Sandy Hook, Guns and Hard Questions

[Amsdorf]

I finally decided to add a bit of commentary of my own on the Sandy Hook tragedy, with a focus on asking some hard questions about the larger issues, as I see them, involved in this tragedy.

How and why was a clearly very mentally ill young man, who was obsessed with his severe violent computer gaming addition, and was about to be institutionalized, able so easily to gain access to firearms to begin with? Banning guns is the knee-jerk emotional reaction to the situation, but it does not deal with the deeper issues raised by the whole incident.

Here are my thoughts on the whole situation, for what is worth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pElvpYDXM0M

[ungawa]

How and why was a clearly very mentally ill young man, who was obsessed with his severe violent computer gaming addition, and was about to be institutionalized, able so easily to gain access to firearms to begin with?

I can't watch your video from this location, but what, exactly, do you propose to make sure that, never again, does a young mentally ill person easily gain access to firearms to begin with? Ever?

Here are my thought on the situation, for what it is worth.

You can't. And if you could, anything that would be successful would be so draconian that it would be worse than a gun ban.

This almost never happens. Less than 100 people die this way every year out of roughly 14,000 murders. It is probably the least likely way for anybody to die in the US. There is no way you can take something so extremely rare from 1 in 3 million odds down to zero without locking up 300 million people. And that probably wouldn't even take it to zero.

You'd have a better chance passing a law to make sure that no meteorite ever hits a house again. It is just about as rare, and there are just about as many houses you would have to regulate to be sure that one doesn't sneak through.

[CenterTree]

I watched your video and posted there....

If you own a car and you notice that the wheel is wobbling... You can ignore it and wait for it to cause an accident. (and death). Then just ban all cars.

Or you can recognize the bad wheel and get it removed and fixed before something bad happens. (my simple analogy about the mentally ill)

[TSimonetti]

I finally decided to add a bit of commentary of my own on the Sandy Hook tragedy, with a focus on asking some hard questions about the larger issues, as I see them, involved in this tragedy.

How and why was a clearly very mentally ill young man, who was obsessed with his severe violent computer gaming addition, and was about to be institutionalized, able so easily to gain access to firearms to begin with? Banning guns is the knee-jerk emotional reaction to the situation, but it does not deal with the deeper issues raised by the whole incident.

Here are my thoughts on the whole situation, for what is worth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pElvpYDXM0M

Firstoff, we simply don't yet know how easy it was for the young man to get the guns. The mother may have had them locked up. It was reported very early on that he tried to go to a gun store to buy guns and was turned away. I'm not sure how accurate that story is. in addition, there were no children in the home. The shooter was an adult with no criminal or mental health record and Connecticut had among the strictest gun laws in the country at the time. Locked up guns up would have been no great barrier for him to overcome. I think the bottom line is that no matter how strict the laws or how good the guns are locked up, a determined psychopath with a lot of time and motivation is going to get hold of one sooner or later.

As for mental health and violence, one thing is certain. Democrats are historically extremely lax on mental health quarantines, and very against long prison sentences and/or the death penalty for violent offenders.

Secondly, a not at all significant percentage of people who play first person shooter games get warped...they are not necessarily the problem. If that were true, there would be a massacre every 10 minutes in this country. That said, we all can do a better job monitoring our young children and making sure they are well rounded individuals, and not just computer gaming zombies, including myself.

But if your son is without a father, spends all day in a dark basement playing these games AND is 20 years old without any drive to get a further education, a job, or a life. Then it's pretty obvious that actual parenting had been completely absent in this household for a very very long time. It seems the other sibling avoided the same fate and actually made something of himself. Thankfully, that does seem to happen often, even in the worst of family situations..

Third, Hollywood seems unwilling or unable to look into a mirror and place any blame on the violence and glorification of violence, including gun violence, that occurs on a daily basis in TV shows and in the movies. I place significant blame on them. Unfortunately the 1st amendment seems to be the one that they claim "shall not be infringed" even though there is no such actual wording in that Amendment.

You are right, we need to look deep and explore everything. But the one thing that seems certain is that it's not simply the fault of ugly looking guns but Democrats seem adamant about not looking anywhere past the guns for the problem..