A question about Mental Health and Gun Violence

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_MeDotOrg
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A question about Mental Health and Gun Violence

Post by _MeDotOrg »

Every time a mass shooting occurs, the counter-argument is made that we need to understand mental illness more so that we can attack the problem of mentally ill people getting guns. So we should have more research into the causes and effects of gun violence?

Not according to Congress:

PRI wrote:“The NRA complained to Congress that the CDC was using the results of its research to essentially advocate for gun control. They called it propaganda. And back at that time, Congress slashed the CDC’s funding by the exact amount that was used for gun-related public health research.”

Rivara and his team discovered that having a gun in the home is associated with a threefold increase in the risk of a homicide — they released this information in a series of peer-reviewed articles that appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine. The CDC both funded Rivara’s original research and stood by the findings.

But after Congress seemingly retaliated against the CDC for publishing Rivara’s findings, Zwillich says researchers with the agency have shied away from conducting gun research.

“There is other research that goes on at the CDC that does have to do with guns,” says Zwillich. “There is a National Violent Death Reporting System, which does record the causes of all violent deaths, including in domestic abuse, youth violence, and child abuse. If a gun is the cause, that’s recorded — it’s not like they ignore it entirely. But gun deaths and gun injuries as a public health issue, as Rivara said, are still basically anathema to CDC researchers and anyone who gets CDC funding, which is potentially millions of dollars.”

So the gun lobby says mental illness is the problem, but for decades the NRA and their cronies in Congress have prevented the CDC from researching the issue.
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_Some Schmo
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Re: A question about Mental Health and Gun Violence

Post by _Some Schmo »

I suppose it is a bit much to expect integrity, sincerity and good faith from people who want everyone to own a killing machine.
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.
_MeDotOrg
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Re: A question about Mental Health and Gun Violence

Post by _MeDotOrg »

It's interesting: If someone says 'I'd like to blow up the world' we give it a loss less credence than when someone says "I'd like to shoot up a school'.

In 1982 in Chicago, someone went into stores and stocked the shelves with Tylenol capsules laced with Cyanide. From Wikipedia:

The 1982 incident inspired the pharmaceutical, food, and consumer product industries to develop tamper-resistant packaging, such as induction seals and improved quality control methods. Moreover, product tampering was made a federal crime. The new laws resulted in Stella Nickell's conviction in the Excedrin tampering case, for which she was sentenced to ninety years in prison.

Additionally, the incident prompted the pharmaceutical industry to move away from capsules, which were easy to contaminate as a foreign substance could be placed inside without obvious signs of tampering. Within the year, the FDA introduced more stringent regulations to avoid product tampering. This led to the eventual replacement of the capsule with the solid "caplet", a tablet made in the shape of a capsule, as a drug delivery form and with the addition of tamper-evident safety-seals to bottles of many sorts.

In the aftermath of the Tylenol murders, there were several copycats. But the government and the pharmaceutical industry worked together to come up with tamper resistant packaging.

It's funny, but I've never heard anyone complain about their right to consume Tylenol was curtailed by tamper resistant packaging. There was never a National Free Bottle Association saying that this was the first step to the confiscation of drugs.
"The great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization."
- Will Durant
"We've kept more promises than we've even made"
- Donald Trump
"Of what meaning is the world without mind? The question cannot exist."
- Edwin Land
_Kevin Graham
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Re: A question about Mental Health and Gun Violence

Post by _Kevin Graham »

From what I see, they're moving away from the "mentally ill" argument and are starting to argue that it is a generational thing. You see, the world is more evil now. God is out of schools, Liberals are turning the kids into snowflake cowards who are acting out because they were raised to believe they can have everything they want. This is the newer line of defense and I've been hearing it on talk radio, on FOX and from a hundred different morons on social media. This is why Trump attacked the students and blamed them for failing to report the problem (even though they did).
_Doctor Steuss
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Re: A question about Mental Health and Gun Violence

Post by _Doctor Steuss »

Somewhat on the topic of this thread:

As someone who has a mental illness, has spent time in mental health facilities, and grew up around guns – I can say with certainty that it’s vastly more difficult for me to obtain my medications than it is for me to obtain a gun. “Legally,” or illegally. I put “legally” in quotes since under state law, it’s technically illegal for me to own a gun, but there is nothing in place to prevent me from being able to purchase a gun today (and I don’t mean by meeting some seedy blackmarket dealer in a hotel room).

for what it's worth.
"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead." ~Charles Bukowski
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