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Gun control and mentally ill

not sure what you're saying, but personally i think anyone who wants a gun is already mentally ill to some extent
 
Should Elliot Rodgers have been allowed to purchase firearms? No.

"Mental Illness" is potentially a label that many could fall under. Sickness is an extension of weakness in a way. To fall in love is in a way weakness. Some say being in love is a mental illness. I think it all depends.

I've thought of purchasing a small handgun lately. The thought that some crazy fucker might show up with one firing at people and having a chance to stop him, sparked this idea.

From the sound (look) of your first post, it seems as if you might be one diagnosed with a mental illness(?). You sound rather volatile, and sensitive over the subject. I would think that a successful government would have laws to protect citizens. Restricting highly volatile people and those mentally ill people who are most capable of senseless violence is in our best interests. The main issue is that I don't think we have a real way of knowing who is who.

Why do you feel you need to own a gun? Why should just anyone be allowed? Do we let a blind man drive a car?

I don't want gun rights to be taken away, but sales should certainly be controlled. It would be nice if in the future the guns would only activate if our chemistry was "right"- like if it could read if use was justified. Intelligent weapons. Like they can tell what you're pointing at. Far-fetched...

I don't see how this is bigotry.

I disagree that wanting to own one, for protection, or for a hobby of shooting (its fun), is a sign of mental illness.

This may be better suited for CE&P.
 
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He lives in America - no amount of gun-control could have stopped him getting his hands on one.
 
I believe everyone should answer a 15 min questionnaire (which would be reviewed by a psychiatrist) before being able to buy a gun. Or better yet, everyone should spend 15 minutes with a psychiatrist, who would determine if that person is mentally sane. And a simple polygraph test asking the individual if he wants to harm people.
Criminals would still be able to get a gun illegally, but that would prevent some gun violence.
 
Testing for mental illness is always going to be difficult, and will shift over time (eg WHO included homosexulaity as a mental illness until the 90s). Would the test include an assessment of whether the fear that lead to the gun purchase had any basis in reality or was just paranoia? If there is a basis in reality for that fear, is the solution to give in to it as a society? If the reason people give for everyone to have guns is that everyone has guns, that's circular logic.

I don't agree with governments too much (though i'd usually trust them before a corporatocracy), but looking at the us compared with governments of europe that control their guns more, which have governments that look out for their people more? (i think the europeans much more; i suppose americans would think different). What i'm saying is that the reason often given for gun freedom being a good idea in america (so the people can stand up to the gubberment) doesn't seem to have any basis in reality - the big changes in american society (eg civil rights, end of vietnam war) were brought about by people with no guns. Most of the people who like guns the most seem to be more reactionary and conservative than people who might actually have a revolution anyway. If anything gun freedom in america seems to work directly against people's liberty by causing more fear and division among people.

I think this problem is wider than gun control though - America kills more of its people with guns than any other country but it doesn't have the highest ownership rates (switzerland i think) - there's something about american media culture that's wrong in some way (maybe the amount of normalised aggression and killing in films/games) (said as an interested observer from uk, but in no way anti-american)

Michael Moore says it better - http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1401062198.html
 
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Polygraphs will not work on many insane people because of the illness. They may think they are saving people by killing them etc. Stigmatizing the mentally ill further may make the problem worse. There are so many guns in the US that these regulations are largely futile.

You forget how many negative changes in society were facilitated by the absence of guns throughout history. It is repulsive how liberals who are too fragile and impotent to handle a firearm try to psychoanalyze those who want that freedom. Wobble trap and plinking are fun, there are sports/ recreational activities that are unique and require guns. It is you who is ignorant of these things, while the ones you criticize actually have experience. You may be safer in submission when you are not armed but gun owners always have another option.
 
Mental illness is such an ill-defined concept that I don't really believe that it is possible to test for it. A sociopath appears perfectly sane as does a psychopath. Take the guy in Montana that purposely set up a trap to lure someone into his garage and then--completely premeditated--shot to kill. To me that person is mentally ill. I certainly think that at the very least people that have delusional states should be prevented from having a gun.
 
So a man who had riches just bought a gun and killed and injured people because he had problems with rejection of love. Discrimination? Who gives a shit.
 
_DankOpiAmp_ said:
Polygraphs will not work on many insane people because of the illness. They may think they are saving people by killing them etc. Stigmatizing the mentally ill further may make the problem worse. There are so many guns in the US that these regulations are largely futile.

You forget how many negative changes in society were facilitated by the absence of guns throughout history. It is repulsive how liberals who are too fragile and impotent to handle a firearm try to psychoanalyze those who want that freedom. Wobble trap and plinking are fun, there are sports/ recreational activities that are unique and require guns. It is you who is ignorant of these things, while the ones you criticize actually have experience. You may be safer in submission when you are not armed but gun owners always have another option.
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I thought about putting in a caveat for innocent sporting fun, but thought it was obvious (in britain we still have sport shooting and hunting for toffs).

So how exactly did having guns help america when bush brought in the patriot act, or obama started scrapping bits of the constitution or not bringing in a first world health system? I'm trying to think of the negative changes that gun ownership stopped recently (or even in the past); perhaps you could remind me. Your country shrugging off its racist laws with the civil rights movement was achieved by mostly non-violent means as i understand. (btw - i'm not a liberal (at least in the british sense) and i can/have handled firearms fwiw).

What's the value of everyone having guns when the government has tanks drones chemical weapons nukes etc. In an actual revolution, the masses don't need their own guns, they use their superior numbers to overwhelm the police/army and steal their weapons anyway when it's needed - the secret they try to hide is that they need most of us to cooperate for it all to run; if enough of us just don't, it wouldn't matter how big their weapons were, their system would collapse (sorry if that's too commie ;)). As Shelley said 'we are many, they are few'.
 
I am not from the US, but I have lived and used guns there. The guns are for the end game. Your last paragraph is so assinine it is insane. Sure more political awareness and involvement is better at maintaining civil liberties but they cannot overrun armed police/ soldiers without firearms. I am sorry, that is just stupid, what the fuck. In world war 2 we learned that a few people with machine guns can kill an UNLIMITED number of infantry charging at them like idiots. Only guerrilla warfare with guns would work. The masses of people may compensate for their superior firearms but not in the complete absence of personal firearms. There will never be the ideal situation you are thinking of where absolutely everyone will be together so millions of people in every city can just suicide charge all government institutions and take them over without guns. That is world war Z movie bullshit.

Countries conquered during major wars and colonization etc., like Poland using cavalry against German machine guns, would have benefited from having guns to maintain their freedom.
 
Well mass civil disobedience on a wide scale for more than a few weeks the system starts to conk out, guns or no - sure the govenrment can shoot people to force them to obey, but that sort of thing can't work for long, and comes at a massive hit of efficiency for the system (and bad PR). Ideas and organisation are far more dangerous to the system than guns in a first world country, because the system is held together by propaganda rather than naked power (just look at how scared the american elite is of little pussycat ideas like socialism and social democracy, or the wobblies). I don't think it's world war z bullshit (haven't seen it though), more V for Vendetta bullshit ;).

The larger the armed forces needed, the more likely the soldiers will be drawn from lower class stock, so are likely to not agree to kill their brothers (see eastren ukraine). And when it comes to revolution, it's as likely for the forces of reaction to have guns as the revolutionaries in america (more likely judging by the NRA caricature). If gun ownership was a real revolutionary threat, would it have so much support from the very people who the revolution would supplant?

I see what you're sayng about guerilla warfare, but there are other types of change which don't have to follow that sort of model. If you have to fight them with only weapons, they will always win.

I ask again in what tangible way has america's gun ownership given it more for its people than gun controlling european states?
 
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Where is my gun?

Men are just sexual predators who use and abuse the female body for their own pleasure, with no thought to their feelings, not to mention we can get pregnant whilst they can just run. What about all the females who are raped and abused just because men can't control themselves? And where is their compassion for the not-so attractive members of the female sex, who are forced to live a life of loneliness, torture, and humiliation devoid of any male company?

It's not fair, I want my chance to put society right, right now.


P.S. This was a satire, as knowing this place many would miss it - he really thought this through, didn't he?
 
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Another sensationalist killing. I don't see that point in changing national law based on even a few hundred deaths from such occurrences per year.
 
It is like you are saying civil disobedience would have taken down the nazis or allowed independence of the US from the British. That is not the case.

I am not talking about some minor rights issue, god dammit.
 
_DankOpiAmp_ said:
It is like you are saying civil disobedience would have taken down the nazis or allowed independence of the US from the British. That is not the case.

I am not talking about some minor rights issue, god dammit.
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But we're not under the nazis - in our first world countries we live under the illusion of freedom, while the oligarchy rules nearly as completely as under a dictatorship. All it takes is for the illusion of freedom to be broken completely, and they can't run the system the way they do now. If the illusion of freedom is dropped and they become more overtly totalitarian, their job of controlling people becomes many times more difficult (and the motivation/need for serious rebellion increases also).

The current system is successful because it doesn't need so much direct physical control of people, just control of wealth and of information in an apparently free press (and workers are more productive when they believe their on the side of right). When soviet officials visited america they were amazed and jealous at how well people could be controlled there using propaganda and the media - the fact is the west is just much more sophisticated at controlling the population than totalitarian systems and so need to rely less on old fashioned violence (which ultimately just makes the workers get together more and be less productive) - the corrollary is that 'wrong' ideas are far more dangerous to that propaganda system than violence/guns, which just gives ammunition to the reactionaries - "look at those violent thugs: better support the government against them".

I've sympathy with violent rebellion on occasion, but i happen to think real revolution can only be in the mind - if guns tactically have to be involved along the way, that's something else, but i think there are other more important ways to change peoples' minds (eg like turning up with no guns and being shot by the police, while the whole population watches (another example why media/information control is more important to the elites than guns)).
 
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The current system is slowly being eroded and the state is becoming more more reliant on violence and eliminating citizens' rights to compensation when the state makes mistakes and oversteps it's power. Society will not be watching when activists are shot, they will be spoon fed lies from a biased media owned by giants who lobby the government so the system always works in their favour.

Multiculturalism has made society so divided there can never be the unity possible in earlier times except under a welfare state government the public has a childlike dependency on. The government has control through this dependency which includes a slight majority of the population. Mitt Romney was spiteful about this dependency ( remember the secret recording?) but that is ironic since his power would have revolved around it. That is why he lost.

The illusion of freedom is irrelevant, it is the illusion of security that dominates.
 
That sort of agrees with me though that ultimately, sustaining the control of information through the media is more important to that system than guns - and that methods to bypass that control are more effective than fighting an army with a pistol is (without dealing with the information/media, the population will already believe you're terrorists if they even find out about it).

Non-violent civil disobedience at some points in history has had some success - a good general strike and the oligarchy is fucked. Imo it's the ideas behind anarcho-syndicalism (wobblies) and socialism that were the real threat to the system, hence why so much time and money had to be spent on discrediting those once common ideas (to the point where socialism is the scare-word it is in america today, and who even knows about the wobblies?) - look up operation mockingbird for evidence of this process in europe (or operation gladio for the more practical/violent version).

If gun ownership was as much of a threat wouldn't it be as widely denigrated by the oligarchy as socialism? (rather than supported by many/most of them it seems to me)

Not to take it any more OT, but I don't personally agree with american libertarian ideas as an anarchist, so while i'm against the state in itself, while we've got it, i'll stand up for everyone getting a share of the wealth when they don't have equal opportunity to make it for themself (welfare's the very least they should get imo). People who've got lots of wealth mostly got it by paying a poor person less than their work was worth (or their parents did)
 
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