Originally Posted by goodtimesintv
THIS, not the guns, is the elephant in the room!
"The past decade lays out tragic evidence of the thread uniting mass shootings and mental illness:
* Seung-Hui Cho. As a child, Cho was diagnosed with severe anxiety disorder and placed under treatment. On December 13, 2005, he was found "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization. On April 16, 2007, he killed 32 people and wounded 17 others at a University in Virginia.
* Jiverly Wong. In a letter dated March 18, 2009, Wong expressed his concerns to a local television station that undercover police officers were changing the channels on his television, making the air “unbreathable,” and had figured out a way to play music directly into his ear. On April 3, 2009, Wong walked into the American Civic Association immigration center in Binghamton, New York and killed 13 people, wounding four others.
* Maj. Nidal Hasan. In early 2009, the mental health officials who worked alongside Hasan held a series of meetings where they discussed his bizarre and paranoid behavior. Some openly wondered whether Hasan was psychotic. On November 5, 2009, Hasan opened fire at an army base near Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13 people and wounding 30 others.
* Jared Loughner. On September 10, 2010, Loughner was asked to leave Pima Community College in Tucson on mental health grounds – a psychologist who reviewed his journals believes he showed symptoms of schizophrenia. Four months later Loughner unloaded his 9mm Glock pistol into the parking lot of a Tucson shopping mall, killing six and injuring 13.
* James Holmes. Between March 16th and June 11, 2012, the psychiatrist who treated Holmes, Dr. Lynn Fenton, wrote in her notes that Holmes "may be shifting insidiously into a frank psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia.” On July 20, 2012 Holmes walked into an Aurora, Colorado movie theater and killed 12 people, injuring 70 others.
* Aaron Alexis. On August 4, 2013, naval police were called to Alexis' hotel at Naval Station Newport and found that he had "taken apart his bed, believing someone was hiding under it, and observed that Alexis had taped a microphone to the ceiling to record the voices of people that were following him.” On September 16, 2013, Alexis fatally shot 12 people and injured three others at the Washington Navy Yard.
In the case of Newtown, Connecticut shooter Adam Lanza, the warning signs of a severe mental health issue were right out in the open for everyone to see.
Adam, who was diagnosed as a child with Sensory Perception Disorder, a condition that made made bright lights, loud sounds and certain textures unbearable, secluded himself in his bedroom for weeks at a time. While left to himself he covered his windows with dark garbage bags to block the light out, and spent his time played violent video games and studying mass killers, compiling an extensive database that read like a scorecard.
A Yale psychiatrist who briefly treated Lanza says he "displayed a profound autism spectrum disorder with rigidity, isolation and a lack of comprehension of ordinary social interaction and communications.”
Lanza never accepted his diagnosis and refused to take medication or undergo further treatment. Since he was over the age of 18, his mother, Nancy Lanza, who was acutely aware of his severe mental health issues, could only hope for the best.
This severely mentally ill young man, obsessed with violence and surrounded by automatic weapons, who had cut off almost everyone he cared about, made a series of terrifying posts all but telegraphing the future violence on a public on the mass-killer website.
In December 2011 he posted. “It goes without saying that an AK-47 and enough ammunition could do more good than a thousand 'teachers,' if one is truly interested in reforming the system…[the children] are already dead.”
On December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, Lanza fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members at Sandy Hook elementary.....
just as you don't want gun rights restricted, in these cases the people at the time did not meet the current criteria for commitment, which is they did not appear to be a danger to themselves or others. So with mental health, the slope is just as slippery. When is someone just "odd" or when are they possible mass murderers? do we commit every person who is different...and what constitutes difference? in the case of Lanza, the person who should possibly be held more accountable is the gun owner....who, while knowing of her son's mental health, left him alone without properly securing her large quantities of weapons. just as there are millions of responsible gun owners, there are millions of people who have been treated for mental disorders who will never be mass murderers.
What all these people do have in common is the ability to arm themselves with weapons capable of shooting many people, very quickly.
This latest shooter had:
Investigators found 13 firearms connected to shooter, Celinez Nunez of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said.
maybe the shear numbers of one's weaponry should be a flag. I realize that some people collect them, but what would be wrong for more stringent checks on people owning certain kinds of weapons and that many.
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