JoeB131
Diamond Member
This writer from Salon hits it spot on.
It s not about mental illness The big lie that always follows mass shootings by white males - Salon.com
“The real issue is mental illness” is a goddamn cop-out. I almost never hear it from actual mental health professionals, or advocates working in the mental health sphere, or anyone who actually has any kind of informed opinion on mental health or serious policy proposals for how to improve our treatment of the mentally ill in this country.
What I hear from people who bleat on about “The real issue is mental illness,” when pressed for specific suggestions on how to deal with said “real issue,” is terrifying nonsense designed to throw the mentally ill under the bus. Elliot Rodger’s parents should’ve been able to force risperidone down his throat. Seung-Hui Cho should’ve been forcibly institutionalized. Anyone with a mental illness diagnosis should surrender all of their constitutional rights, right now, rather than at all compromise the right to bear arms of self-declared sane people.
What’s interesting is to watch who the mentally ill people are being thrown under the bus to defend. In the wake of Sandy Hook, the NRA tells us that creating a national registry of firearms owners would be giving the government dangerously unchecked tyrannical power, but a national registry of the mentally ill would not — even though a “sane” person holding a gun is intrinsically more dangerous than a “crazy” person, no matter how crazy, without a gun.
Now, here's the thing. The sad state of our mental health system is a bipartisan issue. From Republicans who don't want to pay for outpatient programs or hospitals, to ACLU types who make it next to impossible to institutionalize a crazy person against his will.
But the main problem is, we always find out AFTER these people have gotten a gun and killed a bunch of people that they were crazy.
How about, just for the hell of it, we actually prevent crazy people from getting guns before they kill a bunch of people?
It s not about mental illness The big lie that always follows mass shootings by white males - Salon.com
“The real issue is mental illness” is a goddamn cop-out. I almost never hear it from actual mental health professionals, or advocates working in the mental health sphere, or anyone who actually has any kind of informed opinion on mental health or serious policy proposals for how to improve our treatment of the mentally ill in this country.
What I hear from people who bleat on about “The real issue is mental illness,” when pressed for specific suggestions on how to deal with said “real issue,” is terrifying nonsense designed to throw the mentally ill under the bus. Elliot Rodger’s parents should’ve been able to force risperidone down his throat. Seung-Hui Cho should’ve been forcibly institutionalized. Anyone with a mental illness diagnosis should surrender all of their constitutional rights, right now, rather than at all compromise the right to bear arms of self-declared sane people.
What’s interesting is to watch who the mentally ill people are being thrown under the bus to defend. In the wake of Sandy Hook, the NRA tells us that creating a national registry of firearms owners would be giving the government dangerously unchecked tyrannical power, but a national registry of the mentally ill would not — even though a “sane” person holding a gun is intrinsically more dangerous than a “crazy” person, no matter how crazy, without a gun.
Now, here's the thing. The sad state of our mental health system is a bipartisan issue. From Republicans who don't want to pay for outpatient programs or hospitals, to ACLU types who make it next to impossible to institutionalize a crazy person against his will.
But the main problem is, we always find out AFTER these people have gotten a gun and killed a bunch of people that they were crazy.
How about, just for the hell of it, we actually prevent crazy people from getting guns before they kill a bunch of people?