They are there, but hindsight is 20/20. If those criteria (parent's death, betrayal in family, fragile home life, failed careers) were used to proactively filter everyone in the USA, I wonder how many we would mark as potential murderers? That said, I do agree with you -- our mental health infrastructure is clearly an important part of this puzzle.
Michael Jordan @RealJumpman 1 RT= $1 to the families whose children were killed in the Connecticut school shooting.
The thing is, mental illness can be diagnosed at a fairly young age. I'm not saying we should heard them all up and put them in jail, but I do think it would be good to start treating them and keeping a close eye on them. I think it's especially hard for parents to see it because they don't want to believe that there's something wrong with their kids. It's totally understandable, but in this day and age we have to figure something out. Yes, guns are part of the problem because they are the weapon of choice, but the heart of the problem is the people who are willing to go into a school full of small children and start shooting. We need to get to the point where we can figure the WHY before it actually happens, because after the fact it's all just speculation.
I agree this is true, but it could lead to some bad situations. I hope such a system would only have incentives and no penalties.
Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn, Apple seed and apple thorn, Wire, briar, limber lock Three geese in a flock One flew East One flew West And one flew over the cuckoo's nest. One of these days, the govt. will decide that being a commie is a mental disorder and they'll round people up. No thanks.
Guys you're not going to stop this by addressing mental illness, sounds like an excuse to lock up people for life. Let's just admit this guy is a scumbag and deal with him now. I don't think there are minority-report-style warning signs in many of these cases.
CBS News is confirming that a second body has been found in the New Jersey home of the shooter. A law enforcement official in Washington said the attacker was a 20-year-old man with ties to the school and that one of the guns was a .223-caliber rifle.
The biggest problem is that many of these illnesses can't be "fixed". They have no cure for schizophrenia. So what do you do with them? Lock them up? Wait until they hurt someone? It's like a horrible catch 22. I'm not saying that all these shooters are the same, but it takes a certain kind of fucked up to walk into an elementary school and start shooting little kids. Regardless, I don't see any way that this doesn't lead to some significant gun control laws. I don't think they'll ever be able to ban guns entirely, but I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so that someone has to wait six months to purchase one. The sad thing about that is that it would only hurt the law abiding citizens. In the case of the Clackamas shooter, it wasn't even his gun. He stole it from a friend. So how would making guns harder to buy stop that scenario from happening again? I am actually in favor of requiring people to go to a firearm safety course.
Different culture? Who knows. What I do know is that as time has rolled on, I've become increasingly pessimistic about this country. It feels so often like the center can't hold, like we're losing our sense of civility and decency, devolving into a nation obsessed with inanity, violence and extreme points of view. I grew up with guns (hunting rifles and shotguns mostly) and I currently own a pistol and rifle, but more and more I wonder about the gun culture we've created for ourselves in this country ... Owning guns was always a rite of passage in my family, it meant that you were "grown up" and that you were no longer a child and a gun was a thing to be respected and treated almost with reverence (if not just a hint of fear). I feel like that respect for weapons and the basic respect for life in this country is less and less common. Increasingly it feels like we have a lot of overgrown juveniles with access to deadly weapons and the inclination to use them. People willing to kill over the smallest slight, too afraid to take an ass whipping in fist fight, looking for permanent solutions to temporary problems. Certainly there's a mental health aspect to some of these mass slayings and our country is generally pretty bad at either identifying warning signs or quarantining the psychopaths before they do harm, but I feel like that's only part of the problem, I can't quite shake the sense that there's something a little bit rotten in our core.
@BreakingNews: Report: Parent of alleged Connecticut school shooter found dead this morning at a home in New Jersey -
