6 thoughts on “Horrific absurdity…”

  1. ‘When will we say, “ENOUGH!” and actually do something about it?’

    Never. Because there is nothing that CAN be done about it. No one likes to hear this, but it is a universal truth. It has nothing to do with guns, and everything to do with human nature. The most backwoods aboriginal culture has tools like spears and hammers/clubs that they use as weapons, and there is nothing but whatever is bouncing around in any given person’s brain-pan that prevents any one of us from choosing a tool and killing someone with it. If the brain is sick, or damaged, or defective, or drugged, or just plain evil, there is nothing that other people can do to stop that individual from injuring or killing others, at least on their first attempt. And when their first attempt is also their last attempt (because they kill themselves at the end), all we are left with is death and sadness and the urge to Do Something.

    But it is the nearly overwhelming urge to “Do Something!” that produces ill-conceived laws that only restrict and punish law-abiding citizens, while doing NOTHING to stop the next killer. So the laws build up, the killings continue, calls for restrictions on ownership of constitutionally-protected items alienate the law-abiding owners, non-gun-owners demonize gun-owners which poisons the well of cooperation, and every additional non-functional law provides easy proof of the slippery slope that gun owners have seen coming and been worried about for decades.

    Take away the guns, and it continues (look at Great Britain and their knife crimes and laws). Magically remove all the guns and pointy tools, and the criminals/defectives/evils will go back to clubs, poison, rocks, long falls, whatever.

    It is the nature of the human beast, and so far, we have not been able to universally change it.

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  2. Let’s do something by funding the mental health system! More screenings, make it easier for people to get the help they need. Tuition breaks for people to become therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and mental health nurses. More crisis beds in and out of the hospitals. Caseworkers need smaller patient loads so they can do more with the number of people they are responsible for. Educate the public about signs and danger signs of loved ones changing behavior. Get rid of the mental health stigma and let it be treated the same as cancer or heart disease!! That would be doing something!!!

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  3. I would love to see increased funding for military mental health programs. Mandatory screenings for PSTD, for all returning vets, not just once but regular follow up appointments for a designated period. Once again, more therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists are needed.

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    1. And during the mandatory screenings and follow-ups (and the time in-between), we suspend their right to own/possess firearms, correct? Gotta lock them up, too, so they don’t come into contact with any firearms owned by family or friends. How else would it be effective at preventing shootings of this type? We can’t allow them ANY access to firearms until they have been found not-guilty (I mean, sane), right?

      Of course, if you’re going to suspend one constitutional right, why stop there? We certainly wouldn’t want these folks’ help in determining the outcome of an election in their (probably) demented state, and we wouldn’t want them inside a theater shouting “Fire!”, so I guess they won’t be needing those rights either.

      I mean, if it saves only one life… That’s the current popular standard, correct?

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  4. Ms. C, I’m kinda disappointed. You wound up, like Juan Marichal, but failed to pitch. For all your calls to “DO SOMETHING,” you never told us what to do. And as an emergency planner, this is right up your alley.

    I fall in with DJ: nothing we can do. Susan’s idea of mental health funding presumes that such killers view themselves as mentally ill and would seek treatment. Mental health care is voluntary, unless Susan wants us to go round up suspect shooters. Expanding mental health care is nice but won’t get to the mass shooter problem. Yesterday’s shooter was apparently under mental health care and he still went on a rampage.

    I’d like to hear your ideas, Ms. C. If we don’t know where or when the next shooter is coming, how do we plan for it?

    When I was 14, I read a sci-fi short story involving the biblical Rapture – where God brings the Chosen to Heaven ahead of the anti-Christ’s reign of terror on earth. The Rapture is often depicted as humans floating on clouds up to Heaven. But this story rejected such obvious proof of God’s existence. In the story, angels possessed humans and made the kill the Chosen. Seemingly random killings became God’s means of bringing home the Chosen souls.

    An interesting idea. But the Rapture would not focus entirely on the United States … or would it? These murder-suicides, mass killings are unique to the US. Or maybe God also works through tsunamis and suicide bombers and mysterious plane crashes.

    I really don’t see any way to stop such killings or even dissuade them. Welcome to the MIddle East. Wonder what they do? Maybe we could try something to minimize the damage. What would you suggest?

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light. nobody not even the rain has such small hands. I should have been a pair of ragged claws …

    All the lonely people, where do they all come from?

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