It was Leftist do- gooders that emptied the mental institutions in the 70s and made it near impossible to commit someone against their will. Short memories, we have.
I prefer the term "black gun" to "assault weapon". The local paper did a little dialog box of gun definitions a week or so ago...well...their definitions. Basically, an assault weapon can fire one bullet or more with one press of the trigger. An automatic is the same as a semi- automatic...both fire one bullet then with each trigger pull and reload automatically. I love it when people who know nothing about the subject feel they need to mold opinion.
It all depends on who's pulling the trigger. I'm a terrible long range shooter. I'd be worthless in a clocktower.
Institutionalizing people against their will is a whole other ball of slippery slope wax argument that I don't really want to get into right now.. I would assume you wouldn't want the evil gubmint decided who they deem mentally unfit, why, nancy pelosi might just decided to throw god fearing good christians in nut houses for voting against obama!....I'm much more concerned with the gigantic lack of mental health care in this country, maybe if we had socizilized medicine schizoprenics could get the meds they need cheaply but there's really no profit in helping wackjobs....a swiss pall of mine made the point that they have just as many guns in their country but people don't wake up paranoid everyday that they are going to be homeless next month digging in the garbage for something to eat and maybe that has something to do with the way things work in america. The sniper comment was more a reference to the rightwings fetishistic obsession with military might/ the stoic solider, when it's the same system that creates people like Charles Whitman long before Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold where an itch in their daddies ball bags.
I disagree on the Whitman thing. I don't know the exact details, but he did have a sizable brain tumor in an area that controls not whacking the family and bystanders. Neither of us, or anyone, really knows tho.
I will say that your thing about being worried about their next paycheck didn't seem to be a concern for the mass shooters of the last several years. Lanza's job was being nuts. Same with the Colorado shooter, altho I think he may have had a real job of some sort. Kleobold, Harris, the VT shooter were all students, altho I think Kliebold and Harris (or maybe just one of them...I honestly don't remember) had typical high school kid jobs. The guy who shot up the Amish school was an electrician...or something like that. The kids in Oregon and Arkansas that shot up their schools were all students. Going further back to when Post Office shooters were the big rage, all the ones who went postal worked for the Post Office. Government gig, impossible to get fired from. Not a comprehensive list, by any means, but more comprehensive than just throwing out fear of losing a job setting people on suicide missions.
I think suggesting that Pelosi will have people committed because they didn't vote for Obama brings nothing to the discussion. I do find it interesting that you assume the Fed should/ would be in charge of deciding who gets committed and who doesn't. It's very slippery slope when a crat 3000 miles away makes decisions like that. But that isn't how it was in the 50s and 60s. It was done at a local level. Make no mistake, I have no illusion that deciding someone needs to be committed is anything other than grim business. It should be grim. It's a really huge decision and should be taken seriously. I don't trust the Federal gov with that role, but I do trust the local health authorities, who live here, to it. At least to a point.
I understand that forcibly committing people might not be a subject you want to "talk about right now", but I'm not sure we have that luxury. Putting our heads in the sand over the details is what has led us to this point.
I'm with you about the mental health system being inadequate. The problem is that being schizophrenic isn't the same as having a cyst. It takes more than easier access to meds to treat someone with schizophrenia, or any other mental illness. Easier access to meds doesn't mean that people will take them. Through our jobs my girl and I both come into contact with a lot of mentally ill people. When they decide to take themselves off their meds, and they do, it's a pretty hard thing to watch.
As for socialized medicine across the board as a fix for the mental health system, is that really going to be effective? Punish everyone for the inadequacies of a small part of the health care system? Maybe it would be easier to improve the mental health system first rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Make it easier to qualify for disability because of mental illness. Let the protections, such as easier access to treatment, of a disability qualification kick in.
The bigger picture, at least for me, is how the mentally ill are treated in general. Beyond whackjobs shooting up schools. The way we allow the damaged around us suffer needlessly is a fucking crime. Especially in a society that deep down knows better.
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