United States & Gun Control discussion.

[RackMaster]

A question to ask, is "How many are mentally ill and should not have access to weapons?" The answer is rather elusive today and a look into out history may provide some insight. I have typed and deleted this twice, I think it needs looking at.

If you look at mental health care back to the early 1900's and up through the 1960's you will find that there were large mental health facilities with staggering inpatient populations. Looking at just NY State shows around half a dozen or more Hospitals managed by the NYS Dept of Mental Hygiene. Patient populations range from 2,500 in Binghamton, NY to the huge Pilgrim State Hospital which was just one facility for NYC. It was where "One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest" was filmed, and saw numbers over 10,000, and there was still a couple more in and around NYC. The numbers showed a large percentage of the population that required inpatient beds for mental illness. The percentage of people needing mental health care stayed pretty constant up to the early 1970s. These hospitals were a large institution that was self-sufficient and was very separate from the surrounding communities. Institutions had large farms, bakeries, laundry shops, carpenter shops, police/fire Depts., etc to the point of needing nothing from the "outside world". Patients who were able to actually worked in the shops, on the farms, landscaping, and other parts of the institution. The institutions were expensive to maintain and took a pretty large chunk of state budgets.

Patients required different levels of care. Some were nursing home patients with nowhere else to go and they pretty much were bed or bed to chair patients on wards of 40-50 patients. Patients with a true metal disease were divided into two classes. Those who were able to function in the controlled environment of the huge acreage of the institution with staff supervision. The other class were deemed a danger to themselves or others and were on locked inpatient wards. Diagnosis categories ranged from severe psychotic disturbance to mental retardation and simply needed folks to watch out for them. In the 1950s came the first psychoactive agents that had any real clinical impact on diseases like schizophrenia, and other disorders. The side effects were unpleasant and the biggest problem was to trust the patients to actually take their meds. Meds have been refined over the years to reduce the side effects. They are not as bad today, but they are still there and patients are often noncompliant with their meds. The good news was that a percentage of the patients were able to transition to outpatient management and reducing the inpatient bed needs by a few percentage points.

In NY State, the money to run these huge institutions began to dry up. Institutions were downsized dramatically with Binghamton State Hospital dropping from 2,500 to 250 patients. Nursing homes sprang up to care for the elderly and the mentally ill were moved to outpatient management. There was no magic pill that made people all better, and the percentage of people suffering from mental disease stayed the same. What changed was, and is, that the former patients now interfaced with the general population. Patients were, and are, still noncompliant with meds because of the side effects of antipsychotic agents. Not all the patients had family or friends to house them, and they have trouble maintaining any decent employment. This drove up the number of people living on the streets. When behavior becomes dangerous or offensive, LEO is the first contact for the mentally ill. From there the courts and correctional institutions are what shelter, feed and "care for" people with mental illness. The percentage of mental illness has not changed that much over the years. What has changed is the care and tracking of the mentally ill.

It seems to me that with no way of tracking and caring for the mentally ill in our society, they will go untreated, undertreated, and fall through the huge cracks in the system. The possibility of violent interactions between people with mental illness and the rest of our population. The LEO community is not equipped to handle the needs of the mentally ill. LEO and the courts plug them into the outpatient clinics, but there is no way to force them to take their meds and attend outpatient groups. They avoid care because of the stigma mental illness still carries, and because they hate the side effects of the meds. Thus the patients get lost among the homeless and are avoided by everyone else. There is no place to house and care for the mentally ill. There are acute care beds, but the courts limit involuntary stays to the absolute minimum. There are patients who have been involuntarily committed to psych hospitals and those beds are there because our laws say they must be there. There is no place for the others who were for so long patients at the huge mental institutions that were there until the 1970s.

If there are funds allocated for the care of mentally ill patients, and the needed bed spaces are there, the huge chasm that exists can be shrunk. If we can better identify, treat and track our population that needs mental health support, the risk of violent interactions will drop. Today there is no really tight system that identifies and handles our mentally ill. Today they are "treated" by our LEOs, courts, and jails. The go back on the streets with a month of pills and an outpatient clinic appointment. Most of the time the pills get traded off for heroin and the cycle begins again.

That's my $.02 for what it is worth. I have seen to big institutions, and I see what is on the city streets today. They are the same mentally ill people, just in different, and mostly worse places.

Thank you once again for putting into words exactly what I was trying to do.

Until every level of the current system is funded and run properly, as it's intended; this "debate" is useless.

 

[amlove21]

Ok ladies and gents. We are all members of the profession of of arms. We should be able to disagree without coming to verbal blows. We are brother and sisters and should be able to have civil discussion.

I will ask @ShadowSpear to allow all offending parties back into to the thread. If after a second chance they continue to behave like temperamental children allow @AWP to drop the ban hammer.

This issue needs attention and stifling it does no benifit to any of us.

So the rest of the staff did a great job handling the prior nonsense in the thread. Reading through, I wanted to address the above quote for a couple reasons, mainly because words have meanings and some things were said here that deserve specific reply.

I like the self policing, that's the goal. When an organization/culture/whatever finds a way to police their own without involvement from the authority, that's a good thing.

You can ask staff members to reconsider their punitive decisions, but you might not wanna do that when it's the boss that does it, 1. 2, you wouldn't "allow" the Amoral War Profiteer to do anything. And 3, we don't "stifle" any issues here in any way.

You all? The members? You "stifle" conversations when you force the staff to engage because you can't follow guidance and we have to lock things down.

Moving on...

 

[ThunderHorse]

The NRA has over 5MM adult members, these companies are only costing themselves money: NRA Corporate Partners Hit With Boycott Calls

 

[Frank S.]

Until every level of the current system is funded and run properly, as it's intended; this "debate" is useless.

I can't conceive of any system being run and funded properly, ever.
Once the decisions were made and implemented to phase out the psychiatric communities RF1 spoke of and the rubber room was put on the road, so to speak, there was no going back.
A bullet/taser cartridge is cheaper than housing, staff and meds.

 

[Fl_Ag]

There's been some talk of having armed guards at schools. Were you all tracking this? First I've heard of it was this morning.

Cop who didn't enter school during Florida shooting resigns, has home guarded, is slammed as 'coward' by Trump

"Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said Peterson, who was armed when gunman Nikolas Cruz opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, “never went in[to]” the building that was under attack. He said the school resource officer instead took up a position viewing the western entrance of the building."

 

[Fl_Ag]

This is the level of thinking we're dealing with. There really is no rationalizing you can have with people like this. I keep this person around, a peer from high school, as a sober reminder there are folks who fiercely believe this kind of stuff.

 

[ThunderHorse]

There's been some talk of having armed guards at schools. Were you all tracking this? First I've heard of it was this morning.

Cop who didn't enter school during Florida shooting resigns, has home guarded, is slammed as 'coward' by Trump

"Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said Peterson, who was armed when gunman Nikolas Cruz opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, “never went in[to]” the building that was under attack. He said the school resource officer instead took up a position viewing the western entrance of the building."

Yeah, the Sheriff burned him to. Armed Stoneman Douglas resource officer 'never went in' during Florida shooting

He got thumped all over social media yesterday well before POTUS found out.

 

[Red Flag 1]

I can't conceive of any system being run and funded properly, ever.

 

[amlove21]

 

[DC]

40k a year to work 6 months...sign me up.

 

[amlove21]

40k a year to work 6 months...sign me up.

Get after it! Troops to Teachers

 

[Ooh-Rah]

Ummm wow. There was a time I had wanted to see her as a Presidential candidate. Disappointing.

Condoleezza Rice: It’s time to discuss what Second Amendment ‘means in the modern world’

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that it’s time to discuss what the Second Amendment “means in the modern world” in light of last week’s mass school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

Ms. Rice, who served under President George W. Bush, said that while the Second Amendment remains “indivisible,” she doesn’t think civilians should have access to guns like the AR-15, which was used by 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz to fatally shoot 17 students and teachers on Valentine’s Day.

“I think it is time to have a conversation about what the right to bear arms means in the modern world,” she told radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt. “I don’t understand why civilians need to have access to military weapons. We wouldn’t say you can go out and buy a tank.”

“But I believe that the rights that we have in the Constitution are indivisible,” she added. “We can’t throw away the Second Amendment and keep the First.”

 

[Ooh-Rah]

- Mod Hat On -

I've been moving posts between threads all afternoon.

Threads related to the school shooting should go in that thread. That includes discussions around the school security (or lack there of).
School shooting thread

Thanks.

- Rah -

 

[DC]

Political poison can ruin the minds of some of the best. Money can buy anyone. Starting to smell a soros agenda. Interesting to see what the next few weeks gives up.

 

[DC]

Getting worse. Sheriff chastised the NRA and stated he can keep us safe. We don’t need guns. Then deputies outed for dereliction of duty and failure to act. He put a 6 man team on the resource officers house now. Gov let Parkland down. We have had proactive threat investigations here now at 4 schools I know of. The gun free zones are now killing fields.

 

[AWP]

Getting worse. Sheriff chastised the NRA and stated he can keep us safe. We don’t need guns. Then deputies outed for dereliction of duty and failure to act. He put a 6 man team on the resource officers house now.

Wait, the sherriff went on the offensive against the NRA and then discovered his officers sat in the parking lot like turds? Now he's taken 6 officers off the street (or paying OT) to protect that trash? He should be run out of town on a rail for being that incompetent. Maybe the entire department for that matter.

 

[DC]

Correct. I am running down the OAN piece that Liz Wheeler did tonite about it. I can’t even fathom how this will go down for the vitums families. Take our guns then let us die? Unbelievable even for the ADMIN EDIT *people I don't agree with but I've been told time and again to stay away from calling names so I wont anymore* left. Indefensible.

 

[DC]

 

[ThunderHorse]

The amount of people telling folks that don't agree with them on Facebook to step in front of the line for the next shooting is mind boggling. We've fucked up. People in their Mid 20s really don't understand why we have the bill of rights and think AR platforms should only be fore Military and Police Forces. Legit that's like saying you should only have freedom of speech in the 18th century way in the back of my mind.

 

[amlove21]

The amount of people telling folks that don't agree with them on Facebook to step in front of the line for the next shooting is mind boggling. We've fucked up. People in their Mid 20s really don't understand why we have the bill of rights and think AR platforms should only be fore Military and Police Forces. Legit that's like saying you should only have freedom of speech in the 18th century way in the back of my mind.

Well, compare that with the "other side"- the people that hold the 2nd Amendment so sacrosanct that the very notion of exploring what it means today and how to apply it reasonably to our culture as it stands today is akin to heresy and makes you immediately a non-patriot.

I don't know if there was a real watershed moment where we had to choose sides and we couldn't explore topics without becoming polarized- but it happened.