Florida Mass Shooting

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This is all because militaries all over the world lie to prospective soldiers and tell them they will receive counselling and mental healthcare necessary for ptsd caused by their service. Then when they return, they're left to fend for themselves. Canada is barely any better than the USA in this regard, if any at all. Same BS. We just have fewer soldiers so fewer incidents with them post military life. Plus they're Canadian, so they just humbly accept being cast aside and homeless instead of lashing out violently.

A man who murders people, including infants, by shooting each one multiple times after the adults beg for all their lives has no character left to be impugned or destroyed.  Junkie or not, he has no character left at all.

Just visiting the local shopping mall this weekend was all it took to convince me that the country has a serious mental health crisis.

Walmart around midnight, perhaps?

Google those images at your own risk!

Good thing you're not in charge of anything, the criteria to be stripped of your gun rights are felony or DV convictions, involuntary psychiatric commitment, or dishonorable discharge, not merely being diagnosed with a condition that may or may not effect your decision making. It seems beyond counter-intuitive to subject veterans to a level of scrutiny that normal, non-enlisted citizens are not held to in order to practice a constitutionally guaranteed right, from what I hear the military is already having a hard enough time finding recruits these days.

To add to my other comment, threatening to strip veterans of their gun rights is also an excellent way to prevent them from getting the help they may need, as they'd be incentivized to lie during their discharge process if they knew that the wrong answers could get their rights taken away. The Obama administration actually tried something like that, reclassifying people who had a payee to manage their benefits as being mentally unfit to own firearms, but the push-back was so ferocious, even from other Democrats, that he quietly abandoned that scheme.

Agreed .

Not that I am aware.

He told police he was taking meth, so that appears to be why the police said he was on meth.

I’m afraid you have a solid point. I already know of people lying to their therapists out of fear of mandatory reporting laws for suicide, etc, which makes the whole concept of therapy far less effective than it needs to be.

As much as I think most of us don’t believe that some people who are mentally ill (depending on the affliction and how it manifests) should have firearms, the assessment cannot come from or be related to the mental health services they need.

The most effective but still problematic reporting system is likely to be friends or relatives, but how to follow it up and keep it fair I don’t know.

Meanwhile, making mental health care services more accessible is a necessity. Even outside of the military, too many people are on waiting lists for mental health services right now.

Agrees with DW a mom..... in the above post .

You say that like you're surprised...



I'm lying to my therapists right now about that sort of thing, for the exact reasons described, and have been for 20 years, and actually delayed going on anti-depressants in my teens because I was considering a military career, which in hindsight was a real dodged bullet for me after meeting more veterans and hearing of their experiences.

I actually had a little bit of a tiff with my GP a few years ago because he asked about ringing in my ears and I mentioned that I had a little but wasn't surprised due to all the shooting I do, which got me a concerned lecture about being around guns while depressed. The irony there, at least for me, is the fact that I can end my own life whenever I choose to actually makes me feel better, it's a measure of control I have over my life that nothing and no one can change, and that I'd choose a different method just so I couldn't be used a statistic by my political adversaries anyway.



The problem is that our current red flag law functions a lot like a restraining order, in that someone could make a case against me without my presence and defense, and get the cops sent out to my house to take my property for potentially a lengthy period without due process, and they keep expanding who is allowed to bring such an order. I'm not too concerned about my family doing something like that to me, but when they expand it to friends and acquaintances, then I have to worry about someone getting butthurt over something I said on Facebook and essentially SWATing me, which leads to self censorship beyond what I already practice.

He he he well I think you know that emotionally I'd get rid of all guns if I could, so I'm always going to be reluctant about accepting the pragmatic realities. From knowing the issue isn't about my personal emotional reaction, to knowing how often there are unforeseen side effects of so many things that seem like good ideas on paper, to being truly happy to see the joy some friends find in shooting sports ... well, it's a complicated relationship I have with the issue.

I appreciated your sharing more about your own issues and feelings. I hope it helps people understand how complex the question is.

It's slightly amusing reading this given Fnord actually served in active duty so probably has more credibility on this issue than somebody who shoots targets in a rifle range,

A even simpler solution to avoid stigmatising returning servemen/women is expanding firearm restrictions to all the groups in Fnord's list of paranoia, psychopathy, PTSD, schizophrenia, sociopathy, and/or a drug addiction.

I doubt any NRA types would insisting meth addicts should be allowed to carry loaded weapons.

The simplest solution is to expand firearm restrictions to the entire population.

Except we won’t. Not here in the USA, anyway.

I’ve been dealing with someone for months who has been lying to their therapist, by the way, so Dox’s point on that really hit home. It is no small thing. That doesn’t mean we can’t find a solution, but it does mean we need to tread very carefully and include safeguards to mitigate the unintended consequences. Any proposal is going to have to be pretty well vetted and refined.

I've always found that such a strange reaction, since absent guns we'd just be killing each other with something else, potentially something more unpleasant and less egalitarian. I'm always tempted to make the comparison to the medieval church trying to ban the crossbow as being inhumane in warfare, but being just fine with the traditional bows, swords, maces, spears, etc of the era. The more illuminating historical example to me is actually the Japanese, where they banned firearms and sealed off the nation explicitly because guns put the peasantry on par with the Samurai and thus threatened their entire feudal hierarchy, which has obvious modern parallels.

Was Fnord his unit's shrink? Given his age, I'm guessing his experience is 30-40 years old and likely not involving the reintegration of returning soldiers to society in a policy role, so while I'll respect his opinion on say life in the military in the appropriate time period, I'm not going to give his opinions any undue weight regarding current policy.

Also, interesting that you're suddenly so deferential to personal experience, given that you have so many opinions about a place you don't live and politics that aren't yours, be nice if you were consistent about it.



This is why we have a Constitution, to stop dumb ideas like this; you don't lose your rights because you have a condition, all of those disorders have spectrums of intensity, with the vast majority of the people suffering from them being no threat to anyone.



I'm not an NRA member, but I don't have a problem with most drug users owning and carrying weapons, just like I don't have a problem with people who drink after work owning them, the distinction is completely arbitrary.