School shooting in Connecticut

[ReconRat]

I've been reading up on the psychology behind behavior of this type. Unfortunately, it's not well understood, and not something that can be seen well in advance. Not all people do this. Not all mentally ill people do this. Even people that clearly match the symptoms don't even do this. A very very small percentage of the people with the symptoms will act out their rage or delusion. We'd probably have to lock up a thousand people for every one that is truly capable of the crime.

[nautical1]

If this is real then wow.

[jdonn]

If this is real then wow.

That is fucking ridiculous.

[Cheech]

RIP Kiddos.

I was at the range when my Lt. told me. Buddy text me right afterwards. I told my buddy we need to reevaluate how we handle mental health. Sure enough this monster has mental health issues.

Bing-fucking-go. ANY other policy debates are treating the symptoms and not the problem.

[Cheech]

No. It's not isaac's school. I'm sorry for not being clear. Isaac is in New Hampshire and I can't go get him. I just want to be sure he's alright' date=' which I'm sure he is. I'm just geeking out because he's up there and I can't protect him.

I should have not posted anything. I apologize.[/quote']

You don't have to apologize for dick. I hope Isaac's reached out to you by now.

[Tonik]

If this is real then wow.

Seems real, I confirmed one with some twitter searching.

[Scruit]

There WILL be a discussion from this, I just hope it addresses the root cause.

I believe that Mental Health professionals who become aware that a person is delusional/lost touch with reality (or whatever symptoms led up to each of these whack jobs) should have to report that information in a manner that could be appropriately disseminated in a manner that would hopefully reduce the chances of these headcases getting weapons.

[TwiztedRabbit]

^ agreed

[TSB67]

If this is real then wow.

I feel the same way. Why is a shooting in another state interrupt-your-regularily-scheduled-programming news all day in Ohio? It's a media fucking circus.

[Cheech]

I feel the same way. Why is a shooting in another state interrupt-your-regularily-scheduled-programming news all day in Ohio? It's a media fucking circus.

I'm sorry that this national news interrupted your regularly scheduled showing of All My Children. Would you rather this be so commonplace as not to warrant news coverage?

Yes, it is a media circus, and yes, the 24-hour news media overblow things so they can fill airtime, but most (not all, but most) of this is necessary to help the nation get actionable, truthful information, and to help them process their grief.

[Cheech]

I spoke to Isaac's mother. He says he's alright' date=' but he doesn't really want to talk about the shooting at the moment. I think he and I just may see my shrink when he gets here next week just to give him some space to clear his head. I can imagine how many different things he must be thinking and feeling right now. He'll need help processing and cataloging that randomness.[/quote']

Good idea. You guys take care out there.

[TSB67]

Would you rather this be so commonplace as not to warrant news coverage?

I wish it didn't warrant news coverage because it's already commonplace enough. I saw the internet rumbling today and thought they were still talking about Oregon.

If you get off on watching a bunch of strangers cry and whatnot, NBC already produced an hour TV show about it. It's on now.

P.S. IP, I didn't read all of this but I'm sincerely sorry if this had a direct effect on your family.

Edited December 15, 2012 by brn6604
P.S.

[Scruit]

My wife and I were just talking about how to (try to) keep guns away from crazies. One idea, mentioned above, is to have "mental defective" status (Item 11.F on the NICS form) be reported by mental health professionals to the govt so that NICS will already know this.

Other than "legal" sales where a metal case does not self-report his mental status, the biggest risk is unregulated private sales. Sorry, but the "gun show loophole" has to close.

Another suggestion, from my wife, is to set up NICS stations at gun shows. They can be ATM-sized machines that would work thusly:

- I go to a gun show and want to buy a gun privately

- Seller and I walk up to the NICS Station.

- I fill out information on the screen in a private manner.

- NICS result is displayed on the screen, and printed out.

- Seller keeps the printed form and the sale completes.

There is a debate about if the seller info or gun serial# should be stored.

If the gun is used in a crime and traced back to the seller, he provides the NICS station printout to prove that the NICS check was done and the result was a "proceed". Any sale that takes place without a NICS check would be illegal.

All other private sales would have to happen in the presence of a dealer who would run the NICS check - OR a NICS check station could be supplied for customer use at gun shops or similar businesses.

OR we open up the NICS phone # for regular people to use.

[ReconRat]

I discovered that cities and towns have old obscure laws requiring citizens to notify the local police department when they privately sell a firearm. There's a form for that. Obviously these laws are disregarded and no longer enforced. Or rather, were unenforcable.

[Scruit]

Nope. You're trying to stop arterial bleeding with a HelloKitty band-aid. The problem is not guns' date=' gun sales or availability of firearms to the general public. The problem is the complete and total inability/unwillingness to address ignored mental health issues.[/quote']

Agreed that it is a bandaid, short-term until more permanent solutions can be found. We have the technology to make NICS checks for private sales into a trivial matter that won't get in the way of buying/selling by the general public. The fix for mental cases will be much more difficult.

Gun laws may or may not reduce (not stop) the risk of them accessing guns, but would NOT address the underlying mental issues that cause them to want to harm people. THIS is where the solution lies. The long-term solution is appropriate mental health care for people who need it, appropriate monitoring of those who are cared for in the community with medications etc (I don't want to hear "he's off his meds"!), and, where needed, institutionalization.

[Scruit]

I'm not on board with "temporarily" instituting any type of regulation that hinders the private enterprise between two citizens. I don't support the current requirement for background checks' date=' because they clearly do not work. Thieves and criminals will always find ways around the system. Making things more difficult for you and me isn't the solution to anything. Permanent, or not.[/quote']

I'm not thinking about thieves and criminals right now - I'm thinking headcases.

What's your proposal?

[Scruit]

As if to underscore the fact that the problem is head cases, not guns:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/world/asia/china-knife-attack/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

[Scruit]

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/13/world/americas/canada-killer-released/index.html?iref=obinsite

[NinjaDoc]

Pauly, hope u get to be with him soon.

As years go by the expression of "craziness" by the unstable is getting worse,

My only prayer is that this is no way related to the Portland one from few days back, seeing a dangerously uneasy coincidence between them in respect to age and "style" etc. hope there is no underground workship for the aurora guy etc

[NinjaDoc]

Pauly, hope u get to be with him soon.

As years go by the expression of "craziness" by the unstable is getting worse,

My only prayer is that this is no way related to the Portland one from few days back, seeing a dangerously uneasy coincidence between them in respect to age and "style" etc. hope there is no underground workship for the aurora guy etc

[smashweights]

There WILL be a discussion from this, I just hope it addresses the root cause.

I believe that Mental Health professionals who become aware that a person is delusional/lost touch with reality (or whatever symptoms led up to each of these whack jobs) should have to report that information in a manner that could be appropriately disseminated in a manner that would hopefully reduce the chances of these headcases getting weapons.

It's a fine line you gotta walk though. Lots of folks have transient delusional disorders, psychosis, and the like. I just got off 6 weeks of my medical rotation at the psychiatry department at the VA hospital in Dayton and the ability to really predict people's behavior is so tough, not to mention even getting people to be upfront about their mental health issues. On the one hand it seems simple to disseminate these diagnoses to try to keep guns out of these folks hands. But the flip side of that is people will be less likely to seek treatment if they know that kind of extremely sensitive information gets out there.

Every patient gets assessed for suicide and homicide risk, but it's still a guessing game. Physicians have a legal responsibility to inform specific potential victims of a person's expressed homicidal ideation already and hospitalized patient's are held until their risk of suicide and homicide are felt to be sufficiently low.

One of the other problems that come from things like this is further stigmatization of mental illness, such as depression or schizophrenia. This just makes getting people into the help they need that much harder, because in reality these kind of things, while often committed by people with mental disorders, are not typical of people with mental disorders.

Even in the end, the mall shooter guy got his weapon from a friend or relative, if I recall correctly.

[jnor]

From another forum:

The real issue here is BROKEN FAMILIES and how many young people have no sound parenting. Do you have any idea how many kids are battling with depression? How many adults are struggling with that same battle?

We have several issues compounded here. The erosion of family and thereby the destruction of the fabric of society can be linked to events of the twentieth century... the rise of socialism, the intentional weakening of the family unit by destroying gender role-models, the demise of religion-- replaced with secular humanism and moral relativism. People are no longer assertive. Men are too afraid for their own lives that they run and leave their wives and neighbors defenseless. People turn their back to their neighbors when they are in need and refuse to "get involved" when there is violence in the streets.

There are too many single parents because 50 percent of our marriages end in divorce within five years. Then, there are all those irresponsible "baby daddies" out there.

Gun control is not the answer. Healing and strengthening the family unit is.

AND, if there is any need for politics at all right now, it should be focused on rebuilding the family unit and, in so doing, repairing the fabric of society.

[Cheech]

Agreed that it is a bandaid, short-term until more permanent solutions can be found. We have the technology to make NICS checks for private sales into a trivial matter that won't get in the way of buying/selling by the general public. The fix for mental cases will be much more difficult.

Gun laws may or may not reduce (not stop) the risk of them accessing guns, but would NOT address the underlying mental issues that cause them to want to harm people. THIS is where the solution lies. The long-term solution is appropriate mental health care for people who need it, appropriate monitoring of those who are cared for in the community with medications etc (I don't want to hear "he's off his meds"!), and, where needed, institutionalization.

There's a old technology phrase that applies even more so to political policy: "There's nothing temporary in IT." Enacting "temporary", knee-jerk reactionary solutions to the symptom instead of to the underlying problem doesn't do much but to give a small part of the population the warm and fuzzies for a bit by putting a superficial band-aid on the problem.

There's another technology idiom that applies here, and that's "Don't throw technology at a process problem." Yes, it would be nice to close the gun show loophole, I'm all for that. However, throwing all that technology as a response to this, then saying to everyone that "we responded, we're done!" isn't a response at all. The process problem is mental health care and American society's aversion/underfunding of it (which I'm sorry to say peoples, but that ties into the universal health care debate as well)

[wht_scorpion]

Rip people who were killed in this.

The gunman I hope your soul burns

[imaposer]

I'm not thinking about thieves and criminals right now - I'm thinking headcases.

What's your proposal?

This whack job killed his mother then took her legally owned guns and went to a local school and killed 26 people. Not a single current law, or any of your proposed new gun buying or selling ideas would have prevented this.

My proposal is crazy will always exist. We can take measures to try and reduce the number of incidents' date=' but only a fool would believe they can be eliminated. Nobody can prepare for every situation. Sometimes bad wins the day.[/quote']

This.