Stop blaming mental health for gun violence. The problem is guns.

[flamin lib]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/26/stop-blaming-mental-health-for-gun-violence-the-problem-is-guns/

This obsession with mental health as the root cause of gun violence is not only silly; it’s dangerous.

The elimination of severe psychiatric conditions would not solve our problems with gun violence. Despite the sensationalism of shootings that occur in schools or against police officers, they are infrequent events compared to the totality of gun violence.
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Gun violence is 20 times more prevalent in the United States than in other highly developed countries. But our mental health system is not substantially worse. Most wealthy countries spend between 6 and 8 percent of their health care dollars on mental health care; the U.S. spends 7 percent GDP. We have 19 mental health professionals and 3.4 psychiatric beds per 10,000 people, rates that are similar to Western Europe and other high resource nations. A patient with moderate or severe psychiatric illness is just as likely to be seen for care in the United States as in Western Europe, and is just as likely to have a follow-up mental health appointment and receive at least minimally effective mental health treatment.

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If one accepts the data from CNN’s Gun Violence Project, over 80 people die from gun violence in a 24 hour period. How long do we have to wait before meaningful changes in legislation that reduce access to guns? That is far more difficult to predict.

It's never the gun. It's not even the easy availability of the gun. It's video games, it's poverty, it's mental illness, it's never the fucking gun.

[Kalidurga]

1. We have a violent culture

it will be violent with or without guns. Guns make it easier so they should be harder to get. Yet, even with that too many mass shooters had done everything legally up to the point of their violent acts. Many of them would have even met any proposed laws that I have seen. We need to work toward a culture that makes people feel secure in their identity. Such people rarely commit a violent act and if they do it's in actual self defense because they were attacked violently and it's not about some perceived theoretical threat to their identity.

[daleanime]

2. There are a ton of things we need to do....

this should not be the least of them.

[flamin lib]

4. "done everything legally"

That's my point. Access to guns is far too easy and has been made even more easy since the NRA went full fear mode in the '70s to sell more guns. "Shall issue" is now the law almost everywhere in the US. There is no local intervention in who can buy or even carry a gun in public. Far too often we discover that a shooter has a facebook page or website that spews hate and fully discloses intent yet that is never taken into account when selling guns or issuing concealed carry licenses.

Think about Zimmerman. Four arrests for domestic violence but he managed to intimidate his wife/girlfriend into dropping charges. No convictions so Florida law says he SHALL be sold a gun and given a license to carry it in public. How nuts is that?

We, as a nation, desperately need to bring local law enforcement back in to the loop on gun possession. Zero tolerance doesn't work in schools and shouldn't be forced onto the public for guns because guns are soooooo special.

[Kalidurga]

5. Yes it's true it's too easy to get guns

Zimmerman and thousands like him should not get guns. But, not having a gun won't make them less violent. I have known far too many violent people in my life. They didn't use a gun for their violence. I suppose I was lucky my mother wasn't beaten to death or shot by my dad, he used both his fists and his guns frequently. He was happy enough with beating my mother though. Sorry for the side notes here. Recently a toddler was stomped to death in Minneapolis the boyfriend of the mother couldn't tolerate the child crying. I am as worried about the victims that don't die as I am the ones that do. And while we are at it I consider acts of suicide by guns to be gun violence, while those who defend the right to have a gun do not.

Just in case you think I am defending the status quo I am not. I just want it out there that the problem isn't the tool, it's the person who is willing to be violent. There are places where the ownership of guns is rather high and the murder rate by guns is low. The reason is people aren't inclined to use a gun to commit a violent act against another person.

[flamin lib]

6. Let me clarify that I didn't think you were defending the way things are, indeed the commentary on

the nature of violence is well taken and a big part of our problem. I can't personally imagine your experience with domestic violence but that is one semi bright spot in the carnage. More than a dozen states have passed laws taking guns away from domestic abusers. It's kind of hard to defend providing guns to wife beaters.

All that said, on December 14, 2012 a man in Japan took a Katana (sword) into an elementary school and slashed and hacked 20 children. They all survived. How different than Sandy Hook. Sometimes it is the tool.

Thank you for the commentary and a chance to expand on the issue of violence, gun and otherwise.

[Kalidurga]

9. Thank you

I am glad we have a lot of common ground on this issue. It is going to take a lot of people to make the changes that need to be made.

[Faux pas]

3. Being raised in a violent alcoholic

home with guns, I have a natural aversion to them. I hate them because they make it too easy to harm/kill someone. If I had a gun (and could shoot straight) I'd use it. It's sad.

[Maedhros]

7. I'd say the problem is not guns, per se, but GUN CULTURE.

Canada has more guns per capita than does the United States, but only a fraction of the gun violence.

Our problem is that many Americans have elevated the gun to the status of a spiritual fetish: an inanimate object imbued with spiritual power, in this particular case "freedom." To take away their guns, or to restrict their ability to carry or use their guns as they wish, is a direct assault on their "freedom." This stifles any attempt at reasonable regulation, because one side of the argument is not reasonable.

The problem is that guns do not represent "freedom" - they represent the ability to kill another person. That this has become a central idea of "freedom" to so many people is frightening.

[NV Whino]

8. We need to take a lesson from the Aussies

It won't solve the problem, but it may bring it into the manageable range. And the NRA needs to be dismantled and their political influence taken away.

First steps. And sometimes first steps must be drastic.