lets drop the funding going toward all of the other pork barrel, climate change, pharmaceutical pandering, covid emergency spending, etc.... and invest in the mental health of our citizens.
Middle age crisis is unique in U.S. and western countries. You seldom find middle age crisis in Asian countries.
There are 330 million of us. Our mental health is no worse than that of any country.
But our screwballs can buy guns that allow them to kill a lot of people, very fast.
Second amendment, baby!
because they all restrict and control gun ownership. Australia and Canada implemented buybacks and bans for certain weapons and saw IMMEDIATE reductions in gun deaths. Let's not forget all the deaths due to suicides and accidents...btw, there are many more children killed in accidental firearm discharges at home than there are deaths to home invasion perpetrators. The Kaiser Family Foundation notes that in 2020...4,357 children, ages 1-19, died because of firearms.
Guns in the U.S. are for PLEASURE only...we DON'T NEED them...especially when the volume of needless deaths is so high. As I've said a few times before...control the types of weapons available to the public and authorize use for....
>Hunting
>Target Shooting
>Personal Protection...under rigid control for both the home and outside it, along with severe legal liabilities and penalties for not following the rules.
Never going to stop calling for a modern version of the 2nd Amendment.
You people are so fake.
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Before I go further, I'm not disputing your argument about guns. I think you're making a reasonable point.
Your claim that "Our mental health is no worse than that of any country" is mostly false. We have higher rates of mental health issues than all other high income countries.
20% Can, Swe
16% Nor
11% UK
9% Ger
4% Fra
That's just reported issues. You can assume that more than 1 in 4 US adults are dealing with or have dealt with mental health issues. It's a problem.
The criteria for what qualifies a person as struggling with mental health varies from country to country. As does society's reactions to mental health problems.
But there are plenty of dangerous sociopaths out there in every country. We just have more people. And 300 million+ guns.
And drug abuse among high income Western countries. It's not just reported mental health diagnosis. We have higher rates of diseases of despair.
Do you think a mentally healthy population would have the food consumption problem we have? You don't think that's directly related to dopamine baselines?
I am going to say that national mental health has jack squat to do with mass shootings.
It's just that our loonies can get guns and theirs can't.
We're back to square one. I disagree with you assertion that other countries have the same level of mental health issues that we do.
Ftr, I didn't know about the shooting prior to engaging in this thread. I thought we were having a real discussion on mental illness.
We don't have more crazies. We just don't treat them. We put them on the streets. Walk around an urban area. You will see them.
Funny that my phone keeps trying to capitalize "Healthcare." Must be a Left wing conspiracy.
Where do you think these illegal guns are coming from?
Stop the manufacture of certain guns, then the black market would dry up fast.
But I was not making that point.
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Bullying and Hate have become worse, especially since the advent of Trumpism coupled with social media.
Of course, perpetrators of mass shootings are mentally ill.
But, it is more about the shooter making a statement -- flipping the tables and in one moment, becoming the powerful, the decider, the avenger. All these perpetrators view themselves as aggrieved victims of life/society, justified to unleash death and destruction. They live in their own "isolated" world.
Until communities and the nation do a better job of identifying these folks, and intervening in a meaningful way, we will continue to witness these mass shootings. It starts with every citizen "being on the lookout" for troubled people in our neighborhoods, our workplaces, or schools. Many families/households lack the wherewithal to engage their own loved ones, preferring to ignore the reality of the brewing storm right in front of their eyes.
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I mean... what if early life trauma is the root cause of ALL forms of mental illness... including especially the ones we've "normalized" politically.
I don't know how much you need to invest though. The reality is that we know how to resolve a lot of the milder issues.
Money isn't the problem. The problem is that people aren't willing to be accountable for doing the things they need to do to get healthy.
And a big reason for that is that pharma, the medical industrial complex, rhetoric from Democrats, and Big Food are all working against mentally ill people in various ways.
but isn't accountability and mental health a difficult proposition? And let's drop the "rhetoric" and keep it non-partisan. I think there is a lot we can do for this population.
We dismantled the mental healthcare system. We dumped the insane out on our streets...making them homeless, or forcing unqualified, unfunded, overstressed families to care for them...with obvious and predictable effect.
We can't put them back. The Left use them to try to pass gun control, so they need them out there. The Right fears they will be detained for mental tests for their "crazy" political views, having been reported to the police by progressive activists.
So, get a concealed carry permit. We are in this for the long haul, I'm afraid.
Tougher vetting should be done with gun purchases from the MH side.
Straw man purchasers should face major jail time.
Illegal gun dealers should face life in prison.
That is a red herring. Sure, there are people on the streets struggling with mental health issues - Reagan Admin policies are largely responsible for getting them there - but they are not the ones doing the mass shootings.
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And your statement proves that. "...isn't accountability and mental health a difficult proposition?" Of course it is. That doesn't mean that you can just eliminate the accountability requirement.
Example: Biden and his team recently nominated a woman to the nutrition advisory board who says nutrition and exercise are only a small piece of the obesity crisis. How are you going to treat depression, anxiety and attention disorders, if you are out there telling people that nutrition isn't an important part of mental and physical health.
We can go on and on about this. You can't allow open drug markets and resolve the mental health crisis. You can't expose young children to abstract sexual constructs and think that's pushing us toward mental stability. You cant keep telling people it's not their fault...it's societal systems, it's white males, it's the rich.
No, you have to have accountability. You have to eat right, take your meds, get your exercise, journal, be mindful, go to your therapy sessions, reduce your screen time, stop consuming porn, stop ruminating about the end of the planet and racism, face your trauma, and find God...YOU have to do all of those things. You can't just blame everyone else and wait for the government to fix it.
And we need to stop implying that just because something is difficult that it cant be done and that there is no reason to try.
You went right to the rhetoric. We will never accomplish anything if we can't skip the "he said-she said" bullshit.
Let's leave our differences at the door and start here. "And we need to stop implying that just because something is difficult that it cant be done and that there is no reason to try." I agree with this a hundred fold. When I said, "isn't accountability and mental health a difficult proposition?" I meant there are cases where mental health is so extreme accountability isn't possible. There is such a wide spectrum that covers "mental health" that you can't have a strict interpretation.
I am heading for the golf course soon. Hopefully this could be a start of an across the aisle conversation.
Slainte'
How dare I look at this holistically? How dare I set an expectation that Democrats take some accountability for their rhetoric?
No. I'm going to call it like I see it. I believe that Democratic rhetoric is a contributer to today's mental health issues. If anyone wants to challenge me on that belief, they can have at it, but we aren't just going to ignore it like it's not there.
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You people get me more fired up than the actual topic itself. I don't understand why, on a board meant for sharing ideas and debating differences, I can't ever get anyone to give me a completed thought. It's almost always a single statement followed by a litany of tactics to avoid answering follow-up questions.
That they are killing their neighbors if they don't mask up, and that the other half of the population is evil for not masking up and that isn't going to contribute to some mental health issues?
And they were born with a certain skin color and that anything they get in life is because of their privilege and then think they wont have mental issues.
Is actively working to oppress them and think they wont have mental health issues...this is ridiculous.
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