Oh, and also for those who are defending whatever they are defending and not thinking accountability....read this toda, and words do matter...

No other way to bring this home:

Picture your dearest loved one — your husband, wife, parent, child.

Now picture a police officer knocking on YOUR door and saying you will never, EVER see them again due to a mass shooter with a gun.

This national emergency is not theoretical.

My brother-in-law was a very nice man until his world got turned around by the loss of his mentor in India. He came back to the US and began to unravel. Slowly. He started eating just hot dogs and bought two semi-automatic pistols to which he became very attached. Not known at the time he also thought that pod people had taken over my brother and his wife.

My brother had allowed him to stay in his house up until the point that he would not get rid of the two pistols. He got kicked out and eventually killed himself a few years later.

He hid his mental illness extremely well keeping diaries that the VA police found after he committed suicide. Many people probably hide their internal problems well.

Do you know what scares me? The fact that this can happen anywhere. It used to be that you would avoid certain parts of town... or bars, because you didn't feel they were "safe". You knew where to walk, or shop or play because the neighborhood was "safe." Now... nothing is safe. A mass shooting could happen at our Walmart... or McDonald's... or Disney Springs.
I find that incredibly unsettling.

Yes, it's scary. The leader of the US senate started an ad today showing his opponents tombstone. We are told legislation is coming relative to the fear, but will be tied to other political items.

Has anyone recently tried to pull this country together. Has anyone broached the subject that we are ALL Americans and scared. We have heard this same stuff about "we are going to..." and thus far, nothing happened so why believe it now.

There was an executive order that tried to deny guns from certain folks with mental problems , up it was overturned by another exec order.

It's a scary thing, and those who simply make it political are cruel human beings....we are one country.

Sorry for seemingly becoming political, but I am hurting right now, and cannot understand those who do not see the hate around now, and seemingly nobody to console the country or bring us together. These are horrible things that did not need to happen, should not have happened, and I think would have been prevented if this country would stop the accusations, the lies the crass language. First reaction publicly was to blame the media....that is tough to swallow fir me, and you can delete my post, complain to the mods all you want. I fought for, worked for and love this country. I am proud also, but the world is wondering what we are doing.

Tal, there are not words to console your grief even after the passing of time. Be strong

You are honest. Anyone who is not scared or concerned should be. That is not to crumble into a corner and stop living, but we are witnessing such hate from a known group of extremists, and they get support

“Divide et impera,” Julius Cesar

Tal, it shows strength that you could share this story. I have married into mental illness myself, and while everything seems charming and “cool” under the surface I was paddling as fast as a duck.

You are not alone. And I agree, "they" will not fix this, only we the people can.

And the true Latin translation fits. Not the meaning given in general, but the true philosophy.

Are we saying goodbye to "E Pluribus Unum"

Yep.
Steve

Nope
Steve

NAMI Statement on Mass Shootings in Texas and Ohio | NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness

This should be read by anyone wanting to do something about stopping these mass shootings.

Just remember - if "mental illness" was at the root of the epidemic of hate-fueled mass shootings, they wouldn't only be occuring with this frequency in the USA. It would be world wide.

Why? Because mental illness is not an American illness. It is a worldwide illness. Mental illness doesn't stop at our borders, or even at the edge of our continent.

It isn't happening with this frequency world wide. Therefore - mental illness cannot possibly be the cause, or even a primary trigger.

Science/medical research phrase: correlation does not equal causation.

Waaaay overstated. “Cannot possibly...”.
That phrase is a red flag immediately. If such certainty related to major parts of this problem was accurate, it wouldn’t be the dilemma that it is.

Everybody has opinions regarding this difficult problem. It’s just important to remember that such statements are just that...opinions...regardless of how they are stated.

It is untrue that the US is the only one with the problem and it is true that the US is a country with by far one of the largest populations which is also a huge factor.

http://worldpopulationreview.com/cou...gs-by-country/

No one said the US is the "only one" with the problem. You're absolutely right though, we're not the only one with the problem.

But Japan has a much higher incident of mental illness, a larger population in a smaller area of real estate, and they have zero mass shootings in the same period of time that we have.

If mental illness is only a factor in the USA with regards to mass shooters, and mental illness occurs worldwide at even higher percentages, then mental illness cannot be a valid factor.

If it was, then you could much easier blame it on water consumption, or the phenomenon of men who wear long pants during certain portions of the year.

It would be inappropriate to group all mental illness into a single group to make those conclusions. There are thousands of forms of mental illness.

And about 1/5 of the US population had or has some kind of mental illness. Mental Health By the Numbers | NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness

Depression, anxiety, addiction to various things, etc.

And America in 2019 is probably very hard on the mental well-being of just about anyone with any common sense and decency. These are scary times.

This was in late 2014. Thank You. About the same time as the loss of my younger brother due to long term alcohol addiction. Which IMHO is also a mental health problem.

comorbidity of mental illness and drug use - Bing

There were approximately 40,000 gun deaths in U.S. in 2018.

There were approximately 70,000 deaths in U.S. from drug overdose in 2018.

The criteria for mental illness is very broad and may or may not include OCD, anxiety, ADHD and other illnesses not deemed as severe as other mental illnesses that may trigger criminal activity and hospitalization and long term treatment by a mental health specialist.

I don't think anyone, at this point can really say with authority what caused either of these young men to do what they did and what if anything that could have been done to stop it before it happened. I would like to know more about the families of the shooters, the home environment of the shooters. Did they rebel against what they were taught, or did they take on the family values? What made them SO ANGRY? What made them so cold hearted to take so many innocent lives of people they did not know as well as the one family member in the case of the Dayton shooter? I would like to know the "whole story" before I can decide what I think is the primary causes of these events and what if anything we as a government and a society can do to change things.

Since one of these mass killers is still alive we will find out quite a lot.

I interviewed at the University of Texas at El Paso library for a law librarian position back in November or maybe early December of 2001. They paid to fly me back-and-forth and for a night at a hotel and a few meals.

I found the people of UTEP quite friendly and the city of El Paso was attractive.

I was only there about 24 hours or less than that. Did meet a bunch of librarians at UTEP and the UTEP President and other university administrators.

The University of Texas at El Paso does have a lot of Hispanics attending as well as in their staff.

When causes are investigated looking at other countries the common denominator is often mental illness.

Be sure to observe what it is that is more prevalent in the USA but NOT in other countries. Like the openness of violence, rape, murder, mayhem, dismembering, etc in television, movies, games.

All of these countries have access to Hollywood movies and video games and the like.

Some of the foreign movies are even more violent than some of the Hollywood ones.

The problem is guns and access to them here in the United States and the NRA and their death grip on some.

I read about a study many years ago in the prison system. The prisoners were asked why they had committed their crimes and the overwhelming answer was that they felt they had nothing to believe in and nothing to hope for so in essence they felt they had nothing to lose. I am not a gun advocate, I don't have one and I don't want one but don't think gun regulation is the solution. Nobody is going to convince me that walking into Walmart and killing innocent people is a sane act.

13 shot, 6 killed this weekend in Baltimore, including a 12-year-old boy.
No national media outrage.
Why is that?
🤔

Because it wouldn’t fit someone’s agenda!

He answered the question:
There are more answers too but it'll just get ugly on this forum if we give the actual answers - most of which everyone here already knows but chooses to ignore.

Better to have an agenda and try to do something, than have no agenda and do nothing.

In this, Bogie Shooter and I agree. I think that alone should be pretty indicative.

The agenda might not be addressing the root problem!

That is not news but business as usual in Baltimore, Chicago, and some other cities.

News is a "Man bites dog" situation, a relatively rare and particularly outrageous event.

I was a student and then Student Director for Legal Assistance to Minnesota Prisoners from 1987 to 1989 at the U of MN Law School. I was attached to Minnesota Correctional Facility-Stillwater. Probably handled about 40 cases myself or through students or via my co-Director.

Some of these prisoners had believed very much in something when they did their crimes. Often based on one of the Seven Deadly sins. Pride seemed to be the biggest and greed second. Lust and envy too. Not so much sloth. Nor gluttony. Anger played a big part though. Seven Deadly Sins

Some of these men had just done something stupid at the time and got caught. Like one stole some tools from a neighbor's garage. Worth a good amount of money though.

John Sandford's books are well done and have good portrayals of the criminal justice system in Minnesota. And his last covered Las Vegas and Los Angeles. John Sandford - The Official Website

:)
And I might add you responded in two sentences. :ho:

The bottom line is that while there may be many agendas, up to this point NOTHING has been done. Nothing, as in zero!

Weekend shootings in Chicago:

7 killed, 46 wounded and at one point, a hospital stopped accepting patients briefly because they couldn’t keep up.

I'm racking my brain trying to figure it out.

What do you think should be done? It is almost impossible to predict who is going to go off.

I know of no one, no group, no political party, no philosophy that would ever want or encourage a mass shooting, and I know no festering hate against any race or group of immigrants although it has been suggested time and time again by the mainstream media in the past few days.

I see no evidence at all. And if you think that the back and forth over Baltimore is racist, then you are wrong. It is about a city that needs to be cleaned up, literally and figuratively. We have the lowest numbers of unemployment in decades. That is a very good way to help with poverty. New York cleaned up crime. Baltimore can do it too. The government needs to be cleaned up in Baltimore. That is not racist to say or to think.