"It's a mental health problem!"
"It's a mental health problem!"
447 comments
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Well because here you can get treatment for your mental and physical illness without ending up in debt for the rest of your life
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Even when americans hate guns they can't help revolving their entire mentality around them.
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Accessing mental health services in the UK is a nightmare though.
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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
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The best and cheapest possible treatment you can get here for mental illness is the kind you grow on your own sadly 🍄
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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.
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Im picking up what your putting down... the german police force needs assult rifles.
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I didn't put it down, it was taken down.
The German police needs fewer nazis!
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America is filled with mentally ill violent people.
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Even the kugeltesters?
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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.
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Why not both?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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Damn, this should be copied and pasted to everyone arguing its not guns, you've covered basically ALL of the talking points incredibly well
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Everything’s a drama, or a story that needs to be be told
Well you should ask yourself if you're an outsider looking in through the lens of our media.
Because if you are, and you see us through our media, our media is very focus on profit generation, and gives a very 'two sides fighting' view of everything that is America, as that drives viewership and profits the most.
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It's from when I actually meet you lot. I won't even date Americans now in my city - it's just always some drama.
I'm sure not all Americans are like that and I've worked with some really cool ones - no doubt, but there's definitely a culture of emotional drama that contributes to an unhealthy greater society.
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It also doesn't help when we have fear mongering passing as legitimate news.
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I mean sick as in “you all willingly participate in it together”
Not to detract from your well written comment, but there is something of a disconnect between the will of the populace and those who enact the laws.
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well... it is a mental health problem. Plus culture. Switzerland has guns and just as many people with mental health problems as the rest of the 'developed' world, but almost 0 shootings.
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Canada, too. We have a FUCK ton of guns.
We just can't open carry them (or own handguns), so it's not in our pockets next to our phone. When it's at home locked in your hunting case, it's off your mind, and you don't think about pulling it out when people piss you off.
Because of this, we also don't have people feeling the need to buy guns to defend themselves against other people with guns in their pockets next to their phone.
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On the other hand, guns don't kill a lot of people in most european countries (even the ones with very little gun control)
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I don't think any European country comes close to the level of lack of gun control in the US though
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Everybody knows that sane, law abiding citizens become mass murderers the moment they hold a gun in their hands.
Yes, limiting access to the tools of murder will decrease murders caused by those same tools, but it does nothing to eliminate the murderous intentions of those people.
If we truly care about people's well being we should be doing both, reduce the risk of senseless shootings and massacres (gun control) and assist those with murderous intentions and other mental health issues who, believe it or not, are also victims of our sick culture and so-called societies.-
Nah, we don’t very much need to worry about the murderous intentions, as long as they’re not able to put them into action.
That’s the problem, guns let people turn those intentions into actions very easily.
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The Nice, France truck attack resulted in more deaths than someone shooting pseudo-automatic high capacity magazine rifles into a crowd of hundreds of people from an elevated position for like 30 minutes straight in Las Vegas
People in Europe can easily enact their murderous intentions, they just seem to not have them at anywhere near the same scale
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I would argue that gun control is more immediately actionable and greatly reduces the capability of the mentally disturbed to commit atrocities of such scale at such a common rate.
Long-term? Yes, access to mental health care and a culture that encourages receiving it will help immensely. But that takes time and will ultimately not save nearly as many people as gun control would. We need both, but gun control can happen today.
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If fires are happening because of so much gas around, and matches that people are lighting, you limit the amount of matches AND the amount of gasoline.
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Have you ever seen anyone arguing against mental health help? Only one of the two solutions you mentioned has a bunch of idiot fighting against it.
You also can't make mental health illegal overnight. People are born with mental health issues, it's not something they buy at the store or grab from their fathers closet.
Ban guns, ban guns now. Fuck gun culture and fuck all gun owners (even the responsible ones)
I understand your point, but everytime I see someone pointing at mental issues, it just seems to be like they will point at anything except the guns. We can thoroughly take care of the more complicated part of the problem once the easy part has been solved and they are killing childrens with knives instead of bullets.
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Have you ever seen anyone arguing against mental health help? Only one of the two solutions you mentioned has a bunch of idiot fighting against it.
No, the same group of people fights against BOTH the solutions.
Reagan is responsible for gutting our mental health infrastructure, and Republicans vote against increasing funding consistently.
They won't support restrictions on gun ownership because they say the problem is mental health, but they won't support spending on mental health either. (Most likely because they seem to oppose anything that would actually help people who suffer.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MentalHealthSystemsActof1980
https://sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas.html
This last one is a ddg search - you can just pick which article you want to read about Republicans voting against mental health funding.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=republicans+vote+against+mental+health+funding
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What if I want to hunt so I can eat meat without supporting factory farming?
Just playing devils advocate here, I agree we need gun control in the US. But saying "fuck responsible gun owners" seems pretty black and white.
It seems to me that the media loves to latch onto gun stories to further polarize the US. Divide and conquer is the oldest trick in the book. Republicans don't want anyone thinking. They want emotional reactivity and sensationalized, impulsive retorts with lack of reasoning from both "sides" and nothing close to nuanced thought.
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Have you ever seen anyone arguing against mental health help?
Yes, several times. Even this meme implies that arguing for more and better mental health services as a solution to massacres is foolishly wrong. Also, another reply I got here says:
Nah, we don’t very much need to worry about the murderous intentions, as long as they’re not able to put them into action.
You also can’t make mental health illegal overnight. People are born with mental health issues, it’s not something they buy at the store or grab from their fathers closet.
I think you are a bit confused about what I'm suggesting here, or I'm not understanding what you mean with this.
Ban guns, ban guns now. Fuck gun culture and fuck all gun owners (even the responsible ones)
We can thoroughly take care of the more complicated part of the problem once the easy part has been solvedYou think banning guns is the easy part? History has shown us time and time again that prohibitions don't work. Even if possession of a single firearm was punished with death people would still own and trade them as it happens with drugs in places where its punished with death.
Gun control or even prohibition is like a small umbrella under heavy rain, you dont get drenched but you still get wet. We need a raincoat, a hat and rubber boots.
To be fair, better metal health services is not an absolute solution either, there are plenty more stuff we should improve in order to achieve a real solution. -
What about gun owners who support restrictions and bans? There is a small group of us. Also gun owners who need to have them for their job as police, security, or soldiers? Farmers and Hunters have legitimate reasons, too. The government are never going to give up guns. Neither will criminals. The cat is out of the bag on them. We will never be done with guns until a better alternative is developed like the phasers from Star Trek or something. So saying fuck people for just owning a gun is a bit shortsighted, at least in my opinion.
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Username checks out
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Most gun owners live in a paranoid fantasy world with a hero complex. I've heard some wild shit come from the mouths of people who own guns. Many who do own them should have them taken away. It's mostly brainwashing and less about mental disorders with these people.
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Call it a mental health problem, a societal health problem, whatever. Unless we accept that wanting to slaughter the people around you is an unfixable natural quirk of some people's human experience, then this cannot be purely a gun control issue.
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This shit is a recent phenomena and I asked myself what changed since the 90s? That's when this shit really started popping off..
Only thing I can think of is access to the internet. Before that, struggling kids were benign by themselves. But now they have open access to others like them, and they can foment together. Throw in copy cat behavior and access to guns, that's the recipe.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States
It really isn't. They are happening more frequently, but that's to be expected with the population boom that we experienced. There were mass shootings in the 1800s in this country, and that's not counting anything we did to the native Americans.
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Sounds good.
The gun control crowd can stop mass murderers, criminals and domestic abusers from buying legal, semi-automatic weapons (as well as dumbshit gun owners leaving unsecured firearms around to be stolen or used in their childs suicide).
This will keep everyone much safer while the pro-gun crowd get to work on curing every mental health issue forever, fixing wealth inequality, banning video games and schools with too many doors and whatever other things they think are the root of the problem.
Until they do, indiscriminately selling guns to people clearly isn't working.
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The fact that you keep arguing how much of a gun control issue it is amongst other contributing factors is almost as big if the reason as the lack of gun control. Its been more than 20 years since Columbine, grow the fuck up and start doing something, WHICH INCLUDES gun control
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It includes more appropriately addressing actual underlying issues.
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Personally, I don't want to believe that wanting to brutally murder people around you is an innate human characteristic.
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It's not even like Canada even gives a shit about mental health.
Apparently the Ontario prime minister had heard a out how much people were suffering post pandemic - - - and then cut funding to the point that people could only get 10 sessions with a consoler (not even a psychologist or anything special!)
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One only needs to walk around some neighborhoods in Vancouver (hello, Hastings!) to see how much Canada cares about mental healthcare
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And it does lead to mass shootings but Americans have to think they are special
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... or anywhere else, except the USA.
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It can be surprisingly difficult to get a therapist in the US if you don't have insurance. Honestly, I found the process remarkably frustrating even with insurance.
I don't know what it's like in the other countries listed, but they all have much better healthcare systems than the US, so I imagine it's much easier.
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Genuinely.
Have the best insurance - Want a therapist in two weeks? It'll be a one hour long phone call.
Want in person? Join a month + waiting list
Dont have the right insurance? Fuck off or pay $200 cash.
And thats for the basic Talk Therapy or if you're lucky Cognitive Behavioral Therapy route. Want a specialist for a specific issue? Waiting list.
I advocate for books - you can get the therapy + mindfulness setup from a CBT Book for Depression/Anxiety and 10℅ Happier or Eckhart Tolle. Videos are great these days, even Tiktok sometimes. I think HealthyGamer has the best vids.
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Running statistical analysis on the data now. Preliminary results suggest video games as the main causal effect.
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For the record, we have video games, D&D and tarot cards up here in Canada.
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No you dont Canada is a frozen wasteland populated exclusively by Moose. Except Newfoundland their real.
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Oh, cool - we're pretending there are no other differences between the countries listed, e.g. healthcare, social safety nets, etc. that may or may not have been shown to be an unavoidable majority of the underlying issues.
Gotta enjoy the meme circlejerk though, eh?
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From the article...
If we explain this problem as pure evil or other labels like terrorist attack or hate crime, we feel better because it makes it seem like we’ve found the motive and solved the puzzle. But we haven’t solved anything. We’ve just explained the problem away.
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From other comments, healthcare and mental health resolutions are no picnic in the other listed countries either. Some places handle it a bit better, but the US is not alone in abusing its sick.
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What, you don't love neolibs arguing that they need to disarm the masses they've kept in squalor?
Because it's the only moral thing to do, obviously.
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Isn't it interesting that tons of people own guns in America and DON'T shoot people? Or the fact that we had crazy people and assault weapons previously without mass shootings.
Looking at these issues as if they're either-or is ridiculous. Of course you're going to need a multivariate approach. You're not going to get rid of the guns, and you're not going to get rid of crazy people. We need to address gun laws, mental health laws, and societal collapse overall. There's no singular approach that will fix everything.
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Just wipe out the guns and no more school shootings, stupid.
No annual school shooting is Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, China, Hongkong, Australia and people like you still defend it.
So retarded view. Go more left till nothing's right.
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I always say that this is more cultural than anything else. Americans tend to be more gung ho and are ammosexuals who worship guns excessively. The Swiss have more guns per capita, they are legally mandated to own guns, but they have practically zero mass shootings unlike the US. I'm not deriding American people themselves, I'm just criticising how they handle and view guns. They can do whatever the heck they want, it's their prerogative, but if one's rights end with another then that's going to be an issue. Just relax with the guns and emulate their Swiss brethrens who are self-disciplined about handling guns. Rights come with responsibilities.
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I don't think you mean it to be, but everything you're saying is total bollocks.
Particularly the part about guns per capita
The Swiss aren't perfect, mind. They didn't let women vote until the 70s ffs. My point being that these kinds of comparisons simply don't work. The US has a unique problem. But the problem is still solvable through gun control, because gun control can pervade culture, as demonstrated by many other countries.
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So, there's a problem with those statistics; they're looking at civilian arms per capita. In Switzerland, a large number of the firearms that are in 'civilians' hands are military arms. The Swiss--in general--have to serve a term in the military as conscripts, and then have the option of taking their issued rifle home with them. That's not a "civilian" weapon though. I strongly suspect that once you account for the assault weapons--real, select-fire assault weapons, not assault-style firearms--that the numbers go up sharply. Likely not to American levels. But much higher than they are listed.
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Huh, it must have been an outdated info that Switzerland has the most guns per capita. But still, they have large amounts of guns per person nonethless and yet very virtually no mass shooting.
As an aside, the Swiss women's suffrage is constantly brought up as Switzerland not being democratic and being late in the modern world. I'm not trying to justify it, but that is always misconceived. Every Swiss canton in 90s but one kept rejecting the women's suffrage in their local referendums, because that canton is overwhelmingly populated by couple of hundreds of old rural people stuck in their ways. It took the Swiss Supreme Court to force that canton to finally allow women to vote. Because of that one canton, everyone outside of Switzerland thought the entire country did not allow women to vote until the 90s, which gave the country a bad historical reputation and myth.
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But the problem is still solvable through gun control, because gun control can pervade culture, as demonstrated by many other countries.
How likely do you believe it is to bring about the constitutional amendment necessary to ban firearms? To gain support of 2/3s the states in addition to a 2/3 majority in Congress?
That aside, you could argue symptoms could be addressed through such extremes if it were possible to do so, but you couldn't argue such measures address underlying issues - solve problems.
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The Swiss have more guns per capita, they are legally mandated to own guns, but they have practically zero mass shootings unlike the US.
their country is filled with Swiss people.
we are a mentally ill melting pot of dozens of different cultures (some that praise violence) that barely tolerate each other.
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ammosexuals
Ah, I see we're using conservative tactics in making an "other" group demonize and alienate.
I always say that this is more cultural than anything else.
In the sense that culture is a complete lack of social safety nets, affordable and accessible healthcare and community support resources, broken ERPO laws, etc., sure.
You could argue rampant media oversensationalism of such violence glorifies it and further incentivizes it to those seeking to commit such a gruesome suicide, but that's less culture and more partisan wedge-driving and profiteering off ad revenue.
I’m just criticising how they handle and view guns.
How do you believe we view firearms? I'm interested in hearing how we can do whatever the heck [we] want.
Just relax with the guns and emulate their Swiss brethrens who are self-disciplined about handling guns. Rights come with responsibilities.
It's fortunate, then, that the vast majority of firearm owners are responsible.
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Is it really political partisan though? America is the only developed country with disproportionately high level of mass shootings compared to others. Not to denigrate developing countries, but this high rate of mass shooting in US is comparable to those in developing nations, because these countries have rampant corruption and lack of enforcement of rule of law. And the level of violence is manifestation of that. The US is developed one and is put to much higher standard as a result.
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Aren't ammo, like, super regulated in Switzerland though ?
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No. You can buy it at any gun store quite easily.
This myth comes from the idea that there is ammunition paid for by the gov't for the weapon that you used in your term of conscription, that you have to use while you're at the range. If you want to pay for ammunition yourself at a regular gun store, you are more than welcome to do so.
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Ammo is regulated. They can only acquire them from regulated spaces like shooting ranges. That's why the Swiss is one of the top at sports-related shooting.
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Switzerland is ethnically homogenous.
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Switzerland is ethnically among the most inhomogeneous countries in Europe. The 59.3 % indigenous population is already split among 6 ethnicities – French, Italian, Swiss-German and 3 Romansh. 39.2 % of the population are migrants.
Get your facts straight.
Edit: the percentage of first-generation migrants seems to be double that of the US, by the way.
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1169711/umfrage/anteil-der-immigranten-in-den-usa/
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Well. It's partly a mental health problem, sure. But it's not just that.
We've got a number of things going on that a lot of other countries don't have.
First, guns are a civil right in the US. Multiple SCOTUS rulings in the last 20 years have affirmed that it's an individual civil right, and not a collective one. (Which would be weird, since everything else in the Bill of Rights is about people, rather than the gov't; the power to raise a military was already listed as a power of the gov't in the constitution, so why would the signatories need to also specify that the gov't had the right to arm the army that it had raised?)
Second, the US is one of the few developed countries that has extremely poor social safety networks. We have a low individual and corporate tax rate (again, as far as developed countries go), so we can't pay for the kind of social services that other countries take for granted. We have comparatively high rates of poverty and a far larger economic inequality gap than most other developed countries.
Third, we have a declining public education system; we've been cutting public education, and putting more money towards selective schools, like charter and magnet schools (and, in some places, public funding for religious schooling), which decreases the quality of education. This shitty education system means that comparatively fewer people--and disproportionately black and Latino people--don't have access to goo education, which limits their career prospects.
Fourth, we have a terrible, broken criminal justice system. We focus on punishment rather than rehabilitation, and people that go to prison often find that their opportunities are sharply limited when they get out, likely trapping them in a continued cycle of poverty.
The latter three things contribute to fairly high rates of violent crimes. The first factor makes crime much more lethal.
The truth is that the rate violent crime in the US is on par with violent crime in the UK or Australia (violent crime referring to forcible rape, assault/battery, robbery, and murder), with Australia having a quite high reported rate of forcible rape, the UK having a quite high rate of battery, and the US dwarfing their murder rates.
In regards to spree-killers, there's not a single profile. The US Secret Service has looked at some thigns that are risk factors, but spree killers are so comparatively rare, and have such widely varied motives, that there's nothing that they can draw definite conclusions on. When I say that these events are rare, what I mean is that commonly reported figures that claim daily mass shootings aren't looking at spree killers, but are looking at ordinary crime--robberies, assaults--involving multiple injuries, rather than an active shooter that's trying to kill as many people as possible. A running gunfight between gang member that sees 2 people killed and ten people shot isn't what most people think of when they thing "mass shooting"; they're thinking of something like the Mandelay Bay massacre in 2017, Pulse Nightclub, or Newtown, CT. Some of the people that are spree killers do have a real mental illness; the Aurora, CO murderer is schizophrenic. Many do not.
There's not a quick, easy answer, because this wasn't something that happened overnight. The idea that we've never had mass murderers prior to Columbine HS is just factually wrong, and Columbine has been 30 years ago now.
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In 2021, 8 out of 10 murders in the US were committed with a firearm.
130 people die every day to a gun in the US every day in the same data set.
In 2021, the states with the highest total rates of gun-related deaths – counting murders, suicides and all other categories tracked by the CDC – included Mississippi (33.9 per 100,000 people), Louisiana (29.1), New Mexico (27.8), Alabama (26.4) and Wyoming (26.1). The states with the lowest total rates included Massachusetts (3.4), Hawaii (4.8), New Jersey (5.2), New York (5.4) and Rhode Island (5.6).
The top states are all red. The bottom states are all blue. Speaks to safety nets and education and welfare of citizens correlations as you stated.
The FBI found an increase in active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2021.
There were three such incidents in 2000.
By 2021, that figure had increased to 61.
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Had me at what caused the problem, yeah. However, mass shooters have a deeply significant profile. These are young white dudes with conservative to far right beliefs. This is a demographic whose specific problems are rarely being talked about.
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Younger and whiter in general, yes. Conservative, eh, I'm not sure that there's solid data on that. Certainly some of the mass murders have had "conservative" motivations (trying to start a race war, targeting/murdering LGBTQ+ people, inceldom/extreme misogyny, etc.), but that's def. not all of them, and I'm not sure that it's even half. Nicholas Cruz, for instance, or the Aurora, CO murderer. Columbine. Newtown, CT. Shit, Mandelay Bay in 2017; I don't think that those had any traditional conservative motives, aside from, "I want to hurt/kill people because I'm feeling hurt".
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Oh, I agree.
Part of the problem you've got with looking at their findings though is that all of the things that they're highlighting as risk factors are really, really common. (Which is fucking horrific, but there it is.) If you made a database of all the people that fit the potential mass-murderer profile, you'd probably have well over a million, possibly 10M people in it. So then you have to find a way of finding out which one of those, say, 1M people will become a mass murderer. TBH, I fit their profile, but I have zero interest in murdering people. (OTOH, I do enjoy competitive shooting, even though I kinda suck at it.)
We're largely unable, or unwilling, to address these deep social issues. And that's shitty.
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As a non American I can't see a simple solution to the problem, guns are already abundant so banning them won't magically make them disappear, attempting to sieze them would probably cause a dark stain (ala Boston massacre) in the countries history and you've got to deal with the fact that the USA only exists because they had the fire power to make it so which is ingrained in a lot of people.
I wish there was a magical solution but I fear its a choice between a slow, turbulent transition or a quick, brutal, bloody change.
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Really well put. I do often think both sides tend to jump to extremes. But as always, the best solution probably lies somewhere in the middle
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The solution is to address underlying issues.
It's actually very simple. Neither party is willing to do it.
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I would say gun control is worth legislating but its actually not the main issue. The main issue genuinely is the mental health and the structure of society creating powerful and complex emotions in everyone: distrust, apathy, anger that is hard to place. And these emotions are a breeding ground for either radicalizing (left) or making extremist (right) and these white dudes with comversative family backgrounds and turning to far right political beliefs rather than facing these complex feelings.
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Or, ya know, it could be both?
Can we stop making these things into a false dichotomy?
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It's not even a good example. We just had a mass murder in Canada not too long ago.
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those other countries still have issues.
They just don’t have easy access to guns. Doesn’t mean the guy with schizophrenia down the street found a compound bow and hasn’t been threatening people and requires 5 police officers each and every time someone calls it in.
It doesn’t mean the guy who set himself on fire the other day was a figment of everyone’s imagination.
It doesn’t mean the guy stabbing people in the neck just outside of one of the main stations because the bible told him to doesn’t exist
Or the other guy wielding a machete outside another one of the stations threatening people with it just didn’t happen.
It doesn’t mean there isn’t domestic violence because of someone’s underlying undiagnosed problems.
please stop downplaying mental illness and violence.
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I don’t think this post is downplaying mental illness. Republicans like to point out mental illness whenever there’s a mass shooting as though that’s the cause.
This post just points out that every place has mental illness, but none of them have the availability of guns that America’s does.
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It's literally because guns are hard to get here. I'd have killed myself by now if they weren't.
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Are you ok? I know life hits hard sometimes and I get what you're saying, but that sounds like you're in a bit of a dark place right now.
I'm just some random internet idiot from Canada but if you need someone to vent to, I'd be happy to listen, as I'm sure many others would be. No judgement.
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Just had my heart broken, she slept with another guy while I was helping my friend prepare his house for his sister (while she was being evacuated from a war zone). She suddenly blocked my number and when I finally bumped into her at the gym (two weeks later) she grinned when I said my feelings were hurt by that. I feel utterly emasculated, worthless and ugly, to the point I see something grotesque when I look in the mirror. It's really peculiar. Maybe it's okay, there wasn't much heart left to break.
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Those same people who point to mental health are the ones denying any kind of public funding to address such issues (aka voting "no" on proposed legislation). There might be similar rates of mental health challenges in other countries - but we can also acknowledge that the US lags far behind in offering any kind of supportive system for those in need.
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In point of fact, many of us exist who are willing to recognize the unavoidable underlying systemic issues, continue to promote firearm ownership, and continue to promote community resources, social safetynets, and otherwise helping out their fellow human.
The world isn't some purely partisan hellscape.
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Mental illness don't kill people, uh uh;
I kill people, with mental illness
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It does, it just prefers the personal one on one touch in other places over the get em all at once way America seems to like.
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They don't kill people, but they certainly poison society wherever they are. It's like the mentally sick can't keep themselves from administrative positions.
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What if mental illness but guns? Like, lots of them.
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Can you get semi autos in Canada and the UK easily? Definitely can't in Australia. The most you're allowed is a rifle and only if you're a farmer.
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That's not true. You can get a gun licence pretty easily in Australia. Anyone that passes a police background check can get one. Yeah it takes 6 months but that's probably a good thing as well. You can't just make an irrational emotional decision and get a gun.
Also the storage requirements are quite strict. You have to have a proper gun safe to own a gun.
Then it's only single shot rifles and some pistols. We also have no public carriage. You can only move guns around from point to point, not just casually carry them.
It makes access to guns very hard for the average person. Yeah it doesn't stop organised criminals having more dangerous weapons, but organised criminals aren't going into schools and massacring people.
Strict gun control has been a really positive decision in Australia. Those who want to go hunting, still can, but kids, teenagers and crazy bastards have a very hard time getting them.
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I suppose that's true. I guess I was thinking about semi autos when I posted my comment and wasn't considering much else. Pretty sure it's impossible to get your hands on those as a civilian in Australia.
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as a australian this is complete crap people here either alcoholics, depressed or corrupt politicians
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Canada has guns too
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Few handguns. And guns in Canada aren't a religion.
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If they had anywhere near the process we have to get their hands on firearms they'd have significantly less firearms in the public. I've gone through the process and it's not walking into a Walmart.
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I own six guns and neve signed any government form.
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I hear of people getting stabbed like atleast once every two weeks lol.
Gun kill more people at once, which makes bigger headlines, but desperate people are still doing horrible things becuase of a lack of safety nets.
Other than the immediate body count, the only difference is how easy it is to ignore.
Edit: I'm not saying gun control won't stop gun violence. Pretending that the metal health doesn't play a role in why people trapped in a bad situation end up doing drastic things is just wrong.
It just gives those in power an excuse to ignore how societal deficits harm people, and it doesn't really convey a convincing argument for gun control. It comes off as if you think gun control will fix everything, when it just make gun violence exclusively less prevalent.
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What are the mortality rates of those two weapons?
Disclaimer: I looked it up quickly and haven't read a lot.
But from what I see, it's far more likely to survive stabbing wounds than gunshot wounds. See, e.g., the collection of sources here: https://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/1997/02/24/knives-00006
So even if there were a similar amount of attacks using knives instead of guns (which isn't the case as others pointed out), then guns would still be worse.
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Yes gun kill more, but we don't really have to stop at killing less people.
And the key to having even less people killed than just an effective gun control policy alone, is acknowledging that mental health does actually play a part. In a well functioning society people aren't driven to mass murder to begin with.
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Saying guns are fine because knives also kill is such a brain dead argument.
Knife crime is still higher in the US per capita compared to the UK (the country often used in knife crime comparisons)....
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I didn't say "guns are fine".
I said mental health does play a part.
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Dunno. Just recently(2 days ago) people without any guns hijacked an airport.
And are there mass shooting in Finland or Ukraine. Besides putin's mob I mean.
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people without any guns
A mob stormed and airports in Russia. Americans may see Europe as an exotic place, but mobs storming airports is pretty rare here.
So are mass shootings. While they happen, they're very rare.
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560 so far this year doesn't sound rare
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What a terrible take. Can you get mental health care in those other countries, or is there a wait list and a huge bill at the end like in the US?
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Wait list, yes. Bill, absolutely not.
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In Canada? Huge wait list unless you want to pay, same as the USA. What's the next excuse then?
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In the States it's free if you are very poor, but if you get a real job they remove the benefit. The welfare cliff is a really undiserable there.
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In Australia you can get like 5 free psych sessions a year or something. It’s not very well advertised, nor is it really enough to help those who actually need.
For any serious help, you’ll be looking at out of pocket expenses.
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