It always stuns me when conservatives and, in particular, the gun community, make truly thoughtless statements. One such statement popped in comments a while back which can be essentially summed up as this: if someone is too mentally ill to handle a gun, they are too mentally ill to be out in society.
Setting aside the complete lack of intelligence in terms of mental health issues, how people are institutionalized and...well...that the world is shades of gray (not so black and white), statements like this show just how religious these folks are about guns. It's not about the 2nd amendment anymore. It's about proselytizing. Worse, it really illustrates just how ignorant these folks are regarding human nature and how they completely misunderstand, either by free choice or pure ignorance, the fact that low levels of responsibility are the norm, not the exception, in this country. It's this simple fact that will eventually bite them hard in the ass.
These thoughts really crystallized for me a couple of days ago when two separate events occurred. The first one was a story my wife told me about a fellow parent at my son's school. She was having a conversation with another mom that turned to video games. My wife was pretty shocked to learn that this mom let her son play whatever games he wanted (like Call of Duty) even though he has had mental health problems. Compounding this waiting disaster was the mom's admission that she and her husband were going to get their conceal and carry permits and how they were going to start taking their 11 year old son (the one with the mental health problems and love of Call of Duty) to the range on a regular basis to "turn him into a man." It's nice to know the next Adam Lanza will be just a few short blocks away.
Later that day, I went and played tennis with a younger guy who was clearly on the autism spectrum. He was very picky and jumpy throughout the match, admonishing me for not handing him the balls in the right way on the changeover. A couple of times he just wigged out because he thought he saw a ball flying onto the court from another court and in reality, there was nothing. He apologized after the match, noting his mental health issues, and asked me to give him a break. We never talked about guns but it occurred to me that, while this guy was just fine to be out in public, he would decidedly not be fine given a firearm.
There are many people in this country that are not dangerous in and of themselves. But you start adding in elements to the mix of a perfect cocktail and you can very easily have an explosion of violence. It's not as black and white as the commenter assured me (shocking). Everyone is different and each mental issue is complex with each individual. To say that they should all be institutionalized simply because they can't be trusted with a gun is completely myopic.
And I am real tired of the annual culling that goes on from gun violence as a result of this ignorance.
4 comments:
The mentally ill are on some level the same as children: they lack a certain capacity for judgment. We allow children to roam the streets freely, yet we don't allow them to carry weapons.
The same thing is true for someone on parole: they have demonstrated a lack of judgment, and are earning their way back into the good graces of society. They have not yet earned the right to carry weapons.
Someone with anger management issues or depression is mentally ill, and shouldn't be allowed to carry a gun. They might be minimally dangerous to society, but we all are physically capable of being dangerous but then so is anyone who drinks and drives a car. There's a balance between individual rights and public safety that has to be weighed.
The problem with carrying a gun is that it changes some people. It makes them feel invulnerable and powerful. That can warp their judgment, which may cause them to behave in ways and go places that get them into trouble.
A 2009 study at the University of Pennsylvania found that people who carry guns are 4.5 times more likely to be shot and 4.2 times more likely to be killed than unarmed people. The numbers were even higher for people who had a chance to defend themselves.
Of course, many of the people who were shot were cops and criminals. They inject themselves into situations of danger all the time. But that's the problem with guns: if you've got one, you're more likely to go somewhere that isn't safe because you've got "protection."
But guns are not protective, in the same sense that kevlar vests are. Guns are not a passive defense, they're an offensive weapon that has to used preemptively to be effective. They require skill and grace under pressure: most civilians who find themselves under stress will not be effective. Such people often kill innocent victims because they misunderstand what's going on, like the man who shot and killed a young black woman looking for help on his front porch after her car broke down and cell phone went dead.
Michigan has a stand your ground law, so the police didn't immediately arrest the perp. This is nonsense: people with itchy trigger fingers are a clear menace to society. If you want to own a gun, fine. But if you kill someone without sufficient provocation, or with alcohol in your system, you should go down for involuntary manslaughter: it's no different than reckless driving.
"I was afraid" should never be a justifiable defense for murder. It's another way of saying "I am coward and my life is worth more than Trayvon Williams' or Renisha McBride's."
Can such a person safely drive a car? Are they actively a danger to others?
There are fine points at the dividing line that need serious discussion. But if you are going to push for something like "ever had even a single counseling session for any reason" as "standard" for stripping someone's ability to defend their life, then I will have serious words with you.
First rule of self-defense: never allow yourself to be put in a position where you are unable to defend yourself.
The way you tell it, Markadelphia, perhaps your tennis partner shouldn't trusted with a tennis racquet. He might've beaten you to death with it in a fit of rage. God help you if you meet him when he's driving. At least the way you tell it...
And Nikto, you ignorant slut. The vast majority of shootings of armed people in Philadelphia (or any major metro area) is of criminals being shot either in the commission of a crime, or by other criminals (those aren't mutually exclusive categories, either). In past 5 years (twice the amount of time included in the study), 13 cops have been shot, while in the 2.5 years of the study, 677 shootings were used (after carefully excluding the sizable number of armed under-21 criminals who were carrying illegally. If you have reason to believe the period of October 2003 to April 2005 was especially bloody for cops, please provide a citation for that. Otherwise, your statement that "many of the people who were shot were cops and criminals" is so misleading as to almost be an outright lie. Cops were a tiny percentage. Branas' "study" is junk science, pure and simple.
Lovely. Mark you ass. You refused to even discuss this statement when it was made. You dismissed it out of hand. Your fucking opportunity to 'be reflective and liberal' and to 'ask questions' and you went all close minded and black and white.
Now you make an entire post lecturing on something you refused to even discuss then would be the height of hypocrisy - if it wasn't outshined by you - you! - claiming you are looking at things in 'shades of gray'.
And Nikto - ignorant slut is right. The key to your argument is the unsupported statement that carrying a gun changes people - prove it. You can't, it's ignorant fear mongering.
Both of you should try to explain how a person who is too dangerous to have a gun is ok to be in public with a high mass guided kinetic energy weapon.....or with chemical incendiary devices.
You've claimed that it's not about the gun, but the people. But all you ever focus on is the gun. My statement focuses on people - like you claim to. But the first thing you can be bothered to say about it is to focus back on the gun.
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