ABC/WP poll; gun violence is mental health issue
ABC News releases their poll in conjuction with the Washignton Post which reveals that 63% of Americans see the issue of gun violence as a mental health issue rather than a gun control legislation issue.
One reason is that 63 percent see mass shootings as more a reflection of problems in identifying and treating people with mental health problems than as the outcome of inadequate gun control -– a view expressed by many gun rights advocates.
These attitudes relate closely to priorities. Among people who see mass shootings as a mental health issue, just 30 percent prioritize enacting new anti-gun violence laws, while 62 percent prefer protecting gun rights…Views on gun control are highly politicized. Seven in 10 Democrats prefer enacting new gun laws while the same share of Republicans prioritize protecting gun rights. Independents divide more narrowly, 50-43 percent for gun rights vs. gun laws.
Eighty-two percent of Republicans, moreover, blame mass shootings on mental health care failures rather than inadequate gun control; it’s 65 percent among independents and much lower among Democrats, 46 percent.
Most of the shooters in the media’s most publicized mass killings were committed by people who had mental health issues which should have flagged their purchase of those guns, there were also a few that should have been flagged because of their criminal records. The fellow in Charleston South Carolina, for example. The whole background check debate revolves around a National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, that isn’t working the way it’s supposed to work.
According to the FBI “The National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, is all about saving lives and protecting people from harm—by not letting guns and explosives fall into the wrong hands. It also ensures the timely transfer of firearms to eligible gun buyers.” Well, it’s not doing that, and loading the system down with even more background checks, like those transfers between friends and family, isn’t going to make the system more reliable and it’s not going to protect society until the bugs get ironed out.
Category: Guns
No sh!t.
A gun isn’t responsible for a shooting, any more than the car was responsible for the deaths at the recent Oklahoma State University parade. In both cases, it was the individual using the item in question that was responsible.
If that individual is mentally unbalanced, those who allowed them to use the tool are the ones with blood on their hands – not others using the tool properly, or who built the tool.
Hondo; quit using logic and reason. There’s no way to reason with those that are emotionally driven. And logic with those people is like garlic to Dracula.
Hondo……….the first two words says all that’s necessary for the readers of this blog: NO SHIT!
MOLON LABE
My Father gave me my first gun (on LI, NY) at age seven for Christmas – a Savage .410 shotgun. The first time I fired it was on the perimeter of the now Bethpage Golf Course – I shot a head of cabbage off an old wooden box (can’t believe I remember that) found in the area….if my Dad were still alive he would agree with me: MOLON LABE!
Speaking of a mental health issue, Amy Schumer is back at it again:
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2015/10/26/amy-schumer-senator-cousin-call-for-crusade-on-guns/
#AimingForChange
Further proof that liberalism is a Mental Disorder!!
And apparently genetic.
Ergo, liberals should be prohibited persons. Also, if one is too unstable to posses a firearm, they are also to unstable to cast an informed vote.
Win – Win
AMEN to that!!! 😀
Send the libs to Pineland for attitude adjustments!
Screeching liberals always try to paint us as violent-minded antisocial types, yet we always hear them calling for us to be beaten or killed for our beliefs!
Never cared for Amy Schumer. Also didn’t bother seeing her movie, because I have zero interest in what the trailers indicate is a sympathetic portrayal of a pathological slut.
That’s why the liberal set only think 46% of the issue is due to mental health problems. They simply cannot recognize in themselves.
A point of interest re: Schumer – Chuck and Amy, who are related.
My oldest son had a recent medical procedure done (kidney stones) – the doctor is another Schumer…who is a (reported) Conservative!!
Who’d a thunk it?
Yes, the Schumer’s are related. However, the two are very different. Amy is very funny, Chucky is not!
This year, the National Dialog Quartet in Tunisia was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2015.
http://www.nobelpeaceprizeconcert.org/news/2015-nobel-peace-prize-winner-announced/
This movement started with a self-immolation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Bouazizi
Scroll down to read about the many, many copycat incidents associated with the Arab Spring in Tunisia.
In the US, instead of self-immolation, we have people with guns, starting with Charles Whitman, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman
in 1966.
In my opinion, the establishment of gun-free zones in an era of copycat gun murders is an open invitation to commit mass murder.
Bingo.
Those with bleeding hearts often have incredibly bloody hands.
Gun free zones are known as a free fire zone and a target rich environment.
Nobody can shoot back, that’s why they go there.
99% of all massacre’s involving mass shooters have been in a gun free zone since 1955.
Either don’t go or go and carry anyway.
Wait, Buh-rock and Jawn Fraud sKerry didn’t win the Nobel for Peace? Oh noes, they’re going to be pissed. They gave the Ayatollah everything he wanted, and still couldn’t get a Nobel?
If people who don’t like gunzz will move to their own planet, I will be very happy. I hope it is loaded with carnivorous dinosaurs.
I have not yet run into someone who gets right in your face and not only infests your personal space with gunzz drivel, but also wants you to agree with him/her/it.
However, I’m sure that day is coming. It happened with someone whose friend died from a form of clay silicosis because he didn’t use 99% dust-free cat litter, and who, without asking me if I had a cat, wanted me to join him in a class action suit against all cat litter products.
Everyone has a ’cause’ of some kind. Some causes are more complicated than others. but as has been constantly and consistently pointed out here and elsewhere, owning/using a gunzz is a choice, not a requirement of existence.
Ban all cat litter !!!!!
If it saves ONE life……
Cat Owner’s Lives Matter!
There is a very dark side to the mental health aspect of gun violence. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that gun violence is caused by mental illness. Okay…does that mean that everyone who commits a crime with gun is mentally ill? And how far is the stretch to conclude that anybody who WANTS to own a gun is mentally ill, by the very desire to own a deadly weapon? And what happens when vets come into the mix, with problems like PTSD? Most vets I know like to own guns, so what happens if they are clinically diagnosed with mental illness? Do they get their guns taken away? And it’s a good idea to realize that mental illness isn’t ‘cured’ — it’s managed, like diabetes or epilepsy. There can be, and are, relapses of mental illness. So does someone with mental illness EVER get to own a gun? Or, to be ‘safe,’ does everyone with mental illness get blacklisted so they NEVER own a gun? While it’s fairly obvious that mental health is part of the problem of gun violence, addressing that issue will be neither easy nor pleasant.
Well, PN – we’re already part of the way there. As I recall, Federal law generally prohibits those who’ve been involuntarily committed in the past or previously declared mentally incompetent from purchasing a firearm.
I can live with that.
Mental incompetence and mental illness are not the same, Hondo.
I understand that, PN. I mentioned both above, not just mental illness.
Lizzie Borden was acquitted, you know. She used an axe… or so I’m told.
Dark side, indeed. People in this country are wary of involuntary treatment for mental illness for two very good reasons: 1) we don’t know how to do it very effectively, and 2) the old Soviet Union abused the entire notion of menial illness, by locking up people who dared disagree out loud with some jerk in power.
But we are also taking risks with the lives of innocent people, when we medicate troubled people with psychoactive drugs. Further, our media is very loudly failing to report the names of the drugs involved in these mass murders. I don’t argue that we shouldn’t have drug treatments, but psychoactive drugs are known to cause suicidial incidents.
One fine day I learned that my then high-school aged boy’s girlfriend, who was being treated for bipolar disorder, checked into the local hospital because she was suicidal. She waited in the &*^% emergency room, alone, for 8 hours before somebody got around to treating her. It turns out that she had a recent change in medication, and it did not set well, with her.
This is the quality of mental health care we have in one of the two wealthiest and best-educated counties in the country.
I positively love this from the accompanying article that “interprets” the polls results: “Regardless, previous polling has found overwhelming support for some additional gun control laws. An ABC/Post poll in April 2013 found 86 percent support….”
If that’s not a laugh riot, I don’t know what is. Hey, if the instant poll doesn’t provide the results you seek, just run by them and focus on another that does. Cripes.
2/17 Air Cav, it’s called ‘denial’. It’s another form of mental something or other.
Read somewhere that 90% of murders are committed by someone who is already a felon. Same for domestic abuse. Teaching point is don’t hang around or shack up with criminals. Leave the law abiding alone
The profile of the lion’s share of both shooters and victims is quite fixed. The key elements of the profile are race, gender, age, not just priors but the type of priors.
Yeah, saying “gun violence is a mental health issue” is like claiming criminal behavior can be stopped by employing frequent yoga and deep breathing exercises.
I always want to ask these people, “Under what conditions does a person open fire on a group of unarmed children and it is not a mental health issue?”
You do realize all the comments are creating the next psychosis for PTSD don’t you? Now there will be all the nuts in the world involved in mass shootings and creating the need for compensation via monthly checks. At least the flag excuse will get a breather for a while.
Is machete violence equally mental?