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this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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No it is not clearly a case where the kid has some sort of mental disorder. You know literally nothing about this person.
I would probably bet that this kid made a stupid split second choice in the heat of the moment about something that (partially likely due to raging teenage hormones) probably seemed very important at the time, and the guilt will haunt him until the end of his life (which, statistically speaking, just got much shorter on average).
This is exactly why guns are so dangerous. It gives people (in this case, a literal child without a fully developed brain) the capability to make a decision to end another life in a split second.
You really think any sane rational FOURTEEN year old would just shoot their sister solely because of a Christmas gift?
I'm not saying 14 year olds have adult mental capacity and decision making ... but by that age you KNOW what a gun goes and you KNOW you can't take it back.
Either there's more to the story or this kid definitely has some kind of mental disorder or mental distress that they needed to see a therapist about.
Maybe the more to the story is that he thought he could just scare her by pointing the gun at her or her thought it was empty ... and it wasn't/the gun went off. If that's the case, then the parents really screwed up having a gun in the house, not teaching the kid anything about gun safety, and allowing the kid across to the gun (granted again by 14 you're pretty smart ... the average 14 year old could probably figure out the code or were the keys are kept on a gun safe because I know most people do not follow best practices with any passwords or keys).
And before you make any assumptions like you did with the other person, I've voted for Democrats in every election, donated some significant money to their campaigns, and I do not own a gun and do not have any restrictions that prevent me from owning a gun, I've just decided that for me ... particularly with living alone and a (granted not recent) history of depression that included suicidal thoughts ... they're not a good thing to have around. I avoid alcohol for similar reasons.
Thoughts and prayers might be a meaningless response but a huge block of the population has said "we're not giving up our guns" ... come to think of it ... just like a huge block of the population has said "we're not giving up our alcohol" (as is their right at the polls).
There is a majority that would like to see some common sense gun reform and we should do that. However, I believe the right has a point about mental health and guns. What they don't have is the willingness to fund mental health systems and instead they blame all the mental health issues on a degraded culture (🙄). We need to bring mental health back into the conversation with information from professionals. They also have a point about teaching kids about gun safety, if we're going to keep guns, then it's a public disservice to not teach kids (or at least the kids of gun owners) "this is what a gun is, don't point it at anything you don't want to kill" and "there's a difference between pretend and reality, these are never for pretend" as a baseline.
Yes. Countless stories of children murdering their parents over this stuff. It’s very common. Remember that the country is big with lots of people so you’re going to see these things from time to time-it’s statistically likely to happen.
What are you arguing here? That it happens and it's not mental illness because there are so many people that it's bound to happen?
No. That with that many people, there are enough whackos that this sort of thing will constantly be in the news even though when compared to the population size the events are still extraordinarily rare.
Murdering another human is a sign of mental disorder. Especially if it's in a case like this. I don't think it's possible to argue "this human is acting rationally, losing control of yourself to the point where you literally murder someone is, indeed, a sign of mental stability."
Also, access to guns isn't the reason people murder each other.
In Christmas Day a 36 year old stabbed 2 children, 2 girls aged 14 and 16, for no other reason than seemingly, they weren't white. A fucking racist asshole decided to attempt to murder kids. Is this person not suffering from a mental disorder? Should we stop people from owning knives too?
Again, I have never said this was about gun ownership. People who think violent crime stops if guns are gone are delusional. It's such a rhetorical trap. I bet conservative leadership in the United States love when liberals make this an issue, it's one of huge issues that motivates their base.
This is now, and always will be, a public health issue. You want less people to be victims of violent crime? Give us universal healthcare that also covers mental illness. Make it free, make education high quality, and free too. Crime will go down, violence will go down.
The political discourse about guns disguises that entire debate. And it's stupid that people fall for it.
Only stupid people say dumb shit like "guns aren't the problem, the ONLY problem is mental health". People can expect reform in two separate yet connected topics. One can absolutely impact the other.
Yeah, a crazy fucker stabbed a couple girls. He had a knife. I WISH that the crazy fucker who shot up entire classrooms at Uvalde or Sandy Hook had only had a knife.
Provide better mental health AND tighter gun control policies.
I have never said anything about gun control, for it or against it.
This is a mental health issue. Happy, well adjusted people don't murder other people.
It's interesting you mention Sandy Hook. Did you know on the same day in China a mentally ill person ran through a Chinese school and stabbed 22 kids in the fucking head?
Stabbings in Chinese schools are a huge issue. The person killed 8 of the kids by stabbing them in the head.
But sure, keep focusing on guns. Let's put all of our effort into that. That's clearly more important than free, publicly funded mental healthcare.
You're apparently saying that we shouldn't be focusing on guns because mental health is more important...
We can surely do both at the same time, don't you think?
I really don't.
The whole topic, in the current political environment, is so polarizing and so toxic, I think it torpedoes any progress that could be made in reducing gun violence.
I believe gun violence will go down if people have better mental healthcare, better access to housing, and better job prospects. My personal belief is people who commit violence against others are doing so because of mental disease. If you reduce their stress, make their future prospects better, and tell them they have a future, their prospects, and mental health, will improve.
America is more polarized now than it ever has been. A conservative and a liberal will never agree on gun control. They just won't. But I do think a liberal and a conservative can agree that violence is a problem, and that conservatives would be willing to consider solutions to it that aren't simply making firearms illegal.
It obviously wouldn't reduce gun violence to 0 like a ban would, but focusing on it as a mental health issue, and addressing that, would reduce other forms of violent crime too. Less muggings, stabbing, rapes, etc. I believe, taken as a whole, there would be less crime and drastically less violent crime, doing that, than any kind of firearm ban could achieve.
Edit: the downvotes prove my point. American politics right now care more about winning whatever hot button issue someone has, rather than cooperating to make meaningful change.
How about everyone reading this does a mental exercise. Let's say liberals decided not to care about gun control, and that issue wasn't relevant in American politics for the last 20 years. Do you think the current supreme court would look the way it does? Do you think organizations like the NRA would have anywhere near the funding and power they have now? How many single issue conservative voters did simply not show up to vote if there was 0 chance a liberal majority would "take their guns"
How convenient for you: a kid shoots and kills another kid, and just by default, you can make all sorts of assumptions about their mental health, and use it as a scapegoat, before the topic of firearms can even be brought up.
Please save us all the time and energy and don't pretend like you actually give a single shit about funding mental health care. A thing conservatives have also gone out of their way to de-fund.
Interesting you'd label a guy advocating for universal healthcare and increased education spending a conservative.
You're not even listening to my arguments.