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Mass Shooting and Gun Control Megathread

Just remember that the Biden administration would love to find as many inconsistencies as possibles. The more incompetent you make the police department in this town look, the less you have to talk about gun policy and mental health. The more you can write this tragedy off as a fuck up by someone else. The more you can shift attention away from yourself.
I made a typo it's not the justice department, it's the Texas Department of Public Safety that they are no longer cooperating with. We all know how much Texans love the police.

I think this might have more to do with defending police on the whole instead of attacking them. "They didn't do their job right, good police would have stopped this".

I dunno.

As for shifting the discussion away from fixing the problem, I think we all know that was going to happen regardles, since that happens literally every time after things like this.

Looks like they're distracting everyone with this new barrage of "food shortage catastrophe" stories.
 
I'm not disagreeing with you at all here. I'm sure nobody knows the long term effects of pregnant women using ADs. My point was that half the arena is blaming mental illness yet doing nothing to repair the status quo of mental healthcare as it exists in the US. Not only do they not want to improve it, they won't even allow people access to mental healthcare as it exists now, otherwise we'd have universal E

Example: Here in Texas we've prolly had more than half a dozen mass shootings in the past 6 years and our governor Greg Abbott has held that office for 7 years. Texas currently ranks like 49 out of 50 states in mental healthcare. A few years ago Abbott even came out and publicly stated (or tweeted) that he doesn't even believe in mental illness. Fucker believes in some old guy up in the clouds calling shots but not mental illness. But supposedly mental illness and it's medications are to blame for all the shootings.

I feel like I'm repeating myself but I call bullshit. As someone who lives with mental illness it pisses me off that we catch the blame every time some evil fucking incel shoots up the place. As if the stigma wasn't bad enough. Maybe the shooter was bullied and didn't have a dad to teach him how to fight to defend himself, maybe he is ugly and can't get laid, I don't know the reasons why they do it but being bullied or ugly is not a symptom of mental illness. Hell, I've been fighting my whole life and used to get laid a ton 20 years ago, didn't stop me from getting hit with the mental illness lottery. I just don't see enough correlation here. The vast majority of the other mentally ill people I've met in psych wards and what not wouldn't hurt a fly. They are people you prolly see every day at work or in your mosque or at your kids' PTA meeting who just want to go about their lives and be left alone.

And I'm not saying all mass shooters lack mental illness, I'm just saying prolly of 90% or more of folks living with mental illness are not violent towards other people.
I agree with you about the mental health stigma.

people with mental illness are not statistically more likely to commit a violent crime they are more likely to be the victim of violence or hurt themselves

it is just a story to take the blame off of guns and make the country feel like they have a tangible problem that they can pretend they are going to fix “mental health“

the truth is a greater societal problem, hopelessness and disconnection that is not mental illness but a societal malaise
which requires admitting something is fundamentally wrong with the American way of life, doesn’t have a clear answer and makes a bad sound bite…



a different topic is women using antidepressants
as a woman who is bipolar 1 and as many times as I have gotten off that final med unfortunately it really is accurate I need lithium or a mood stabilizer and occasional antipsychotic
I got my associates in psychology and then switched to social work and child development and drug treatment classes (🤫)

what shocked me was that time and again these womens drs did not give them the advice to come off of their medications
and their children went through withdrawals on par with hard drugs
one of the worst was a child coming off of Effexor
the mom could not take the discomfort of the Effexor withdrawal and yet could not make the mental leap to understand if that if it was is too uncomfortable for her, who could express her feelings and knew what was going on.. then what did she think her child will go through?
I’ll tell you: the child went through hell
no sleeping, 2 years old and still not sleeping, shaking constantly when first born going through extreme withdrawal; inconsolable, stiffening his body and screaming, hypertonic, nonstop bloody noses, allergies to everything, on the autism spectrum, violent outburst, sensory issues I have been working with this family for 12 years.
she ended up quitting Effexor after she had the baby, which made me even more angry, she could do it for herself but now her kid?
its times like that when I have to bite my lip
but it is not her fault
her DR said it was fine and even though I could gently guide her towards tapering off people take the advice they want to hear

her Dr is the one who these moms believe and I cant light them up with fear esp not 13yrs ago when my only real facts were my gut instincts and knowing that these drugs were on the list of teratogens level c

I often wonder as the rates of autism continue to explode how many people are taking drugs from their GP’s who dont have complete educations on the medications have a fiscal incentive to prescribe and the parents don’t want to face the discomfort on coming off. It took me months to clean my system out before I got pregnant because I was on a cocktail of medications all which were know teratogens with effects ranging from cleft palate to facial malformation and that is before they even started to ponder what playing with this crucial chemical messengers to the brain during the formation of a child’s neurons and brain matter is being formed

if a potential mom to be can’t go through the discomfort of coming off the those medications then maybe having a biological child is not a good idea

I know this is an unpopular take but why should a parents desire for procreation matter more then the quality of that child’s life?

until the medication and medical establishment stops being a money making profits will always be over people
 
I agree with you about the mental health stigma.

people with mental illness are not statistically more likely to commit a violent crime they are more likely to be the victim of violence or hurt themselves

it is just a story to take the blame off of guns and make the country feel like they have a tangible problem that they can pretend they are going to fix “mental health“

the truth is a greater societal problem, hopelessness and disconnection that is not mental illness but a societal malaise
which requires admitting something is fundamentally wrong with the American way of life, doesn’t have a clear answer and makes a bad sound bite…



a different topic is women using antidepressants
as a woman who is bipolar 1 and as many times as I have gotten off that final med unfortunately it really is accurate I need lithium or a mood stabilizer and occasional antipsychotic
I got my associates in psychology and then switched to social work and child development and drug treatment classes (🤫)

what shocked me was that time and again these womens drs did not give them the advice to come off of their medications
and their children went through withdrawals on par with hard drugs
one of the worst was a child coming off of Effexor
the mom could not take the discomfort of the Effexor withdrawal and yet could not make the mental leap to understand if that if it was is too uncomfortable for her, who could express her feelings and knew what was going on.. then what did she think her child will go through?
I’ll tell you: the child went through hell
no sleeping, 2 years old and still not sleeping, shaking constantly when first born going through extreme withdrawal; inconsolable, stiffening his body and screaming, hypertonic, nonstop bloody noses, allergies to everything, on the autism spectrum, violent outburst, sensory issues I have been working with this family for 12 years.
she ended up quitting Effexor after she had the baby, which made me even more angry, she could do it for herself but now her kid?
its times like that when I have to bite my lip
but it is not her fault
her DR said it was fine and even though I could gently guide her towards tapering off people take the advice they want to hear

her Dr is the one who these moms believe and I cant light them up with fear esp not 13yrs ago when my only real facts were my gut instincts and knowing that these drugs were on the list of teratogens level c

I often wonder as the rates of autism continue to explode how many people are taking drugs from their GP’s who dont have complete educations on the medications have a fiscal incentive to prescribe and the parents don’t want to face the discomfort on coming off. It took me months to clean my system out before I got pregnant because I was on a cocktail of medications all which were know teratogens with effects ranging from cleft palate to facial malformation and that is before they even started to ponder what playing with this crucial chemical messengers to the brain during the formation of a child’s neurons and brain matter is being formed

if a potential mom to be can’t go through the discomfort of coming off the those medications then maybe having a biological child is not a good idea

I know this is an unpopular take but why should a parents desire for procreation matter more then the quality of that child’s life?

until the medication and medical establishment stops being a money making profits will always be over people
I was on duloxetine for my entire pregnancy and my son is fine 🤷‍♀️ He didn't even show any signs of withdrawals after birth. He's already starting to talk and he's only 4 months old. My doctor and I weighed it up and made the decision to keep me on duloxetine for my safety. I came off all my other meds though because they are teratogenic.
 
I often wonder as the rates of autism continue to explode how many people are taking drugs from their GP’s who dont have complete educations on the medications have a fiscal incentive to prescribe and the parents don’t want to face the discomfort on coming off.
I think there are dozens of factors that contribute to autism, a lot more than just taking medications during pregnancy. Things as simple as eating certain foods or vitamins during pregnancy have been shown to contribute.

As well as just more and more awareness and a broadening/loosening of the spectrum causing more diagnosis in general.

I don't even think we can solely blame biochemical factors. If you look at male sperm counts, which have been drastically been declining since for many decades now, I speculate that other environmental factors from our modern lifestyles, like the constant barrage of electromagnetic waves our bodies are constantly exposed to, may have some blame on things like autism. Just my uneducated guess, though.

I'm no 5G conspiracy theorist, but there are very real measurable effects these things have on our bodies. It's still a bit of a mystery.
 
Australia had a gun amnesty recently for illegal firearms. 260000 guns got handed in. The article I saw had pictures, which were kind of interesting to me, I guess because I've only ever seen guns in movies.

I thought I'd share some images (including the big gun reform after the Port Arthur Massacre) just to put them out there.








 
@jane douloureux I'm certainly no expert here nor have I really looked into it, but everything has trade off. I think this is a pretty complex topic.

"87% increased risk of ASD" - I think we need to interpret this number carefully, nor do I think it's all that startling as it might sound. Only about 2% of children have ASD, an 87% greater risk of ASD would mean the child has about 3.5% chance of having ASD (rounding, approximately). 1-2% greater risk of ASD sounds like a decent trade off of the potential risks to a growing baby in a mother who has severe depression.

Anyways, speaking as someone who actually has ASD, it's really nothing to be terrified about... being neurodivergent is not some scary disease all the time. 20-30 years ago they wouldn't even consider it a disease... they would call it "personality". Millions of people have ASD and it goes undiagnosed, because it's not some major impact on one's life all the time. Personally it has very little to do with my life problems, my brain just works a little different. People with ASD often are very intelligent, successful people. Elon Musk claims to have ASD...

My sister is bipolar and continued taking certain medications during all 3 of her pregnancies and her babies are very healthy and beautiful.

I think as science progresses we can infinitely zoom in on small risk factors of everything to the point where we're really missing the point. No pregnancy is perfect. No human is perfect. No person can eliminate every single risk of anything.

Anyways I'm getting rather existential here...


moving on, trade offs, risk management:

Osborne says that there is generally no need to taper off medications during pregnancy. “We can say with strong confidence that antidepressants don’t cause birth defects,” says Osborne. She adds that most studies finding a physical effect on babies from antidepressants taken during pregnancy fail to account for the effects of the mother’s psychiatric illness.

In fact, untreated mental illness itself poses risks to a developing fetus. A woman who is depressed is less likely to get good prenatal care and more likely to engage in unhealthy or dangerous behaviors, like smoking and substance abuse. Osborne also says mental illness has direct effects on newborn babies.

“Untreated depression may increase preterm birth or cause low birth weight,” she says. “Babies of depressed moms have higher levels of a hormone called cortisol. This raises a baby’s risk of developing depression, anxiety and behavioral disorders later in life.”


but overall, n3o listened to her doctor who is the real expert here beyond any of us, I'm sure her baby is just fine and will grow up to be a rockstar
 
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@jane douloureux I'm certainly no expert here nor have I really looked into it, but everything has trade off. I think this is a pretty complex topic.

"87% increased risk of ASD" - I think we need to interpret this number carefully, nor do I think it's all that startling. Only about 2% of children have ASD, a 87% greater risk of ASD would mean the child has about 3.5% chance of having ASD (I might be fucking that up, but maths is hard particularly statistics).

Anyways, speaking as someone who actually has ASD, it's really nothing to be terrified about... being neurodivergent is not some scary disease all the time. 20-30 years ago they wouldn't even consider it a disease... they would call it "personality".



moving on, trade offs, risk management:

Osborne says that there is generally no need to taper off medications during pregnancy. “We can say with strong confidence that antidepressants don’t cause birth defects,” says Osborne. She adds that most studies finding a physical effect on babies from antidepressants taken during pregnancy fail to account for the effects of the mother’s psychiatric illness.

this statement contradicts

“Untreated depression may increase preterm birth or cause low birth weight,” she says. “Babies of depressed moms have higher levels of a hormone called cortisol. This raises a baby’s risk of developing depression, anxiety and behavioral disorders later in life.”

she is saying if there is something wrong with the kids after taking antidepressants it’s from the moms depression, but she can’t stop taking them because of the ill effects that would be caused from the moms depression

way to cover your ass all the way around
no matter what it’s never the drug
kids fucked up and mom was on their medication to treat depression it’s the depression
but can’t stop taking the medication because it needs to treat the depression or the kid will be fucked up
doublespeak and covering your ass all the way around

I don’t know who this Osborne is a doctor? A pr person, a rep for the drug company
that would be good to know because they talk like a spin dr




In fact, untreated mental illness itself poses risks to a developing fetus. A woman who is depressed is less likely to get good prenatal care and more likely to engage in unhealthy or dangerous behaviors, like smoking and substance abuse. Osborne also says mental illness has direct effects on newborn babies.

“Untreated depression may increase preterm birth or cause low birth weight,” she says. “Babies of depressed moms have higher levels of a hormone called cortisol. This raises a baby’s risk of developing depression, anxiety and behavioral disorders later in life.”

low birth weight and pre term birth is increased in women who use antidepressants

Women who used antidepressants during pregnancy had a 20% (95% CI: 10–40%) increased prevalence of both PTB and LBW compared to those who never used antidepressants. There was no evidence that women who used antidepressants during pregnancy had a higher prevalence of the considered outcomes compared to women who used antidepressants before pregnancy, but stopped during pregnancy. Such findings were confirmed by considering separately the effects of SSRIs and other antidepressants together



im done with this conversation I’m debating something when all I was doing was responding to a question
I will never change my mind bc I have seen it with my own eyes and it has been a continual topic of discussion amongst myself and coworkers for 15yrs

edited to add; you can’t ignore the fact that it’s a double standard that the use of drugs during pregnancy is frowned upon because your pregnant and the baby is forming but they don’t think about these medications that are changing the way your brain works effecting your child for life

Recent experimental animal studies have shown that fetal exposure to serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRIs) affects brain development. Modern recording methods and advanced computational analyses of scalp electroencephalography (EEG) have opened a possibility to study if comparable changes are also observed in the human neonatal brain. We recruited mothers using SRI during pregnancy (n = 22) and controls (n = 62). Mood and anxiety of mothers, newborn neurology, and newborn cortical function (EEG) were assessed. The EEG parameters were compared between newborns exposed to drugs versus controls, followed by comparisons of newborn EEG features with maternal psychiatric assessments. Neurological assessment showed subtle abnormalities in the SRI-exposed newborns. The computational EEG analyses disclosed a reduced interhemispheric connectivity, lower cross-frequency integration, as well as reduced frontal activity at low-frequency oscillations. These effects were not related to maternal depression or anxiety. Our results suggest that antenatal serotonergic treatment might change newborn brain function in a manner compatible with the recent experimental studies. The present EEG findings suggest links at the level of neuronal activity between human studies and animal experiments. These links will also enable bidirectional translation in future studies on the neuronal mechanisms and long-term neurodevelopmental effects of early SRI exposure.

EEG
 
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^^^^Every firearm in that junkyard looks antique; the style of that semi-auto rifle that one guy is holding died out in the 70s. Just looks like a lot of single shot rifle actions and a few shotgun mechanisms otherwise. Just kinda makes me sad to see a bunch of antiques being junked for “the greater good”.




I hope that people do continue to get over these shootings. I hope they stop too, but no one (as in politicians) is interested in finding the source of this cultural malaise and treating it, simply fixating on one or the other side of a spectrum. If I have to pick between a few people dying, even thousands a year, and heavy infringements upon the rights of all U.S. citizens, I’d pick the former. People dying is no reason to infringe rights; we don’t ban motorcycles, we don’t ban sport cars, we don’t ban knives, or snow skiing, we permit teenagers to drive, we ban drugs (that’s great huh?) and look where those things are. Killing thousands daily. I'm not saying motorcycles or sport cars should be banned (I own a convertible, it's fun), but why is society accepting of a huge glut of accidental deaths due to auto accidents (especially among teenagers) and other 'preventable' risks, but not firearms? The inflated numbers on firearm related deaths (to include suicides) is intentional lying to the public and shows that it is still, and likely always will be, auto accidents killing people the most often. Yet we've seen no action on automobile-safety since the 70s when they raised the drinking age... and no, airbags and shit don't count, if anything they made cars more lethal. We have very lax licensing for automobiles and until people realize how foolish that is, I don't even wanna talk about restricting firearms. Why can a 16 year old operate a machine capable of killing a whole family in one moment due to them looking at their phone instead of the road? Shit sickens me.

The only reason a nation willfully disarms all its citizens is if the population has given over to fascist ideology.
 
^^^^Every firearm in that junkyard looks antique; the style of that semi-auto rifle that one guy is holding died out in the 70s. Just looks like a lot of single shot rifle actions and a few shotgun mechanisms otherwise. Just kinda makes me sad to see a bunch of antiques being junked for “the greater good”.
lol yeah, bit weird

Harrison Ford That Belongs In A Museum GIF


these are hunting and home defense weapons, if anything, hardly the type used in crimes, but I guess as American I have a pretty unique perspective on what common guns look like to basically every other country out there

they found ONE modern AR-15 and showing it off heh
 
I will never change my mind bc I have seen it with my own eyes and it has been a continual topic of discussion amongst myself and coworkers for 15yrs
I believe you and I'm not trying to change your mind or debate per se, just trying to show some perspective.
 
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ps You best hope anthropogenic global warming is complete bullshit. If it's real then the actual elites actual solution of green taxing the middle and lower classes out of existence whilst maintaining their mega polluting corporate industries will solve absolutely nothing... unless... their actual plan involves genocide of the majority of the worlds population.
Yeah, probably by shoving us off the edge of the Earth.
 
I guess as American I have a pretty unique perspective on what common guns look like to basically every other country out there
Sometimes I think about that. I walked into my closet this morning to get some pants and I realized it probably looks like an Aussie/UK/Canook person's nightmare. Have several ammo cans filled to the brim and a few long guns just leaned in the corner.
 
Sometimes I think about that. I walked into my closet this morning to get some pants and I realized it probably looks like an Aussie/UK/Canook person's nightmare. Have several ammo cans filled to the brim and a few long guns just leaned in the corner.
if I walked into someone's garage and saw some AR-15s, maybe a modified AK pistol, a long gun with a sniper scope... I wouldn't think it was weird at all

it's a hobby

but that would probably astound the average European
 
It's not always complicated. Drug addicts out of there minds and crazy people off they meds. Columbine was they got bullied. Make the schools work defenseless kids secure. It might cost money to do this, but it's money well spent and maybe this can start a conversation politically about how we spend money in America. All of us the government but us people too.
 
USA and Americans usually get things right most of the time but USA gun policy is a massive failure that will just have to run its course. Personally I think the 2nd amendment should be repealed, most gun ownership should be made illegal, most guns removed from circulation, forcibly if neccesary, and gun owners put in prison until the number guns in USA reduced by a good 95% at least.
 
^^^^Every firearm in that junkyard looks antique; the style of that semi-auto rifle that one guy is holding died out in the 70s. Just looks like a lot of single shot rifle actions and a few shotgun mechanisms otherwise. Just kinda makes me sad to see a bunch of antiques being junked for “the greater good”.

I was gonna say they all look like bb guns to me 😆
 
USA and Americans usually get things right most of the time but USA gun policy is a massive failure that will just have to run its course. Personally I think the 2nd amendment should be repealed, most gun ownership should be made illegal, most guns removed from circulation, forcibly if neccesary, and gun owners put in prison until the number guns in USA reduced by a good 95% at least.


yea but we're not designed to have the government just take over like that

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

just the way it is - they can limit things but the way you're talking? never gonna happen - not even close
 
Of course the 2nd Amendment can be repealed, the Constitution has been amended several times. If people think a well regulated militia is no longer needed, they'll repeal the 2nd Amendment. There's no constitutional magic about guns and militias being some absolutely necessary element for a republican democracy to function. We can project military power anywhere in the world and spend trillions of dollars on wars in places like Iran and Iraq without batting an eye. We don't need an 18th century anachronism like the 2nd Amendment anymore. We already own a big chunk of North America from the Eastern seaboard the the Western, what civil and democratically functional roles do private militia actively play in the American state today? As far as I can tell none whatsoever. Unlike in 1776-1783 when local militias did fight in the Revolutionary War, and most every war with Native Americans prior to that. As a political state we have evolved far beyond needing a well regulated militia. As far as disarmament 'never going to happen' we already have all the resources to accomplish it. We don't have the political willpower to do it right now but I'm pretty sure in a few generations that will drastically change.
 
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