Freedumb ain't free.

everyone saw something and said something. people suspected him before they even IDed him.
there was armed security at the school
town had just been named one of the safest places in america
town is middle-upper and upper class exclusively

my therapist has a friend whose daughter died.

....I was talking about what Trump did.

I know

oh


cool

what a fucking literal nightmare :cry:

Psychiatrists Can’t Stop Mass Killers

Richard A. Friedman OCT. 11, 2017

In the wake of the Las Vegas massacre, politicians are once again promoting the politically expedient notion that better mental health care could stop such mass killings. Paul D. Ryan, the speaker of the House, said last week that “mental health reform is a critical ingredient to making sure that we can try and prevent some of these things from happening in the past.”

The public appears to share this view. A 2015 poll found that 63 percent of Americans blamed deficient mental health care rather than deficient gun regulations for these shootings.

It’s true that many mass murderers do have a mental disorder, typically a severe personality disorder or a psychotic illness. But this fact has almost no implication for how to stop them.

Why? First, a vast majority of these killers avoid the mental health care system. They are intent on murdering people, not on seeking help, and generally don’t see themselves as psychiatrically ill. Of the 92 documented mass killings from 1982 to 2017, only 15 percent of the perpetrators had any known previous contact with mental health professionals.

Clearly, whatever psychiatric evaluation and treatment this small number of perpetrators had did not stop them from committing mass murder. Even if all of these killers had been seen by mental health professionals, it is still highly unlikely their crimes would have been prevented, because as a general matter it is very difficult, if not impossible, to predict who is likely to turn violent.

Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas gunman, is an object lesson in this regard. As an affluent 64-year-old gambling enthusiast with no relevant criminal history, he bore little resemblance to the typical mass murderer, who tends to be an angry young man seething with resentment and with a history of violent outbursts. An exhaustive search of Mr. Paddock’s life for a motive has so far turned up nothing. His brother, Eric, noted that Stephen was “the least violent in the family during my childhood.” I have no doubt that had Stephen Paddock seen a psychiatrist, he would not have raised suspicion of dangerousness.

To put it another way, most mass killers are gun-owning, angry, white, paranoid males, but it is also a fact that nearly all men with these same characteristics will never commit a crime.

In addition, the mentally ill contribute very little to overall violence in this country. Even if you were to eliminate all psychiatric illness from the population, the rate of violence would drop by only about 4 percent. (The contribution from mass killers is far smaller: In 2015, mass killings accounted for only 0.35 percent of gun-related homicides.)

The disturbing reality is that a vast majority of homicide is committed by healthy people in the grip of everyday emotion using guns. That is exactly what many politicians don’t want the country to think about.

Still, if we can’t predict human aggression, there is much that we can do to modify or contain its expression. For example, consider the success of using simple physical barriers to prevent suicide. A 2015 ****-analysis showed that installing large safety nets beneath suicide “hot spots” like San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge was highly effective in cutting suicide risk. The death rate from suicide dropped from an average of 5.8 suicides per year before the nets were installed to an average of 2.4 deaths per year after. Intriguingly, in most cases there was no increase of suicide by jumping at other hot spots. In other words, taking away one means of self-harm did not result in the substitution of an alternative one.

The same appears to be true for homicide. Countries that limit access to deadly firearms have a fraction of the gun homicide rate of the United States. Australia, for example, severely restricted access to guns following a 1996 mass killing, and the gun homicide rate dropped by half and stayed there. In 2012, the United States had a homicide-by-firearm rate of 29.7 per million people compared with 1.4 for Australia.

Contrary to what some gun-rights enthusiasts claim, people who are deprived of guns do not simply find a new way to harm themselves or others. Countries that have reasonable gun control, for example, do not have a compensatory epidemic of lethal knife attacks.

So let’s stop pretending we can detect mass killers in advance. But we can deprive them — and everyone else — of the deadly weapons they require to turn their impulses into carnage.

went to work today, still all anyone can talk about. my "you're in america speak english" conservative coworker was even saying trump is going to get verbally berated when he visits parkland and that he needs to be forced to look at the crime scene. that something needs to be done, etc. i was quite surprised to hear her say this. she also has a friend whose daughter died. it might be the same girl that my therapist knows, i'm not sure.

i honestly think if he comes to parkland there could be a riot. it's like spitting in their faces, no one wants him there except to express their anger at the policies he supports. parkland is an upper-class town with ranches and other large properties. people can afford to take time off to really grieve. kids are speaking out.

...but probably nothing will happen

Not a mass shooting (yet) but in Rio we have military intervention on the police now. Yay for tanks cruising the streets and us getting one step closer to dictatorship.

What would Pele do?

I'm sure that Mr. President will do the right thing

Good god, what's wrong with this generation of people? When I was a kid you'd never hear about this kind of shit happening. I do think the gun laws in America need some tweaking. At the same time, it's far too much of a hassle to get your gun license in Canada, while all the criminals easily obtain them on the black market. It would be nice to see a middle ground found in the United States.

But still, there was never such mass violence in the decades before. I really do think this is a cultural problem that needs to be examined. These lifelike video games where you go on shooting rampages all day can't be good for impressionable disturbed children and teens... I really think they outta be banned.

I used to work at a video game department and parents were always buying their little children the most violent shooting games... It was unbelievable to me, really.

You got a gun Fuzzy?

I will not divulge such information on a public forum.

But I grew up around guns. My dad is a big gun enthusiast. Has a big collection of handguns and everything. I am gonna go through the process of getting a gun license... Just for the sport of it all. A good friend of mine visits the gun ranges regularly and it really looks like a fun hobby. There's a range out here that offers the disc shooting and what not. And it's always good to be able to protect yourself if the worst comes to the worst.

So, you got a gun.

So, you do.

I will soon enough. I like the sportsmanship of the hobby. I'm only gonna use it at ranges and shit and have it as comfort in the case of an emergency.

I'd reckon a good number of our yankee friends on Netphoria likely have guns. I don't see what the big deal is if you're a well balanced person.

Note to nihilist self: don't steal socks from fuzzy's basement.

I'm already well versed and on the way to getting a license, but it's much harder than I would have thought... Seeing as I'm a law abiding citizen with no criminal record to speak of... It's a direct opposite of how easy it is to go in and buy a guy in the United States.

I suppose that's a good thing and all, but you even need references out here and stuff... It's a little bit much considering that it's not even legal to carry a gun in public or anything.

oh yeah let's blame video games. you know what else makes people murder a bunch of kids randomly? marijuana. and rock music. seriously how fucking stupid do you have to be

also "yankee friends?"

heh, I'd never shoot someone for a simple break and enter.. If you do that in Canada then YOU'RE the one who does the prison time... It's been a big point of controversy out here for ages. There's been countless cases of senior citizens and otherwise law abiding folks having to do prison time for wounding some junkie who's broken into their home.

I really just like the target practice and the shooting drills and the community that surrounds gun culture. I know a lot of hunters and shit too. I'd never do that, but it's fun to fire guns and shit.

Fuzzy, there are violent shooting games played all over the world. If they caused gun violence, it would be everywhere. There have been A LOT of studies done about this. Only in fucking America are people more worried about virtual guns causing violence than real guns.

No, the problem is the gun availability. These mass shooters aren't getting guns on the black market, they are getting them themselves legally or stealing/borrowing them from people who got them legally.

There is no other statistic that shows any correlation besides number of guns.

i don't think video games are the problem. i'm kind of scared a mass shooting "trend" has started and now all the disturbed kids who were considering it will be pushed into it by what they hear about it.

I blame God.

Well if you look at the stats, these public shootings have gone through the roof in recent years... Gun laws haven't changed in ages... There is something sick that's going on in the minds of the society.

This might sound hard for a lot of you guys to believe, because I know a lot of you guys are actually high IQ people... But I know people who spend 5-6 hours a day playing violent video games... These guys have been doing it their whole lives, and it's not an outlier. There's tons of people that do this... And the video games keep getting more and more realistic and lifelike.

I think there is a definite correlation.

you're more likely to get shot by a home invader if you have a gun

Well gun availability hasn't changed in America. It's been the same for decades and decades... But it's only been recently that we've seen these maniacs going on rampages... Something has to have changed.

Bill Maher was talking about this on his recent show this week... He thinks it has to do a lot with how doctors are prescribing psychotropic drugs to children into adulthood... These people never have a chance to be "normal"... An interesting idea nonetheless.

Either way, you can't deny the stunning increase of these events... So there's definitely something culturally that needs to be addressed and examined. It's not fair to put all the blames on the weaponry itself.

it's like a game of how many blatantly incorrect things can you say in one post

Probably true... In these situations it's better to get the cops involved... But you never know what might transpire...Especially if you're the man of the house with a family. Gotta prepare for the worst.

gun laws haven't changed in years?

ever heard of the assault weapons ban? you just spew bullshit

No, guns have been getting easier and easier to get as time goes on. Thanks, NRA.

It is obviously not the gun's fault, but if these people couldn't get guns their body counts would be much lower.

It's gun availability and the large amount of events causing at-risk people to think they could really do shooting. video games have nothing to do with it at all. there are seriously hundreds of studies about this.

yeah it's not fair to blame guns and the gun industry and the NRA for this cultural problem, but it makes sense to blame call of duty. good thinking fuzzyroes

it's far more likely someone in your house will get shot accidentally than that the gun will do literally anything else

You disprove your own point. Why aren't all these people mass killers?

There actually is some evidence that games can make people violent, but the real correlation is between games that are very frustrating, not between games which show violence.

a study from Germany a few years back showed people with violent predispositions seek out violent games

yep. like i said, only in america do people blame virtual guns more than the real ones

Video game culture is fucking HUGE... It's one form of physical media that is still growing and doing business like gangbusters... You look at the majority of the top bought games? It's all of these violent shooting massacre titles. I don't think children and teenagers should be spending the majority of their time fantasizing about shit like this, do you?

It's cancerous... And I know it's "unhip" to blame video games, but really... Most adults aren't even aware of these games that children and teens are playing... It's INCREDIBLY violent and ever increasingly lifelike.

I'm telling you guys, you ban these video games and there would be a dip in these violent nightmares... You have kids sitting there all day long in front of their monitors and TV screens blasting peoples brains out... You don't think it's gonna reach their mind when they reach a breaking point and figure they have nothing left to lose?

you are such a blithering idiot

looks guys fuzzy solved gun violence

why didn't researches ever think to look at video games