1y ago

"It's a mental health problem!"

447 comments

Well because here you can get treatment for your mental and physical illness without ending up in debt for the rest of your life
- Hahahahaha! Mental illness treatment? In Canada? Got insurance to cover that or years to wait?
  This part is no better than the USA (and surprise surprise, it's mostly privatized!)
  
  years
  u mean a couple weeks, right? or have you never left bumfuck, Missouri?
- Even when americans hate guns they can't help revolving their entire mentality around them.
- Accessing mental health services in the UK is a nightmare though.
  
  Was in a deep depression. I have good Healthcare and tried to make an appt with a psychiatrist to take care of it.
  6 month waiting list.... I thought US Healthcare was supposed to be better than this?
  Still cost me $300 when I finally got in too since it's a specialist... Fml
  
  It's also a nightmare in much of the US if you are not rich or happen to have excellent insurance. Having to wait six months to receive a bill you can't afford isn't great.
- The best and cheapest possible treatment you can get here for mental illness is the kind you grow on your own sadly 🍄

The German police uses less bullets every year than the average policeman in the US.
Yes you read that right, the entire German police, all of them.
- Im picking up what your putting down... the german police force needs assult rifles.
  
  I didn't put it down, it was taken down.
  The German police needs fewer nazis!
- America is filled with mentally ill violent people.
- Even the kugeltesters?
- When in the history of humanity has anyone, anywhere in their right mind thought, "You know what we need here? More police shootings!"
  I'm begging you, for your sake, think about the things you write before you post.
  
  Why?
  Not that I'm that connected to German day to day events but it's not that country is rampant on street violence.
  
  No tolerance for nazi scum. Never, not once not one little bit.
  Fuck off.
  
  What are you talking about? I have been to Germany and it was great.

The UK and Canada have similar occurrences, but not in the vast number as the United States. We all understand the access to firearms is the problem.
- Except for all the people trying to deflect blame from firearms by blaming mental illness. Without any will to actually address mental illness, of course.
  
  It's all about the access to firearms.
- Why not both?
- How do you effectively remove firearms from the equation at this point? Doesn’t the US have something like 120 guns per 100 residents? I don’t want to be the guy tasked with taking someone else’s gun away, that sounds incredibly dangerous. It also doesn’t seem fair to task someone else with that duty.
  I won’t disagree that it’s a problem, but I don’t have a solution either.
  
  Every country that currently has gun control laws, at some point didn't have gun control laws and did have an armed population
  They all managed to pull it off, the USA is unique in thinking this is an impossible task. And they haven't even tried
  
  You can't, but in Canadian communities where firearms are more prevalent you see the same result. Mental illness and access to firearms is a huge red flag no matter where in the world you are.
  
  Most places solve it with buy backs and slowly tightening the vice. So that people have both incentive and time to come to terms with it before it comes to a point where they would have to fight to keep them. The crazy gun nuts are actually more talk than action, despite how often they "say" they aren't.
  
  That's another problem I have with simple baning of guns all your doing is disarming the responsible folk as what are you going to do with the people who fight back with said guns and what about the people who hide their guns or people that get guns illegally you have to remember that there are people that break the law
  
  Historically, old America looks very different from the current one. I look at things like our transit network being entirely train-based, and now being completely car-based. That is a HUGE change driven by demand.
  The point is just that large, glacial changes over many years are by no means impossible if we’ve set it as a target and there’s motivation. Nobody ever barged into a railway company’s office and said “We’re tearing up your lines by force and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
- A part of the problem, not the only aspect.
  
  Really? I'd say it's a no Brainer. Easy access to firearms IS the problem.

I don't think it's a mental health problem per se - I think American society is sick.
And I don't mean sick as in "something happened to you all" - I mean sick as in "you all willingly participate in it together"
There are plenty of other countries with guns who don't have the same kinds of mass killings the USA does.
The problem as I see it is that so many Americans are just so fucking emotional about everything.
Everything's a drama, or a story that needs to be be told, of a journey, or an underdog, or revenge, or a protector. Are musical montage. "I just have to tell you where I have come from" - "you just need ro know my roots"
Every disagreement is a fascist or a communist.
Nothing just "is".
Everything has to have bullshit emotional content and context.
The trouble is none of you will ever see yourselves as part of the problem.
You're in a narcissistic trap.
Liberals are 100% certain that "it's the guns" and get absolutely high saying it.
But it's not the guns. Canada has guns.
Loads of other countries have guns.
You're all fucking hysterical.
- TL;DR: it is the guns, but it isn't just the guns. It isn't any one thing and it isn't not any one thing.
  it IS the guns. It's hard / difficult to massacre with knives.
  it IS mental health too.
  Canada, Australia, UK, etc have horrifically underfunded and backed up mental health care systems - but yes, still far better than anything in the USA.
  Canada has guns. Australia has guns. Neither has as many guns as the USA. Neither is as easy or cheap or widely available as in the USA. Restricting guns is what actually happens and is meant by your imaginary liberals and guns. They don't mean that farmers shouldn't have guns - they know that as a tool, they're useful. I'm not saying hyperbole isn't used (which pisses me off as much as you). But what I am saying is they're right. It's the guns. It's the amount of guns. It's the types of guns.
  Which brings me to:
  using words like "hysterical" doesn't help. It's misleading, and plain wrong.
  And yeah, I've gone off from your main point of "the USA is too emotionally extreme". This is... not wrong, but I want to argue overly simplistic. I (and others) have described the USA not as one country, but 50 or so (I'm not sold on the Dakota twins) countries that are loosely bound by their xenophobia of everyone else more than anything else. The country wasn't founded on a love of the USA, but the hatred of the UK.
  I mean, the UK isn't really that much different. Remember Northern Ireland and Great Britain? Scotland and England? If they had guns like the USA had guns.. woo.
  So, America being a drama, etc? You're not wrong. It's an ideology that was instilled at birth, and raised by capitalism - money from engagement, and emotionally trapped people are engaged. It's a society/system created, used and trapped by itself.
  And guns are what turns that bubbling cauldron into massacres.
  And massacres make the emotional drama cauldron bubble more.
  Get rid of guns, you get rid of a lot of stress and drama. You don't solve all problems, but you solve one that is repeating and feeding the drama machine.
  Sell the guns to South America/ Israel / wherever they want to ruin next, and use the money to fund affordable housing or something. Solved two birds with one stone!
  PS: I'd love to see the USA fundamentally change in one big way: a stronger, standardised federal government. For example, let states do state elections however they want. But if you're voting in a federal election, it should be the same forms, same design, same level of access everywhere in the country. If you can drive freely between states, driving rules and tests should be standardised (they basically are, rural vs city aside). Education? Anything which affects and creates a level playing field across the country, ie. federally, should be standardized. If a state wants to charge sales tax, and another doesn't - that's fine! That's local.
  In the same vein, remove weird voted-in positions, like judges and sheriffs. Emotional, populist,partisan involvement in roles that are supposed to be neutral and balanced is insane.
  And the guns aren't helping.
  
  Damn, this should be copied and pasted to everyone arguing its not guns, you've covered basically ALL of the talking points incredibly well
  
  Man, voted in positions sound so reasonable and logical and democratic, it's a real bummer it doesn't work in our current systems. You just end up introducing marketing to everything, ugh.
  
  Look, I don't think it's merely about mental health spend either.
  I genuinely think that Americans are not very laid back.
  It's mir magic - some nations are more laid back than others.
  You say the word "hysterical" doesn't help.
  But it's what you need to hear.
  Everything has to be coated with so much sugar you all get fat and the meaning is lost.
  Yeah. That's what's it is. You're just all always looking for drama and shit to get upset about.
  It's not more complicated than that. It doesn't need everyone to sit down and get to therapy or make a TV show show about your pain.
  It's just that you're all always looking for drama.
- Youre not entirely wrong, but I gotta say how funny it is to see a post complaining about how everyone blows each other's positions way up fisish by saying American liberals want to take away all guns. I'm sure you can find an American liberal that says that, but they're in a massive minority. Most of us would be very happy with Canada's level of gun control. You have to take a gun safety class and pass a safty test for any gun, with an extra class and test and a license for hand guns and assault rifles.
  Canada also has a system for helping people with mental health problems that doesn't bankrupt the person.
  Im pretty sure that's exactly what the Democrats have been asking for for the last 30 odd years.
  
  As an American who's about as progun as you can get and still think the government has a responsibility to tax its wealthiest citizens and keep it's poorest out of poverty, I'd welcome the same level of gun control as we apply to owning motor vehicles: license programs to ensure everyone who can legal own/operate one is familiar with safe use, practice and undergone a bare minimum level of mental evaluation so that a psycopath or sociopatn can't just have a bad day to turn it on the general public. It would be a tough pill to swallow for some gun owners but if it was paired with removing a lot of the baseless restrictions (looking at you California compliant) with regular requirements such as yearly renewals and checkups with the ability for referrals to be made if a person starts acting in a way they could become a danger and law enforcement required to act upon it or face immediate termination if they were found to ignore it.
  Combine that with single payer/universal healthcare with a comprehensive mental health for every citizen and it could lead to better diagnosing people suffering from conditions that could make them a threat to public safety and get them treatment that would hopefully help them live and not suffer from such conditions to say nothing of lower the chances for these violent outbursts.
  Its a fantasy, yes I know. But the current system clearly doesn't work, and prohibition and war on drugs has shown repeatedly that restricting everyone to stop the minority of abusers only makes a massive underground/black market for such things that actually makes it easier to people to abuse them in ways that are more difficult to track and prevent. I'd rather try to make the fantasy work than pursue a method I know is only goin to have short term benefits and long term problems.
  
  Yeah but there are lots of people saying it's the guns (literally in this thread) - that's basically what the OP is about. But even then the right wing acting like scared little babies about it too.
  It's just everything is turned up to 11 with you lot.
  All the fucking time.
- Our propaganda machine is generational and runs deep.
- Insert Fight Club quotes. We've known for years. The American Dream is consumed by everyone from everywhere and when it doesn't come true, no one knows what to do.
  
  It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.