The article said the guy had issues. He had a gun too.Investigators have no clear idea of what led a man to go on a shooting rampage on the northeast side of Indianapolis, leaving one victim and himself dead and three other people wounded, but the police chief said prior mental health issues might have contributed.
What's your opinion? Don't you think we should make more of an effort to keep guns out of the hands of guys like this?
That's what I think? Please leave a comment.
So we have another instance where this was a problem with guns, not gangs, apparently?
ReplyDeleteYeah, but oh Noooooooooooooooo don't worry about keeping the mentally ill away from firearms!!!!!
We must trust their natural goodness, and just shut up and bury the failures of that premise... or hospitalize them.
This is one more failure, following the same kind of failure in Seattle that killed six.
Wow this crazy guy was a slacker! He didn't shoot nearly as many innocent sane people as that last guy. The NRA failed, WalMart as the number 1 seller of guns in the U.S. (or so it was reported in conjunction with them quitting ALEC) must be very disappointed in their sales strategy.
I wonder if like Loughner and others this guy and the Seattle guy picked up their ammo from wally world before their crazy killing rampages?
When was the last time you saw a handgun in Wal-Mart? Have you noticed that there are two small long gun cases there in the sports section?
DeleteBut once again, you express your faith in mental tests to catch people like this. Right--you're going to put a hundred million or more Americans through a psychological examination. Where are you going to get the people to do that? Who's going to pay for all of this?
Your simple-minded solution won't fly in this country.
Yeah, simple minded, like your idea of not restricting gun ownership at all and just hope for the best.
DeleteLet’s say you have your screening and this guy was indentified. You put a stamp on him that says “no guns”. Now what? How does he get help when the mental health professionals are just looking for the next guy to stamp? I know what you are thinking- just do both, but you are not being realistic. Where do those resources come from? You don’t seem to understand the massive scope that your ideals involve. You want to shift resources from helping people to finding people. That is the reality of what you are talking about. And who suffers in that reality? People who need help.
ReplyDeleteOh, it would be too expensive, so forget about it. That's too convenient.
DeleteMikeb, I have no problem with restricting the gun rights of people who have a record of violence--at least until they can show themselves ready to have those rights back. You want to convict people without trial in advance of any crime. And yes, making a determination that someone isn't worthy of rights is effectively a conviction.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, typically, you're dodging an important point here. There are some 100,000,000 gun owners in America, perhaps even more. Are you only going to test people who seek to buy a gun after your proposal passes, or do you want all 100,000,000 of us to lie down on a shrink's couch for a session? We have enough problems with healthcare in this country as it is. How will our overburdened system process all those tests?
This is why we believe that you want to remove guns from private ownership. You propose laws that if enforced would make owning a gun all but impossible to do legally. Would you please address the point that I made in the paragraph above?
You refuse to acknowledge how small the problem of gun violence is in comparison to the number of guns and gun owners in this country, and you refuse to acknowledge the insurmountable difficulties in your proposals. Get a grasp on reality.
Greg, I've called you out on this little bit of bullshit before. The number of gun owners is 80 million not 100 million, at least according to most sources. From that number you have to take away the ones who are nominal gun owners only, you know the guys with a gun in the garage that they haven't seen in years. The you have to take away all those who actually agree with the gun control arguments, too.
DeleteWhat's left is what you can put up against not only the deaths, but also the injuries and even the near misses. ALL incidents of gun misuse is what you need to consider.
Once you do all that, you'll see, even you will see it's not insignificant.
The numbers that I've seen lately say 100,000,000. Eighty million came from the nineties. The recent Gallup poll suggested 47% of American households.
DeleteBut there's no point in arguing over minor differences. That many millions, whether eighty or a hundred, gun owners, compared with the number of homicides, suicides, accidents, or whatever else you wish to compare, shows that the vast majority of us aren't a problem.
I wish that you'd define what significant means to you. Most people would say that when more than ninety percent of a group is X, that characteristic is definitive of the group. How do you see things?