this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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Or, you know, we could just reallocate these egregiously huge military/police funds to healthcare + infrastructure. There are innumerable reasons people in this country are driven to violence but the number one is the violence it inflicts on us.
Pretty fucked to watch people blame doctors for mass shootings, because the pro-gun crowd doesn't want anyone blaming guns.
The Maine shooter received urgent, emergency mental healthcare. 2 weeks in a psychiatric ward, being given daily treatment and observation by doctors, who did everything they could to stabilise him.
What did you want them to do? There's no instant, perfect cure. There's no pill or surgery to fix "I want to kill as many people as I can with my legal firearms".
Or does the group constantly bleating about "freedom" want to indefinitely hold people against their will in a psychiatric ward, for the crime of "not being healthy enough to sell guns to"?
Doctors need months to stabilise a patient and potentially years for full remission. Since America is fucked, they also need someone to cover the tens of thousands of dollars since for-profit insurance companies and for-profit politicians will do everything they can ensure it isn't them.
But the gun manufacturers only need a couple of days and a few hundred bucks for everything they need to kill everyone in sight. The far-right politicians, media companies, sock puppets and suckers have already been working on them for years, making sure they know exactly who their targets should be when they snap.
It took the gun lobby 25 years to find their perfect excuse -- "It's a mental health problem". A tidy little catch phrase that sounds right if you don't think about it, that demands we jump a hurdle that will cost tens of billions of dollars and take 50 more years of medical research.
But it's no more bullshit than "violent video games" or "not enough prayer" or "too many doors" was.
If America has 20 social problems causing people to use their legal firearms to kill as many people as possible, then America has 20 reasons why the current gun laws are hopelessly insufficient for the society they're supposed to serve and the pro-gun crowd has 20 things they need to fix if they want to indiscriminately sell that society guns.
Nice strawman argument you have there. Nobody is blaming doctors.
You must have the head of a scarecrow if you think that's a strawman.
It is tho haha u literally can't point to anywhere in this thread that was said.
https://www.google.com/search?&q=us+blame+mental+health+mass+shootings
The world extends beyond the thread you're reading.
None of the links in that search support your argument. Saything that mass shootings are a mental health crisis, or a healthcare crisis (regardless of whether either is true) is not the same as blaming doctors for it.
Hey, uh, about that. Just because someone gets sent to a mental ward doesn't mean they're getting properly treated. I've been in one before, they did nothing to help me and I left with the same problems I had before, except they gave me PTSD too. They didn't release me because they thought they'd helped me, they released me because they believed they couldn't help me (what the fuck?). I've talked to other people and many of them had similar experiences. There's this myth that all mental health services are the same, but they aren't; especially when you are the emergency mental health service for the area. I'm not saying that we don't need better gun control, but what I am saying is that the US mental healthcare system is a burning trash fire, especially emergency services, and needs a lot of help, if not a straight-up overhaul.
Edit: it doesn't help that, iirc, there's a maximum holding period for people with mental health issues. A normal hospital can hold a patient for years while they're being treated, but what I've been told is that, as a result of the abuse 19th-20th century psychiatric wards would inflict on their patients, there is a maximum duration that mental health wards are allowed to hold patients (not sure if this is federal or just some states). Additionally, because they are typically private companies, they tend to put profit above health. The result is that some places will hold patients long after they're healthy enough to leave because the hospital is draining their bank accounts. Alternatively, sometimes they release patients long before they've healed because the patient doesn't have any more money.
"America's mental healthcare system is amazing and flawless" wasn't the point of my post, nor a view I hold.
There is no mental healthcare system that could possibly be built that would make America's gun laws safe.
If you know a way they could have prevented this, please share it with the world -- they'd love to know the cure for these problems.
The reality is that the pro-gun "it's a mental health problem" is functionally identical to saying "cigarettes aren't the issue, we just need more oncologists"
I think you're misunderstanding my point as well. Your statement implied they released him because they believed him to be mentally well, but what I'm saying is that just because they released him doesn't mean he was mentally well.
We do need better gun control. We also need existing gun control to actually be enforced. His two-week stay should have disqualified him from owning a gun, yet it sounds like he was not only allowed to continue to own guns, but he was allowed to continue to work as a firearms instructor. That shouldn't happen.
To be clear about something, I'm someone who believes that people should have a path to being able to own guns, including actual high-power weapons like anti-materiel rifles, if they want to. However, not everyone should be able to get one, in order to do so they should be required to pass tests, mental health evaluations and background checks, the depth of which would increase with the power of the weapon (a basic double-barreled shotgun would be easier to get than a Browning M2, the latter of which would involve a metaphorical colonoscopy and MRI courtesy of the FBI and ATF). Additionally, I believe there should be laws about what can or can't be advertised as gun storage; many lockboxes, for an example, are often advertised as being a good solution for gun storage. However, they're often so flimsy and weak that a toddler could open one by accident without even needing a key. Finally, I believe that if your gun is used in a crime, then you should be considered complicit; with your only defense being that your gun was properly secured prior to the crime and that you reported the weapon as missing the moment you discovered it to be gone (aka within a reasonable amount of time).
I know this runs against the views a lot of people around here have as it would permit someone to own a heavy machine gun if they wanted to. However, if I'm not mistaken, there is at least one European country (possibly more) with similar systems. Finland, for an example (unless this was changed within the past 5yrs or so), allows you to own any firearm. The catch is that it's very hard to legally obtain something like a Browning M2 because you have to have a museum/collector's license and justify your purchase, which can be difficult to do. You also have to be willing to let the cops stop by and check in on you whenever they feel like it, even if that happens to be at 3am. Yet Finland doesn't have the issues that the US does because they're very strict about who can or can't buy weapons and which weapons they can buy.
The reason why I hold this view is because I believe people should be allowed to do what they want so long as they aren't hurting others directly or indirectly (within reason, otherwise christofascists could claim gay people are hurting them spiritually or some bullshit). I know there are tons of people out there who could be trusted to own, take care of, and properly store pretty much any firearm imaginable. A law that completely bars them from being able to own a firearm because of something that another person, or group of people, have done just doesn't sit right with me. However, I also recognize that it's far too easy for people to be able to acquire a gun and we need more restrictions in order to weed out the people who'd use them to harm others.
Edit: I guess what I was trying to say, or what I wanted to say, is that in my opinion, gun control is like painkillers for a broken leg. The painkillers help, but if the cause of the pain isn't addressed then you'll eventually end up back where you started. Would it decrease the number of mass shootings? Yeah, probably. However if you don't fix the mental health system and normalize mental healthcare, you'll probably get people who are even more radicalized and aren't afraid of resorting to other measures.
So in other words, America isn't doing well enough socially for the current gun laws to work, but Republicans will staunchly oppose any attempt to address the underlying problems and everything they can to enable mass shooters.
But your "people should be able to own whatever they want" is self-absorbed trash. Why should thousands of people have to politely tolerate the risk to their lives just so some reactionary with a limp dick can own a minigun?
There is literally nothing in it for the public. The people who wouldn't wear a mask in a pandemic aren't going to lay down their lives for democracy. The guns haven't lowered the crime rate at all, they've just added a layer of gun violence to it. Minorities are still executed in the street by the state and if they have a gun anywhere near them, there won't even be an investigation.
You didn't fully read my message dude. I know this because you brought the "gun self-defense" argument into this, which I didn't bring up. Additionally, I don't even own a gun. I don't trust myself with one because I'm highly likely to take my own life with it if I had one. However, go ahead and tell me how I'm self-absorbed for thinking that there are plenty of people who could be trusted with one. Then again, I crave the sweet release of death and the idea that I might not have to live another day is very appealing, so maybe I just want to get shot in a mass shooting, right?
I already laid out my thoughts on how gun control could be improved. I gave an example of a country with a similar system and it seems to be working pretty fucking well for them, and it's something which is better than the nothing that's currently happening.
At the end of the day though, it's not like it matters. American politicians only respond to threats of violence or when minorities get """too uppity""" and """don't know their place""". So what's the point? Why even bother? It's not like the US will get any better; it's only going to keep getting worse. Why even bother caring...
That's fair, I didn't.
I didn't call you self absorbed, I called the view self absorbed.