Another GodAwful Massacre In A School

[Sylvester]

The problem is a lack of mental health care, not guns.

I agree.

[Amskeptic]

The problem is a lack of mental health care, not guns.

It's both, in my book. We are armed to the teeth.
It increases the odds that mentally unstable people will have access to extremely efficient killing devices.
There are more car accidents in Chicago IL than Bluff UT. The gun homicide rate in the US beats all of Europe by a factor of four.
We can demand of gun owners that they be subjected to the same sort of regulation as car ownership, but the NRA collapses in paranoid tears of outrage at the thought.

If the NRA were serious about mental health care, we would have heard about it before now.
If the NRA were pure in its desire to arm us to the teeth for "safety's sake", they would not have a prohibition against visitors packing heat into their very own headquarters . . .

Adam Lanza's mother, had she been subjected to a more serious process on the way to gun ownership, would not have had an AR15 with extended clip, and she might have had a locked gun safe, and Adam's rage might have been spent out before the point of no return, if the obstacles had been greater. Maybe.
Colin

[JLT]

The problem is a lack of mental health care, not guns.

It's both, in my book.

Exactly.

What do you need to prevent a fire? Do you try to control the fuel, or the spark? Ask a fuel seller, and he'll tell you it's those Goddamn sparks that cause the fire, not the fuel. "It's perfectly safe to be up to your ankles in gasoline," he'll say, "as long as there's no spark." Right.

I agree that access to mental health care is an important part of the solution to gun violence. (That access has decreased greatly over the past thirty years or so, and would decrease even more with the cutbacks in government spending on mental care facilities that the Republicans want.) But the sheer amount of, and access to, high-powered firearms is an equally important part of the problem.

Let's face it: the NRA is, at heart, a lobby for the gun industry. That's where they get much, if not most, of their funding. The purpose of the gun industry is to sell as many firearms as possible, to as many people as possible, to return a greater profit to their stockholders. It's as simple as that. Naturally, the gun industry is not going to embrace any solution that tries to reduce their profits. So they point their fingers at those crazy people who use guns to kill innocent people. Their solution: put more guns into the hands of the Good Guys, so they can shoot at the Bad Guys. The result: even more sales of guns.

The foregoing is not meant to disparage the individual members of the NRA who want to preserve the traditional aims of the organization: keeping guns for hunting and training people on how to use them safely. I doubt that these members realize how much their organization is taking them for a ride and using their concerns to further the agenda of the gun industry. I hope it's not too late for these members to take back their organization, kick the lobbyists out, and return it to its original function.

My two cents' worth.

[Amskeptic]

The foregoing is not meant to disparage the individual members of the NRA who want to preserve the traditional aims of the organization: keeping guns for hunting and training people on how to use them safely.

I doubt that these members realize how much their organization is taking them for a ride and using their concerns to further the agenda of the gun industry.

Yes, and yes.

I was happy to go through the NRA gun training and target shooting program when I was a teenager, and I respected the people who taught it.

It is a qualitatively different group now, just like the racing fraternity has been taken over by business interests who want $$$$, just like college athletics has been mowed over by business interests who want $$$$, just like the U.S. Congress has been taken over by business interests who want $$$$, we are being divided and conquered by business interests who want $$$$, we have become the Pottersville warned against in the movie Its A Wonderful Life.

[grandfatherjim]

On a different level, what I don't understand is why the pro-gun people care so much. Why is it so important to them (really, not the superficial reasons) to be allowed to own a gun?
I know I'm coming from a different place, which I'm sure is why I don't get it, but I just want to understand better what's going on. Here (in Canada), while it's true there is a small number of people who care deeply about the issue, it is just that, a small number. Most people kind of shrug their shoulders as if to say "why should I care about that?" There are folks who hunt for their food or for a living so I get why they would care, but in a city, it's largely a non-issue.
So why as soon as you cross the border, are people so incredibly adamant that it's their right, that they go so far as to claim things like you're only safe if you're packing?
Seems like paranoia but if so, it sure is becoming widespread.

[Velokid1]

Colin nailed it... If the NRA were serious about mental health being behind the bulk of gun violence, they would defend their own interests by putting thought and MONEY into dealing with it. At the very least, they would be fully behind any effort to keep weapons out of the hands of mentally ill people. Or an even better indicator that they truly believed mental illness is to blame, THEY would volunteer to help regulate the industry themselves!

But they don't, and IMO their true motives are obvious.

But let's forget the NRA for a moment (or better yet, forever) and talk about whether we are capable in America of talking about providing access to treatment for those suffering mental illness WITHOUT treatment meaning medication. Because it is our overmedication that is causing the bulk of the mental illness in our country! Talk about the elephant in the living room. These pharmaceuticals turn 30% of the people to which their prescribed into ticking time bombs.

[grandfatherjim]

The elephant in the room. Someone else mentioned this to me a while back and I had forgotten - but it does all fit together now for me.
And of course if we back off one more level, we then ask - why is the goal enormous profit above all else? Why isn't it for example, reasonable profit and lots of employment and the betterment of the health of the nation?
Publicly traded companies are accountable to their shareholders, who nowadays value instant huge gains above long-term steady growth. Often, the high level execs also hold large quantities of shares.
So GREED (which for some reason is considered a just-fine character trait) drives the behaviour that leads to an increase in share price, and we have an extremely skewed system where a very few people are wealthy beyond imagination, at the expense of the many.
Ultimately this should mean that a more socialist society should exhibit less gun deaths. I wonder if that's true.
For sure it points to a flaw in pure capitalism.

[ruckman101]

Henry Ford wanted to pay his employees enough that they could afford to buy one of the automobiles they were employed to make. Shareholders sued him and the courts ruled that a corporation was legally obligated to maximize profits for shareholders first and foremost. Legally, corporations aren't able to "do the right thing", unless you consider profits over all else the right thing.


neal

[Amskeptic]

Henry Ford wanted to pay his employees enough that they could afford to buy one of the automobiles they were employed to make. Shareholders sued him and the courts ruled that a corporation was legally obligated to maximize profits for shareholders first and foremost. Legally, corporations aren't able to "do the right thing", unless you consider profits over all else the right thing.


neal

Time to redefine the Corporate Charter! Let's get to work!
Colin

[ruckman101]

Absolutely. Paul Cienfuegos has much to say along the issue, and has been opening my eyes for a spell now.


neal

[grandfatherjim]

I maintain - and have had little to no pushback from anyone to whom I posit this notion - that a society behaves according to how it is measured.
We have had GDP drilled into our heads all our lives as if it's the be-all and end-all, and we go on our merry way thinking more money more money more money there is never enough money we must increase the GDP to be a successful country... meanwhile, cleaning up the Exxon Valdez oil spill generated a lot of jobs and contributed to the almighty GDP...

But if we use something else as a measure of success, I believe we can shift attitudes. If for example it was widely accepted that the most important thing was good physical and mental health (or pick your own criteria), and the media bombarded us with rankings of the world's countries with respect to the health of their citizens, scrutiny of the GDP would become but one of many topics found within our conversations regarding the state of a given nation.

Take for example the charts found in the article below. I was distressed on reading it, as it reveals how our government does not have a balanced perspective of what constitutes well-being. I would not have been distressed if they only showed the GDP performance, since we're doing well there.

https://uwaterloo.ca/canadian-index-wellbeing

Social change can happen, and pretty quickly too. Look at smoking. In just a few years (OK decades) it has gone from ultra-cool and suave, to boorish stinky disgusting behaviour. How? We were pummeled by the media. When we hear it every day it starts to sink in.

We need to start a new conversation - about what matters. Make it an everyday thing, a given, that we naturally value other things beyond becoming rich. We need to stop blowing the wind into the sails of the corporate execs and stockbrokers who are measured by profit profit profit. Time for a balanced view.

Hmmm.
Jim meets colleague X at corporate business function. X: "Hey how's it going? Haven't seen you for a while! Did you move to that new city so you could get that spiffy promotion that will get you more money to buy a bigger house with a swimming pool and a three-Lexus garage?" Jim: "No, man. Wasn't worth giving up the happiness I have in my social circle where I live already. We get together and support each other through tough times, and celebrate good times with each other too. After a while it's like a big family you know? That kind of happiness gets me through the day better than a pile of green."

[ruckman101]

Absolutely grandfatherjim.


neal

[Amskeptic]

I maintain -
We get together and support each other through tough times, and celebrate good times with each other too. After a while it's like a big family you know? That kind of happiness gets me through the day better than a pile of green."

=D> =D>