly can, which every human being deserves.

[tiger8mush]

I agree, its something you don't think much about until it involves you. There are so many subects that can be included in that statement though, like spousal abuse and drug addiction and cancer treatment and alcohol abuse etc. I think the afformentioned get more $ allocated from the gov't than mental institutions because there is more awareness and more people afflicted with those illnesses/symptoms. I would chose to fund ALL of those programs, including mental institutions, over funding war and probably 1/2 of the other stuff that the gov't spends money on. I'm all for a reallocation of our tax money. But politicians have power and in order to keep their power they put money where the lobbyists (who give the politicians money) want them to put it, and the tax dollars don't end up in the areas that I feel they should be.

I'll stop w/the political rant as I really don't know what I'm talking about anyway

I haven't had direct involvement w/mental illness and I'm sure I'd feel differently if I did. Although, my mom is bi-polar and we believe my brother is. My mom takes medication and doesn't work because of her illness. I'm definiltely not as sympathetic to her as I should be.

I guess I'm willing to help those who want to be helped. Who aren't looking for handouts and who want to better themselves etc. How do you separate those from people who are just mean/lazy/criminals?

I'm sympathic to your cause, Scott. Its good that you are raising awareness for the mentally ill and helping your loved ones. If there is a worthy cause/organization that you specifically favor, I'm willing to donate to it, please let me know the info.

In the particular case of Holmes, while its certainly possible he is temporarily ill or what-not (I don't know cuz I don't have the time/energy/desire to look into this subject specifically, so I resort to making uneducated statements like I've made in most of my posts), its just hard to believe that our society would help this person and he'd one day be able to be a contributing member of society without something like this happening again. Not given what he's done. He didn't flip out and beat up an ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend or go haywire cuz his professor gave him a bad grade or have road rage. This is something that took many days of planning and he had a lot of time in between to come out of his insanity and realize that he was planning to hurt a lot of people.

Rob

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by tiger8mush

I agree, its something you don't think much about until it involves you. There are so many subects that can be included in that statement though, like spousal abuse and drug addiction and cancer treatment and alcohol abuse etc. I think the afformentioned get more $ allocated from the gov't than mental institutions because there is more awareness and more people afflicted with those illnesses/symptoms. I would chose to fund ALL of those programs, including mental institutions, over funding war and probably 1/2 of the other stuff that the gov't spends money on. I'm all for a reallocation of our tax money. But politicians have power and in order to keep their power they put money where the lobbyists (who give the politicians money) want them to put it, and the tax dollars don't end up in the areas that I feel they should be.

This is all perfectly understandable, and as it should be. I'm the same regarding all the programs you mentioned. Another wrench in the mix is that for each of those, the 'victims' begin crusading after they recover (or as they don't recover), but with mental illness, the ill who 'recover' prefer to get on with their lives and sort of pretend they never had it; i.e- best case is they take the lithium willingly and tell their family to quit talking about it.

Funding won't come until their is more public awareness. What I was hearing in that thread was BAD public awareness, which is even worse than none at all.

I'll stop w/the political rant as I really don't know what I'm talking about anyway

I haven't had direct involvement w/mental illness and I'm sure I'd feel differently if I did. Although, my mom is bi-polar and we believe my brother is. My mom takes medication and doesn't work because of her illness. I'm definiltely not as sympathetic to her as I should be.

My guess is that if your brother or mother had had a first manic break and killed someone (even planned it), then came down from the mania and was grief-stricken, you would want him to get treatment, as opposed to a lethal injection. But you might also believe that what I'm describing is impossible.

I guess I'm willing to help those who want to be helped. Who aren't looking for handouts and who want to better themselves etc. How do you separate those from people who are just mean/lazy/criminals?

Good luck finding such people. Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia affect the part of the brain that gives insight - this means that such people are incapable of knowing that they have an illness. Sounds weird, but I have been through it and promise you that is the case. Since schizophrenics never have insight that they are ill, they almost never want to be helped. Bipolar people don't want help while in the mania, and when out they either want to takes meds or want to be left alone.

How do you separate them? You have to educate yourself on the difference - there are plenty of books and websites.

I'm sympathic to your cause, Scott. Its good that you are raising awareness for the mentally ill and helping your loved ones. If there is a worthy cause/organization that you specifically favor, I'm willing to donate to it, please let me know the info.

It's not a cause yet. I'm just a family member who is recovering from shock. Thanks for your offer - if/when I find something, I'll post here. This is a very recent experience for my family.

In the particular case of Holmes, while its certainly possible he is temporarily ill or what-not (I don't know cuz I don't have the time/energy/desire to look into this subject specifically, so I resort to making uneducated statements like I've made in most of my posts), its just hard to believe that our society would help this person and he'd one day be able to be a contributing member of society without something like this happening again. Not given what he's done. He didn't flip out and beat up an ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend or go haywire cuz his professor gave him a bad grade or have road rage. This is something that took many days of planning and he had a lot of time in between to come out of his insanity and realize that he was planning to hurt a lot of people.

Rob

He is an extreme example, regardless of his mental state - murders like this, that are this well-planned and evil, and where the perpetrator makes no attempt to escape, or not common. Also, if manic, he might not have had enough time to come out of his insanity - manic breaks (schizophrenia and bipolar disorder both typically begin with one) can last for months, or even a year. If the person simply goes manic and is angry or vengeful, people who meet him during that phase will think that's just his personality. They do not all go psychotic (schizoaffective disorder).

But I understand your feelings. My experience was the same, even as I watched it happening. You try to reason with the ill person, appealing to his 'old brain' and how it thought. It just doesn't work. Then you wait for them to come down and understand what they are saying and doing, but nothing short of medication will speed up that process.

If Holmes were indeed in a manic state and someone close to him had noticed the personality change, and they had been AWARE of what mental illness is and how to deal with it (this is where the lack of public awareness is such a problem), they could have tried to get him to a psychiatrist and to take meds, which could have brought him down early on. Unfortunately, it seldom works that way. Generally what happens is that if lucky, a family member notices the change, is unable to get the person to get treatment, and simply follows them around until the illness manifests itself as a direct danger to the person or others, at which time they can try to get them committed involuntarily to a hospital for 72-hr observation. But this all hinges on family members recognizing the signs of mental illness and then understanding that they personally can't do much without medication.

[thedutymon]

Afternoon,

Living here in Colorado (Small Mountian Town about 200 miles from Denver/Aurora) I am deeply saddened by being the Countrywide Headline for another one of these senseless tragadies........Period!!

But the gist of the problem we have here is included in my above sentence. The problem IS the Media. If NO and I mean NO mention was made from Moment One of who was the Perpretrator of this incident we would see a drastic reduction in these type of incidents. And if the guy was knealt down in the parking lot and a Bullet put behind his ear, that would be another deterent.

I am so sick and tired of hearing the Gun Debate....I personally own 35-40 Rifles, Pistols, and Shotguns and if I was to count up all my stashes around my property I probably have 40-50,000 rounds for all the different weapons.
Now you probably know where I stand on the whole Gun Control issue........
Wrong Keemosabee........I believe that we need more Gun Laws and we need to get the guns out of the hands of Idiots!!

I used to live in Denver and even did a stent in Aurora and made a descision to move to the mountains because I wanted to raise my kids without fear of Gangs and City crime. Thank all that be I did!

Until the ownership of guns is made the provenance of Law abiding citizens. How do we accomplish that, lots of different ways. As was discussed, make it harder for Wacko's to buy them. Do a background check that encompasses the Mental Health industry, any Flags form them, no gun until they get clearance!!! Increase the penalties for possesion of an Unregistered weapon. Pick up your local Crip with an Unregistered Handgun and give him 10 years and make him do 10 years. Couple times of this he's in his 40's and not much of a worry about anymore.

Make it easier for Law abiding citizens who complete a Safety and Shooting course to get Concealed carry's. I have mine, if I would have been at that movie, that MF'er would have killed at least a few less or I'd be Dead!!! Enough of us get walking around bearing arms and the Criminals have to start worry'ing about that aspect of the Crime there committing, crime goes down, its been proven!!!!

Lots of other things could be done..............But the biggest issue is the 24/7 Ruthless/Sickening/BloodSucking/ NEWS MEDIA..........Don't allow them to Glorify these incidents and I can tell you what will happen....They will slow to a trickle.

The Headline should be "A Deranged Guman heretofore to be known as A##Hole #3 shot and killed 9 people at a local school today, The Gunman is in Custody and we will update with informnation about the Victims. The Gunman WILL NOT BE IDENTIFIED out of common decency for the Victims of this tragedy"

That's how you stop this crap.....................All they want is there 15 minutes of Fame!!!

Out

Neil