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Post by gailkate on Dec 14, 2012 14:36:04 GMT -5
Lirio, I'm hurting for you - Newtown looks fairly close to you on the map. What can you tell us? CNN says 30 are dead, including 18-20 children.
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Post by Jane on Dec 14, 2012 17:18:29 GMT -5
It's beyond words, isn't it? But, as my husband said when we heard, "Nothing will come of it. We just learn to live with it, because no one is willing to make the changes we need to make."
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Post by liriodendron on Dec 14, 2012 17:44:22 GMT -5
Newtown is very close. Our schools were on lockdown today. By now you've probably all read the same stories online that I've read. I had absolutely no focus at work today. I just got home from work and hugged my son. I don't think it is possible to ever feel safe again.
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Post by doctork on Dec 14, 2012 18:24:49 GMT -5
I am already seeing internet comments to the effect "If all teachers had guns, then this wouldn't have happened/wouldn't have been as bad."
I'm also seeing a report on CNN that no police officer fired a single shot, leading to the conclusion that the perpetrator shot himself. And I would suspect that no police officer dared fire a shot because there were 600 children and 50 faculty/staff in the building, anyone of who could also have been shot in an attempt to subdue the shooter. Hard to imagine a teacher would have felt qualified.
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Post by doctork on Dec 14, 2012 18:26:29 GMT -5
Newtown is very close. Our schools were on lockdown today. By now you've probably all read the same stories online that I've read. I had absolutely no focus at work today. I just got home from work and hugged my son. I don't think it is possible to ever feel safe again. I am relieved that your son is safe, lirio. Still must be very frightening for you all.
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Post by joew on Dec 15, 2012 10:38:18 GMT -5
It occurs to me that, given the fact that the Second Amendment isn't going away, the solution lies in reasonable restrictions on who may own firearms. After an earlier shooting incident, I suggested that we need to do better at recognizing and treating those with dangerous mental health problems. The difficulty is that it would be extremely hard to accomplish. But focusing only on the deranged shooter problem, it seems to me that it would help if people had to obtain licenses to own firearms and those licenses were only issued after a mental health/stability test and had to be renewed every few (maybe five) years with a repeat of the test.
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Post by gailkate on Dec 15, 2012 11:51:39 GMT -5
Joe, I agree that's an important piece of it. This was a very sick young man. But he was able to get access to guns without ever applying for them - because they belonged to his mother!
Why do people need handguns and repeating rifles? Personally, I'd melt down every gun in the country, but that's not going to fly. If we were serious, the gun laws that have been passed before and are pending now would be scrapped for something far more comprehensive. If that guy (at 20 he's not even fully mature) had had a knife, he could have killed his mother, but he couldn't have slashed his way through 20 kids and 6 more adults.
We tamed the West by getting rid of guns. I think we need to change minds in a fundamental way. We need to fill jails with anyone in possession of an illegal gun (and most would be illegal) rather than non-violent drug-users. Then we focus on what we can do to change the development of sociopaths. Adam was once a little boy with little arms and legs and tender flesh just like the ones he killed yesterday. What the hell happened?
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Post by BoatBabe on Dec 15, 2012 15:23:27 GMT -5
Tragic. Just tragic.
Personally, I feel that the 24/7 news coverage during and after one of these tragedies encourages the mentally unstable to go for the same "hero treatment."
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Post by doctork on Dec 16, 2012 14:06:22 GMT -5
I think there are many causes of such events. Like you BoatBabe, I think all the publicity plays a role. Nationwide there is nearly one gun for every person, and such easy availability is linked to these massacres. Graphic violence is widespread in the media, movies, and gaming. Joe has a very good point about mental health - almost every single one of these massacre events involves a young man with very serious mental health problems.
My husband was a psychiatric nurse for many years, but had to leave the field because funding was so poor that all the jobs went away. And even if adequate mental health care is available, the people who most need it often don't go in and get it. If you do get the real crazies in, it is very difficult to compel treatment. There are long-acting injectable meds that are effective and can be given every 2 - 4 weeks, but if the patient doesn't come in - well there is not much to be done about it.
If you round them up and commit them (which is not easy to do, state laws vary widely), usually they can be held only 72 hours, then must be released. Long term psychiatric in-patient care is largely a thing of the past. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was somewhat exaggerated, but those facilities were quite awful. Still, they did keep the real crazies off the street.
Since we test and license drivers routinely, it seems reasonable to me to impose similar requirements for gun purchasers/owners. A criminal and mental health review could be required, but it seems that in the states that require a mental health check first (which was the example in the Virginia Tech case when Virginia has fairly stringent laws on this matter), the rosters are often incomplete - not updated, or not everybody who deserves reporting is reported. As a physician, I can imagine the challenges in deciding who to report. There are privacy and confidentiality considerations.
[As a side note, loosely related - all states have laws about people who have seizure disorders and driving. In Washington State, I was not allowed to report a patient who had or developed a seizure disorder, as that violated patient confidentiality. In Maine, I was required to report a patient with new-onset seizures, and patients with established seizures were required to have an annual status report completed for the DMV to be sure they were still safe to drive.]
I'm not sure about taming the west by getting rid of guns, gk. AZ is the youngest/newest of the Lower 48, celebrating its centennial this year, and I believe the law here allows even concealed carry without a license. Unless specifically prohibited, guns are allowed pretty much everywhere; our clinics, and many stores and restaurants have "No Guns" decals on the doors. Throughout the west (I've lived in WA, CA, CO, AZ and spent a lot of time in NM and NV), many/most people own and use guns - to a much greater degree than I experienced in eastern states (NY, PA, WV, VA, NC, FL, LA) where I've lived. Well maybe I would except WV - virtually everyone there hunted and all school kids had to take "Gun Safety" in middle school.
I'm watching "Meet the Press" and David Gregory highlighted a tweet he found interesting: "@michellelaw - One crazy bomber tries and fails to light a shoe bomb on a plane and years later we are all still taking our shoes off at the airport. There have been 31 school shootings since Columbine - and nothing."
As John Donne said, "As the islands of knowledge expand so do the shorelines of ignorance." We have more data about these shooting events, but we still can't seem to forge an agreement on how to reduce them.
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Post by gailkate on Dec 16, 2012 15:27:23 GMT -5
As for media fame, Anderson Cooper repeatedly said he wouldn't name the killer, but that was long after the horses were out of the barn. Unfortunately, the need to scoop each other rules media. And I'm unsure about what I want reported because I once lived in a town where there was no bad news. Everything was whitewashed and really bad stuff was often ignored. Somewhere there's a balance, but I don't know how to achieve it.
As for the West, K, obviously I know about the proliferation of guns, which is why I'd like them all melted down. I meant the Wild West, which wasn't fiction. People didn't want shoot-outs and hip-holstered six-guns to be the rule, didn't want guns accepted as part of the culture. Our culture needs to change again. I'm really doubtful we can do it.
Since hunting is usually more humane than factory farming and slaughter, I wouldn't control hunting rifles(which, btw, are far more accurate and efficient than the muskets enshrined in the 2nd amendment). But maybe we should control ammunition. And collectors like this shooter's mother could have all the guns they want but no ammunition. I know, it's dreaming....
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Post by doctork on Dec 16, 2012 21:24:10 GMT -5
The old "Wild West" makes more sense, though living so close to Two Guns, it doesn't feel like there were tamed eras.
There have been a lot of sensible suggestions about high taxes on ammunition. Taxes on alcohol and cigarettes are aimed at discouraging (excess) use, and covering related costs so it seems like the same could apply to ammunition.
But I don't know, I've heard lots of talk also about the "new normal." We should just be expecting a major shooting slaughter every month as a normal part of our lives. I don't really see any new will to change; as soon as this news event blows over, we'll hear no more about gun control (oh perhaps a few squawks from safe blue seats).
David Gregory mentioned today on Meet the Press that his show contacted all 51 Senators that opposed gun control and not a single one agreed to appear. Politicians have no spine, and no interest in any thing other than getting re-elected, so they dare not cross the NRA, which will not tolerate any hint of the slightest restriction on anybody owning any armament they choose.
Not even 20 dead first graders can move a politician.
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Post by gailkate on Dec 17, 2012 12:06:23 GMT -5
A friend sent this clip about joe Scarorough's reaction, which seems a bit promising. This guy isn't always the sharpest knife in the drawer, but this is encouraging: www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/17/joe-scarborough-newtown-shooting_n_2315100.html Maybe when it's a whole bunch of white 6-year-olds in Connecticut, these gun people can be made to be ashamed of themselves... It is encouraging. Every now and then Joe has sounded more reasonable than the worst of the crazies, and this may have a real impact. But, as my friend said, it took something in his own world to wake him up. All the recitations of shootings in the media leave out the daily killings around the country. I’ve heard no one, even Obama, mention the Red Lake Indian reservation killings (after all, just 5 Indian 15-yr-olds and 4 adults who were also just Indians,) or even the Amish girls who apparently were too foreign to claim a place in our memory. Obama did strike the right note last night. Saying we must change clearly signals gun laws but also a cultural change that tones down movies and gaming. Kids are so used to TV violence they probably see war games as no different from playing Army when we were kids. But it was different. Besides westerns, we saw movies and news about Korea and practiced belly-crawling with much critiquing of whose butt stuck up too far. But it was not real and we knew it. Is that the difference? Now I’m wondering about some of my own guilty favorites on TV, which include guns and explosives. Or is NCIS far too tame to have the impact of “No Country for Old Men” and the common bloody Internet games?
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Post by liriodendron on Dec 17, 2012 20:51:14 GMT -5
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