Shooting at Texas church

Is there any new legislation against bump stocks yet? Hey, the NRA was ready to talk about it, right? Or was that a smokescreen they offered up hoping nobody would notice when nothing got done?

(To be fair, at least one state has passed legislation banning bump stocks. Not sure if any legislation is pending in other states.)

 

He's not wrong. It's going to become evident that this guy was a real piece of work. Evil, yes, but a community malcontent with all the hallmarks of mental illness.

But trying to address mental illness as a mass violence problem is like trying to get one's hands around water.

Here's the other thing: If you pin this solely on mental illness...congratulations, you stigmatize mental illness! You make it less likely - not more, less - that people cop to where They're really at.

 

Maybe this just a matter of semantics. I was going to say that it's not to much that "we choose not to use it" as it is that 535 members of Congress choose not to do anything about the problem. Of course, "we" are the ones who keep re-electing these clowns.

 

Massachusetts passed it and governor signed it. We have relatively strict gun laws and a relatively low homicide/suicide rate. Go figure.

 

If anyone is genuinely looking for common thread for these mass killings, a good place to start would be domestic violence.

What Mass Killers Really Have in Common

 

And speaking of likeliness, remember the VA Tech shooter? (I know his name but refuse to use it.)

He was seen by some professionals, and IIRC, some feared he might go completely unhinged. And I always wondered if the efforts (and scrutiny) to get him help pushed over the final edge.

The whole mental illness thing - damned if you do, damned if you don't. Pharmaceuticals also as previously mentioned.

The biggest possible avenue for a tip off is for people who know a person and starting to see odd/erratic behavior to warn others.

But, then you start getting beyond the 2nd Amendment and into civil liberties and that kind of thing. No crime committed YET, and no place to put people (that isn't prohibitively expensive), and no national healthcare either, and LAWYERS... and the whole thing is just a clusterfuck tail chasing situation with no end.

???

Complete darkness. No light at the end of the tunnel. I don't see a way out of this mess on the mental health side, aside from taking away the tools of mass destruction.

 

I went to visit my parents last month and had a cold, and I couldn't buy Sudafed at the Kroger pharmacy near their house because it's been identified as a place of abuse by some group. I don't know if it comes from government or within Kroger or some combination, but they don't carry it anymore because they've had problems with it being sold to people incorrectly. But I can go to the gun show at the civic center and pick out any gun I want if I have the cash.

 

That's an ingredient for meth labs.

 

Thought mental illness was already stigmatized.

 

It's taking my wife and I about a year to obtain the necessary permits to put a fucking addition on our deck, but I could go buy a gun and a bump stock today without a problem.

 

Something can already be stigmatized when a statement further stigmatizes it.

 

It would appear this guy was denied a permit in Texas yet got a gun anyway.