Again...

[unpopular]

Blame belongs on the shoulders of one person, and one person only. I'm pretty sure that person is neither you nor I.

But what will this accomplish? People who commit these crimes are not bound by social shame! They nearly always know what they're doing is wrong, at least from the larger social standpoint. They don't think "well, nobody is going to blame me ... so I'll do it anyway!" that's not how sociopathy works.

Everything everyone does is justified within their own head one way or another. Blaming people on a moral level is inconsequential and doesn't address the problem of why it happens before it does.

 

[tirediron]

there is a difference between accountability and responsibility.

No. No there isn't. You do the crime, you do the time. The whole concept of dimished responsibility is nothing more or less than an excuse.

 

[AgentDrex]

there is a difference between accountability and responsibility.

No. No there isn't. You do the crime, you do the time. The whole concept of dimished responsibility is nothing more or less than an excuse.

Is that concept for those with the capacity to think clearly or does it also cover those without the ability to fully comprehend the consequences of their behavior? Do you we lock-up the mentally ill in prisons or in a mental institution that can keep track of their mental state? How do we deal with severe mental issues?

 

[unpopular]

there is a difference between accountability and responsibility.

No. No there isn't. You do the crime, you do the time. The whole concept of dimished responsibility is nothing more or less than an excuse.

so there is no scenario in your opinion that the mind can respond to stimuli in a an inaccurate way leading to decisions which are based on faulty information? If this is what you're saying, science says otherwise. Including physiological evidence.

I also think you've been watching too much Law and Order. People who are found criminally insane don't just go home, temporary insanity is seldom argued successfully. The "criminally insane" typically spend more time in prison hospitals. They don't have the benefit of a clear prison term with a definite ending.

And BTW - those facilities are often not the cushy private hospitals you're thinking they are. I've been a patient at a state facility, and while they are better than they used to be, they're still not comfortable. Unless you're into cockroaches. I doubt very much the prison ward is Club Med.

 

[runnah]

Trying to stay out of this but here we go...

The problem is that the current state of mental health care in this country woefully under funded. The funding gets lumped in with every other social service, including welfare. So when people get on their soap boxes and say cut social spending, mental health care gets cut along with that. Many people out there need constant supervision to make sure they don't act out and take their medication. When funding gets cut, they get turned loose.

My mother worked for a large mental hospital that had it's funding drastically cut forcing them to close. What happened to the patients? The more dangerous were transferred but for the most part many were just told to leave and that was it.

Gun control isn't the issue, mental health is the issue. Spending more time trying to stop the carpenter rather than banning the hammer.

 

[tirediron]

..so there is no scenario in your opinion that the mind can respond to stimuli in a an inaccurate way leading to decisions which are based on faulty information? If this is what you're saying, science says otherwise. Including physiological evidence.

I didn't say any such thing.

I also think you've been watching too much Law and Order.

As far as I know, I've never watched any "Law and Order".

People who are found criminally insane don't just go home, temporary insanity is seldom argued successfully. The "criminally insane" typically spend more time in prison hospitals. They don't have the benefit of a clear prison term with a definite ending.

Fair comment

And BTW - those facilities are often not the cushy private hospitals you're thinking they are. I've been a patient at a state facility, and while they are better than they used to be, they're still not comfortable. Unless you're into cockroaches. I doubt very much the prison ward is Club Med.

And you know what I'm thinking because....

I never suggested in any way that there are scenarios in which the human mind can't make a "faulty" decision, nor did I state that teleivision justice bears any resemblance to the real thing, and I definitely did not say that mental health facilities are "cushy" or "Club Med". All I said was that if you have the capacity to commit the crime, you must be held accountable, and a person's [alleged] mental state should NOT have a bearing on the sentence he/she receives. It should definitely have a bearing on WHERE that sentence is served, but not on the nature or duration. Whether the warders in a particular institution wear white uniforms or blue is immaterial, although from what (admitedly little) I know of physciatric/mental detention facilities, I suspect I would much rather spend time in a regular prison any day.

 

[John27]

I'm not going to comment on the mental health/responsibility/accountability issue but...

I think it's important to note that "Not Guilty by reason of insanity or mental defect" isn't the same as "Not Guilty". In fact, a person who gets the 'insanity plea' will, on average, spend twice as long in a lockdown mental health facility than they would have in prison. It's hard to convince a court you're crazy. It's even harder to convince them that you are not. I did a few case studies on these in a psychology class and one was a man convicted (Not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect) of sexual assault towards a coworker. Claimed he was having a breakdown due to his failed marriage, and sexual deviancy became a psychotic outburst. Now, normally, that particular crime maxes out at 15 years, with the average sentence being 7 years, AND, the average time between conviction and release being about 5 years (with a large number being released in less than 18 months even with a 10 year sentence). At the time of this case study, he had been in a mental health facility for 22 years. Locked in a cell, 3 hots and a cot. Once a person is incarcerated under an insanity plea, the state worries that once out, they will be off of their medication, or might be faced with new environments that they don't receive in prison. They are worried that synthetic instigators won't show them how they would ACTUALLY react if TRULY provoked. So the catch 22 results in them, often times, dying in a mental health facility. They don't just get of scott free, again, the AVERAGE is 2x the typical incarceration if convicted. Often times a defense attorney will only push for it if the death penalty is on the table; a person found insane (fun fact, insanity is a legal term, it's not recognized in psychology or psychiatry) as far as I know, cannot be executed anywhere in the United States.

Again, that's not a comment on whether or not accountability for the mentally ill is the same, just trying to clear up a Law and Order perpetuated misconception that insanity is the same as not guilty.

On a side note, I cannot imagine any person of normal mental health committing any of these crimes. It's normal, and probably smart, to have a level of distrust for your government. But it's not normal to load a Ryder truck full of explosives and blow up a federal building. It's normal to have a fight with your parents once in a while, it's not normal to kill them, then go to the school your mother teaches at and wipe out a classroom. I just do not see anything other than mental illness here. Although, I'm not so sure the Aspergers has anything to do with it. Aspergers isn't known to cause aggression or any sort of psychopathic responses like that. Aspergers is basically ADD on steroids. It's not a severe behavioral disorder like some of these media personalities are making it out to be. My younger brother has aspergers and is a successful member of the US Navy and gets along great with everyone.

 

[KmH]

Gun control isn't the issue, mental health is the issue. Spending more time trying to stop the carpenter rather than banning the hammer.

Absolutely! :thumbup:

 

[AgentDrex]

Mental health is definitely an issue but I don't believe it's necessarily THE issue. I believe a faltering society is also a big issue. From glorification and sensationalism of crime through media (books, television shows, movies, news reports, etc.), to the desire for fame through "reality" TV and the youtube phenomena, to technologies that have the ability separate us (personal computers, "phones" and other portable media devices, etc.) from each other. The technologies that could bring us together seem to be at the moment driving us apart more than anything. Sure, a lot of social networking sites can and seem to me to have the mirage of bringing us together but is our time at these places meaningful?

Some may think that a photography forum is not the place for such issues to be discussed, that these are the topics mental health "professionals" should be debating. I believe everyone should be talking together about this and other issues (regardless of place and person). It seems there is a tendency to keep stuff under the table (be it through stigma, embarrassment, denial, etc.), however, this should definitely not be hid away.

Have we turned away from each other so much that the only time we get together is in times of crisis? I agree that mental issues should not be a determining factor in whether a person is charged with a crime or not. I believe it should way heavily upon sentencing. Do we send them to prison (granted that they don't stalemate that through suicide) where they will most likely have no attention paid to their state-of-mind, being just another criminal? Should they be sent to a medical prison where they don't necessarily get the help they need either, just a longer sentence? What kind of mind-set in a person must there be to commit a crime in the first place? Are there more people in prison and on the streets with issues that we seem to ignore?

Should we train early-ed educators into reading the signs of mental health imbalances so they can get the kids the help they need sooner? Are they already trained to do this? What about bullying? What type of mind-set does a person need to have to become a bully? A friend of mine brought a gun to school because the administration and faculty let some kids bully over and over without a proper consequence (suspension is a ridiculous punishment and does not nothing positive and in general seemed to make it worse at our school because we would get payback once they came back). If that gun had not been jammed, there would have been a school shooting in my town. As is, there was a horrible shooting twenty-seven miles from here in Red Lake. Do we as a society have a vested interest in keeping our kids safe? By which I mean, do we make sure our own kids have the support they need? Do we just disregard our own who may have issues and pin it on others while keeping a lid on our own childrens' mental health (the whole next-town-over, not in my backyard mentality)?

Did the mental health worker for the guy who shot up the theater in Colorado really warn others about it? Did they keep it under wraps or did the people who were warned simply ignore the inevitable? What about Columbine? Were the "jocks" and "preps" there really mean to people as has been mentioned before? If so, did the administration and faculty know about the cruelty? My school knew about the bullying and little to nothing was done about it which is what set my friend off in the first place to attempt to take matters into his own hands in seventh grade with a broken rifle. Is that what went on at Columbine/Red Lake/Virginia Tech/etc. as well? What about the gang problem mentioned by cpeay a page ago? Are these people being ignored on purpose or through denial? Is there any good reason to ignore and deny that any of our children could be the next victim or perpetrator?

Is this something we really expect the government to even think about? With funding cuts of programs that could help keep the discussions, debates and education going while spending more on killing, is this really the body of people we want fussing around with this anyhow? Shouldn't we, as a society, do something to help out neighbors and random strangers? Shouldn't we as a group recognize the issues before it's too late and someone gets hurt? Or shall we just leave it up to someone else, whoever that someone else may be as long as it isn't ourselves? How do we even go about doing that?

That's where the internet could save us. We can either use it to distance ourselves from each other even further or use it to pull this society, that is falling apart rapidly, back together. What say you?

 

[jaguaraz]

My response to these horrible shootings is that I can't keep quiet any longer. We must have intelligent conversation in this country about gun control. At the risk of being flamed for my stand, a boy that crazy would not have likely killed all those people with a knife or sharp stick. In responsible democracies that severely limit the access to guns and place ongoing responsibilities on those that do have guns, the rate of gun violence is a small fraction of what it is in this country. I'm tired of the approach that we have to tolerate these massacres because there is nothing we can do. If we truly could remove guns from the equations, we would have far less mayhem in our streets.

If you don't believe me, google independent research statistics on gun violence in this country. If you have a gun in your home, you are no less likely statistically to protect yourself from harm and many times more likely to have someone you love accidentally shot, commit suicide, or commit homicide with the family gun. The second amendment talks about a "Well-regulated militia" so we have constitutional authority to make gun ownership far more difficult and responsible.

I've been a teacher and elementary school principal and the last thing I would have wanted in any of my school is more people packing heat! Sorry for the soapbox but I've been apolitical on this issue too long so I will use any forum because it is what I personally can do for the families of all the innocent children in our country that lose their lives or the lives of people they love to gun violence.

 

[AgentDrex]

I can see your point sir, however, I would like to argue that taking guns away will not eliminate mental illness and its capacity to commit harm. A gun cannot be uninvented. Taking away gun rights only takes away guns from those that follow laws (I know, it's a cliché). I say this because I am a stoner (have been for nineteen years) and marijuana is illegal. Making a plant illegal does not make it go away. Making a law against the plant does not stop those who would seek it to find it. The same logic, in my mind, would follow suit with gun bans.

While I do agree that getting guns off of the streets would severely curb the amount of gun-related deaths, I disagree that the sick-minded would not turn to other means of hurt. You mention that "...a boy that crazy would not have likely killed all those people with a knife or sharp stick..." and while definitely not debate-able concerning the amount of people that were hurt being less, any number of people hurt is too many, even if only one.

More restrictive gun laws are not going to alleviate much of anything except to give criminals, who do not abide by laws (hence the word criminal) as is, an advantage over those that do follow laws.

We, as a society, need to pull together, more than we currently are, to provide better preventative measures (quit denying the potential capacity of our own children to commit heinous acts against society, teach gun respect, follow proper weapon safe-keeping, teach our children compassion and humility, do positive acts for random strangers, work for what we need and don't worry too much about what we want, etc.). By no means am I saying that our societal congregation would prevent all murders, I am stating that we can join together to try and, as Barney Fife would say, "Nip it in the bud."

 

[jaguaraz]

I can't disagree with what you said except that the supply of readily available guns actually does dry up. Its like shutting off the water in a pipeline. It keeps running but eventually runs out. It is a long term solution. There is a significant amount of research that bears on this even in states that have restricted ownership a small amount. I totally agree that we need to address mental health issues in this country including the incredible way we expose children to gratuitous violence during their formative years! Our crazy society allows a child to see 20,000 murders on television airwaves before the age of 18 but not a single bare breast..... (ah such priorities....).

 

[pixmedic]

I can't disagree with what you said except that the supply of readily available guns actually does dry up. Its like shutting off the water in a pipeline. It keeps running but eventually runs out. It is a long term solution. There is a significant amount of research that bears on this even in states that have restricted ownership a small amount. I totally agree that we need to address mental health issues in this country including the incredible way we expose children to gratuitous violence during their formative years! Our crazy society allows a child to see 20,000 murders on television airwaves before the age of 18 but not a single bare breast..... (ah such priorities....).

The answer is simple then. Less violence, more boobies.

 

[AgentDrex]

I like that reference to violence versus breasts. That just made my day!

I wonder what research was/could be conducted regarding gun limitation versus current quantity. If we were to ban guns in the US, will that stop people from making their own homemade guns or importing them from outside the country (some of the weed I get is smuggled in from Canada and Mexico, not that I know who actually gets it through the borders. I just get it from middlemen who get it from middlemen who get it from middlemen, so on and so forth)?

Though the bombs made by the Columbine killers in 1999 were basically duds, some did end up causing damage. Will banning guns prevent mentally-ill people from designing, building and using explosives? I know this may seem like an opposite tangent from the gun ban argument but I feel that those who would normally be able to acquire guns to cause havoc could resort to other means of destruction.

We cannot likely ban violence off of television shows, movies, online video sources as that would be a severe encroachment upon the right to free speech, one of the main reasons our country (USA) is (could be) so great.

What we could do as a society is limit the amount of television and what-not we view. We can choose to become more involved with our neighbors, cities, states, countries.

Blaming violent video games doesn't seem to be the answer either. I have my own mental issues (as each and every one of us do, admit it) but those games (Doom, Wolfenstein, Battlefield 1942, etc.) have not caused me to ever want to harm another person, EVER. I listen to death metal as my main source of music (napalm death, cannibal corpse, obituary, deicide, etc.). I have never wanted to harm another individual because of any "messages" in the music that others may believe are in there for that exact purpose. I love horror movies and underground shock movies (August Underground series by Fred Vogel, ginni piggu in japan, Salo by Pier Paolo Pasolini, etc.), none of which have ever made me want to recreate them. I'm not easily suggestible however and I realize there are others that could be. Who ever is forcing these ill people to watch and recreate these movies/games or follow messages that may or may not be in music should be prosecuted and sent away. Obviously no one is. So what is the solution? Do we add a clause to free speech dictating what is allowed as free speech or do we constantly keep an eye on mentally-ill people so they never have a chance to view/listen to music/movies that may be violent?

I'm not even really saying we start to focus on mental health issues. What I'm stressing (attempting to at least, as vague as it may be coming from a stoner, because apparently stoners are "brain-dead slackers") is that we get back together as a society. We have, with the advent of the great thing called the internet, a perfect chance to either corrupt each other to the brink of death or utilize the technology to bring harmony back into this world. I want a world where cultures are free to prosper (culture is awesome, I love learning about how people live and think), where ideas are mulled over by one and all instead of pacified and/or ridiculed.

I hope we have plenty of time left to get to this point. Part of me is a negative nancy who thinks we are on the brink of a complete collapse. A collapse in not just this country (USA) but world-wide (and beyond! is this the wrong time to reference Toy Story?).

 

[bentcountershaft]

This may sound a bit silly, but I'm gonna let this idea loose from my fingers just to see how stupid it looks in black and white.

It's all about MORE. Don't confuse MORE with GREED. Sometimes they're related and sometimes they aren't.

More this, more that and more everything. We all want more of something. More money, more food more time away from work. Even when we get the things we want, that we've waited on, there's always more to be had. The rich get richer, the big get bigger, the fast get faster. Everything we come in contact with is driven one way or another by MORE. More gas, more oil, more macaroni and cheese it doesn't matter, as long as there is more. Look at different types of people. That ******* you used to know? He's even more of an ******* now. That bodybuilder that lives down the street? More strength for him today. That guy at work that's a little depressed? He's feeling the effects of MORE as well.

These days there are more people afflicted with allergies, more people afflicted with soul sucking, crippling diseases and of course more people afflicted with some serious mental issues. So it only stands to reason that there be more and more reasons to be pissed off and full of hate. And not just in quantities of these people, but more and more of this growing population is taking their hate further and further. Just like your friend the ******* being even more so, seriously ****ed up people are growing even more ****ed up by the minute. Everything and everyone seems to be taking it all up a notch. Cars keep getting faster while our ability to control them hasn't. Drugs keep getting more potent while our ability to handle them hasn't. Diseases keep getting more aggressive while our medical procedures drag and crawl themselves to keep up. The internet has made communications so fast and immediate that our brains can't even keep up with ourselves anymore.

And yes, guns certainly have had their share of MORE. More available, more options, more accurate and more rapid firing. But it isn't just guns. More knives, more bats, more ways to build explosives are available at the click of your mouse than you can shake a stick at. More and more ways to harm, maim and kill. Basically, within the last 150 years the whole world has been in hyper drive and the human race has been hanging on for the ride. How much more can we take as a society take? How much more can we as individuals take? Probably until we are no more.

OK, well, in black and white is does seem silly, but I'm gonna post it anyway. It's semi interesting and if nothing else you get to see a bit of what my free form writing looks like.