People always say it's 'guns' or 'mental health' but no one simply says 'Anger'....

[CountGlockula]

There is a boundary with anger. I can be angry with my son without smacking him on the head.

But if I want to produce physical and bodily harm, then my anger turns to rage.

It's a fine line. But when it leads to killing another human being, then all ethics and morals are out the window. The subject is an animal.

 

[maxsnafu]

Where does that leave us in terms of who might be disqualified from owning a gun? At least mental illness can (sometimes) be quantified ahead of time. Anger issues, not so much.

Uncontrollable anger IS a mental illness.

 

[grter]

Grrrrrrrrr rarrrrrrrrrrrrr ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[amanda]

I've always believed that pretty much anyone is capable of murder under certain circumstances; Not everyone is capable of killing in cold blood. When something has been planned out we can call it fighting for a cause, revenge, or mental illness. What it is called is greatly dependent on the mores and point of view of the person or persons who make up the audience. Heat of the moment murder is something else entirely and most of the time dependent on emotion or, again, mental illness.

On another note, cognitively intact adults should be able to control their emotions in such cases- and this is why there are not more murders. But I do see a generational gap where younger adults and teenagers labor under the feeling of entitlement and when things do not come easily they lash out.

 

[cdk8]

Mental health often gets grouped into one large category (presenting a potential slippery slope.) Gun control advocates often use it as fuel for the gun control fire by stereotyping anyone who has ever experienced a mental health issue as a walking time bomb. Gun rights advocates often overlook the larger picture of how mental health reform could play a pivotal role in preserving the 2A. The end result is people with mental illness get screwed from every angle. For example, look how the media treats Vets: if you have served in the armed forces and you are a little down, anxious, or going through an adaptive process/transition back to civilian life, you get lumped into the group of, "oh he's got PTSD and is unstable." It's like...seriously? It's an incredibly ignorant and insulting assumption that, ironically, is often made by the same people who never shut up about tolerance and political correctness.

There is a LOT to mental health...anyone working with the DSM can attest to this. They can also attest to how the large bulk of conditions in the DSM do NOT indicate any need for concern of self harm, and that even fewer of the conditions warrant concerns of harming others. Most people will, at some point in their life, deal with certain mental health issues. Take depression or anxiety for example...it could be situational or biological, but the overwhelming majority of these people get successful treatment, and at no point in time is there any concern whatsoever of self harm or harming others. Gun control advocates will gladly try to screw these people over with the slippery slope.

At the same time, I do believe there is something very, very wrong with people who do these awful things. In some cases it seems to be mental illness, but in others I think it is just pure evil. Normal people (both gun owners and not), simply don't even have these kinds of thoughts, let alone acting on it. I mean, think of it...walking into a school and shooting innocent children?...or walking up to someone you disagree with and stabbing them repeatedly in the gut? Just the thought of those things are repulsive. Yeah, we're all gun owners here but we don't go around using firearms to solve our differences or as an offensive weapon to harm innocent people. So I have no idea what must go through the heads of these people but it must be drastically different than the rest of us as evil things like that don't even ever cross the mind.

I've always felt that the NRA can do a better job here. They need to be more aggressive in demanding mental health reform, by reducing social stigma and expanding treatment options, especially to those of lower income. This will, in turn, reduce gun violence statistics, especially suicides. Beyond the benefit to society, it will also further undermine a huge potion of the gun control arguments and further prove how this is not about the gun, but rather it is about human behavior.

 

[thefamcnaj]

Individuals who are diagnosed with a mental health issue, and are being treated and properly medicated dont concern me.
Individuals not properly medicated or actively seeking help on the other hand is concerning.
Its such a slippery slope.
Bi polar for example, what disqualifies a bi polar person from owning a gun.
Does being bi polar 1 or bi polar 2 disqualify a person.
Bi polar consist of depressive episodes and manic episodes, or hypomanic episodes(bipolar2)
There are medications to help with depression and medications to help with mania.
So how do we decide who is disqualified.

 

[Ignition Override]

How about incomplete databases for the known serious mental cases, whether linked to visible anger or otherwise?

Maybe it fits this topic to ask whether there is much public awareness that large numbers of people who have been somehow 'adjudicated' with serious psychiatric problems are not yet on the federal or state NICS (etc) databases when an application is crosschecked to legally buy a gun?

It has been stated numerous times on gun websites that many states are far behind on the processing, or entering the lists with so many names.
Pardon my lack of familiarity with the exact terminology.

 

[grter]

How many people do you think are going to seek help once word gets out they will be black listed ?

I don't know but a good guess will tell me that there will be a lot of unlisted people that are not getting any help at all for serious problems.

What would be the next step paranoia ? Can you imagine teachers suspiciously eyeballing your children in school ready to report your child as mentally ill if he/or she comes to school with their hair uncombed or perhaps put them through the wringer because one of their distant relatives may have been/are mentaly ill ?

I would think I would be preaching to the choir here, but again, you should be aware of individuals who promise fast easy fixes for problems that have been known to confound the world for years.

Me not knowing diddley squat about the stats can make a guess based on common sense that mental health is certainly one of those problems.

 

[cdk8]

Individuals who are diagnosed with a mental health issue, and are being treated and properly medicated dont concern me.
Individuals not properly medicated or actively seeking help on the other hand is concerning.
Its such a slippery slope.
Bi polar for example, what disqualifies a bi polar person from owning a gun.
Does being bi polar 1 or bi polar 2 disqualify a person.
Bi polar consist of depressive episodes and manic episodes, or hypomanic episodes(bipolar2)
There are medications to help with depression and medications to help with mania.
So how do we decide who is disqualified.

That's the million dollar question. For the gun control crowd, I think the goal is to disqualify as many people as possible for whatever reasons will stick. They do not give a damn about the mentally ill...this is just the latest ploy they are using to impose more gun control. By doing this, they are likely preventing people from seeking treatment.

If the pro gun control people actually gave a damn here, they would acknowledge that this issue has almost nothing to do with firearms and rather it is centered around people. Since it has to do with people, more gun control will not work.

 

[IWAC]

Be VERY careful who you confide in! A listening ear can result in a running mouth! I once worked for a Government Agency, and the following happened to two coworkers.

One was having a real struggle in performing his job, due to lack of experience and knowledge. Couple that with internal office battles between the boss and the assistant supervisor, who thought he deserved the other's job, and was using the employees to discredit the boss. Why to continue to work there? We ALL needed our jobs!

The way my friend told it, he heard the other fellow, who was grossly overweight and had high blood pressure, ranting and raving about some relatively minor thing. Red face, sweating, the whole 9 yards! He was concerned about our coworker's welfare, and went to his area, sat down to talk with, to see if he couldn't calm him down.

During the conversation, he confided to the upset fellow that he had a one-time fantasy himself, something about "cleaning out" another government office.

Things seemed to calm down after that, but, apparently, the overweight one, probably to gain "points" had immediately gone to the Supervisor.

The fellow that had attempted to help his coworker ended up in a "conference" with the boss, the H.R. Director, and a psychologist.

They had done an "investigation", and discovered that my friend's computer password was "sniper"...definitely an indicator of dangerous mindset , despite the fact he was a life-long shooter, and that is what he liked to do...long-range, precision rifle shooting! REALLY threatening, particularly to the bureaucratic mindset!

He was "evaluated" by the tame pshrink, Who, with an eye to future commissions, determined that he was DEPRESSED!
O.K., No surprise there, considering the conditions we were all working under. I think most of us were depressed to some degree.

After the dust had settled, he said that the H.R. Director told him "Don't worry, it's past!" But our Director...never!

The point to all this? Somewhere, there is a Psych report, showing the guy was, at one point in his life, said to be depressed.

Would this, at some future time, ban him from buying/owning firearms? Law enforcement cannot do something until the law is broken, but bureaucrats have no such compunction about eliminating Constitutional rights.

BTW; We have both since retired, and significantly, our blood pressure numbers immediately dropped a fair amount. Till the day he retired, my buddy left his password as "sniper"...a subtle "up yours" to the boss!

We still go shooting..hee hee!

 

[old lady new shooter]

Thanks for the excellent graph, Lord Teapot.

 

[thefamcnaj]

Another thing that could be happening is; people who currently have a diagnosis and are medicated properly stop their meds and doctor visits cold turkey.
Hoping that they can get "out of dodge" before the heat gets on them about being treated.
People being black listed for mental illness seems like a gross example of discrimination.
I feel bad for the person that lives day to day with a mental illness and suffers unjustly because they are afraid they will lose their basic human right to protect them selves.
Its a damn shame people are being confronted with this situation.

 

[usmarine0352_2005]

Uncontrollable anger IS a mental illness.

This guy obviously didn't have uncontrollable anger because he was able to control his anger and plan and carry out a methodical murder with a getaway plan.

 

[grter]

This guy obviously didn't have uncontrollable anger because he was able to control his anger and plan and carry out a methodical murder with a getaway plan.

Thats a very simple good point that evaded me. I don't know how ? But it is somthing to consider.

 

[cdk8]

This guy obviously didn't have uncontrollable anger because he was able to control his anger and plan and carry out a methodical murder with a getaway plan.

I do not know enough about the guy to say whether or not this applies to him, but quite a few people who are able to bottle rage up, methodically plan to harm other innocent people (or animals), and then follow-through without the slightest bit of remorse could be characterized as possibly having borderline personality disorder. It is believed that quite a few serial killers have or have had BPD. What goes through these people's heads are absolutely foreign to the rest of us...to such a point where understanding causality has been next to impossible, and treatment is often very difficult.