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[Dunamisdeos]

No, it actually is the definition of mental illness. That it not affect others negatively is not part of any medical definition, and I'd say if it turned out to be mental illness then it affected him pretty decisively, since he is now dead as a result of his actions.

And I'm not talking about gun laws, I'm talking about addressing why we, as a nation more than any other, have a culture that is totally fine with things like "problem with Trump/Hillary/Nazis/SJW/Immigrants/GOP/Literally anything? A gun can fix that, maybe these 2nd amendment folks can finally do something positive/maybe those liberals wish they had a gun now ha ha I'm so witty" and then acts shocked when someone follows through.

We created a culture that encourages this as a solution. It's not a politician's job to fix that. That's on you and me.

[RedKing]

Gun laws regarding mentally ill don't work if the person hasn't been diagnosed as such, which was the point I was making earlier.

*waggles hand* You might be able to manage something if you require screening for ownership. It's probably a kinda' farcically bad idea, but one way to go about things if your standard means of evaluating psychological instability isn't working, is to introduce a means specifically tailored to firearm ownership and gate the privilege with it.

Firearm ownership is a right, not a privilege. The distinction is important.

So is voting. We have no problem abrogating that for people who have disqualified themselves through the commission of a crime.
I'm not altogether against the idea of abrogating the right to a firearm for people who can demonstrably, validly be shown to have a mental illness. Not only for this reason, but for the reason that they're statistically orders of magnitude more likely to use it on themselves.

[martinuzz]

Not only for this reason, but for the reason that they're statistically orders of magnitude more likely to use it on themselves.

Slippery slope. Maybe then you want to ban people with mental illness from owning a car too, because they're more likely to end their lives by driving into a tree? Or perhaps forbid people with mental illness from crossing bridges, because, you know, they are more likely to jump off?

[Frumple]

Eh, you stop at things without substantive extra use, or whatever the word is. Can get by without a gun pretty easily, less so without a car in the US or being able to cross bridges. There's also this thing where firearm ownership is one of the jagoff huge statistical gribblies when it comes to suicide, heh.

... any case, I'm pretty sure we actually do ban people with certain mental illnesses from driving cars. Not like there's not stuff with perceptual buggery that renders it impossible to pass the requirements for acquiring or maintaining a license.

Firearm ownership is a right, not a privilege. The distinction is important.

If you're gating ownership with a psych check, it's a privilege, heh.

Legal question in the US is kinda' sketchy, too, though. Most precedent has came down in favor of individual ownership, but there's still a bit of an argument going on on the subject. It's damn sure not the same sort of right as stuff enumerated in the first, in any case.

People are (rightly!) concerned about a list like that being created for the same reason EnigmaticHat is concerned above about the creation of an active database of people with mental health problems. It cannot possibly exist for any purpose other than to discriminate, legally or otherwise, against the people whose names are on it.

It totally could exist for other purposes, really. Buncha' sociological shit tracking demographics and ownership patterns and whatnot could be done without even knowing specific names. The legal/enforcement possibilities are pretty obvious, and don't preclude things besides discrimination (one of the common talking points is that a database would make it a lot more certain whether a firearm used in a crime isn't yours, if you've been accused, ferex), either. Active stat tracking is useful stuff even if you're not doing much particularly heavy handed with it.

Potential abuse is obvious, of course, but the question folks ask are if gun crime and the potential issues caused by mental illness is worth the potential. Note that I ain't saying they are worth that potential, mind yeh. Just that saying the stuff would be used for discrimination isn't exactly a counter to the arguments for it, given that even with the quibbles above, to a fair extent that's largely the point.

E: Though, all that said, as RK noted while I was typing, as a country we're apparently pretty okay with stripping people of rights a metric fuckton more fundamental than the ability to own a specific tool for killing things. Particularly so far as how the GOP approaches the issue, it's a farce to claim all that many folks really give a shit about whether it's a right or not, or would care even if it was.

[Antioch]

Solution: You have the right to bear firearms, however it does not state WHICH firearms!

Everyone gets to have a 18th century musket like the founding fathers referred to when they wrote the bill.

[Egan_BW]

Humans have a pretty strong mental taboo about killing each other. Anyone who can get over that and kill anyway either has a reduced "not killing people" instinct for some reason or is under quite a lot of stress.

*ahem* Soldiers and the like? Still pretty damn stressful for them though.

Most soldiers don't kill. These days soldiers are trained to shoot human instinctively, of course, which I'll file under "reduced 'not killing people' instinct". Also a good reason why artillery is so deadly, because the operators don't have to see who they're shooting at...
I believe that it was found in WW2 that 9/10 (?) soldiers didn't fire at the enemy without hesitation.

I get these ideas from this guy, so if he's wrong so am I. Sorry.

[Starver]

There have been plenty of terrorists in Europe lately that resorted to knife attacks instead of guns and they have all been far less deadly than the gun attacks.

Following the London Bridge attack, I was watching (for complicated reasons) a US news call-in TV programme (or, I suppose, 'program') with various callers from both the US and also the UK reacting to the UK incident.

The very last caller (pro'ly a proud Texan, from what I recall - that sorta fella, anyhow) came on air to say as how if the UK weren't essentially banning guns from public use, those knife-wielding terr'rists would have been taken out by gun-toting ordinary citizens much quicker even than they ended up being taken out by the armed police response unit...

The flaw in that argument really, really needed a come-back, but it got none due to the closing credits.

(Not that it's relevant to this incident, and I don't really want to add to the inevitable rehash, but I've been bottling that one up ever since then and I figured that if I said it now, I can resist the need to say it in the midst of a really heated argument where it might seem like it will make everyone shut up, but just ends up making it worse because of human nature. I think I prefer to take my chances here, among forum people I can trust to be not to be as bad as others out there. And now I won't prod them, at all.  I now assume you don't want to dissapoint me by replying to this.)

[RedKing]

One glaringly hypocritical problem some people have is treating the Second Amendment as some absolute universal law which is utterly inalienable.

Newsflash: All rights are alienable, even those deemed "unalienable" in the Declaration of Independence.

Life? We executed 20 men last year in the United States.
Liberty? There's about 2.1 million Americans in prison, and another 4 million on probation or parole.
Pursuit of happiness? Ask a gay couple how happy they are in many quarters of the US. Ask a transgender individual. Hell, ask a Bible-thumping redneck if he's happy. The fact that he can't beat up that gay couple is a violation of his pursuit of happiness.

Free speech? Already well-documented exceptions such as the "yelling fire in a crowded theater". Also, if money = speech, limiting someone's income (which is done all the time in the form of garnishing wages, etc.) is also limiting their free speech.

We can and do limit rights in the name of the common good all the damn time. The fact that we don't for the Second Amendment just boils down to kowtowing to a powerful lobby, plain and simple.

[Starver]

I believe that it was found in WW2 that 9/10 (?) soldiers didn't fire at the enemy without hesitation.

Councidentally, I came across this the other day, on looking up alleged "not wanting tonfire upon the enemy" actions, or lack thereof, by ACW soldiers.

It's just one of several explanations given for the discoveries, but in the top two, by some margin, for likelihood.


(Anyway, given the innate tendency not to want to kill a fellow human without a good reason, assuming you don't get a good reason you can always either uprate your bad reason(s) by selective logic or downrate your targets to sub-human so that there's not the same elevated threshold needed. Mental illness, or deliberate indoctrination, can do all that. We may never understand what was involved in this case, without some shadow of a doubt.)

[EnigmaticHat]

I mean, he also shot 50 strangers at a music festival. Unless they find some kind of manifesto, I feel like that counts as solid evidence that something wasn't right upstairs.

I don't mean to be a broken record, but we've created a culture where you can publicly advocate murder and not only get away with that but also be heralded as brave and right by thousands of people. That's where we are right now as a society in the USA.

This logic bothers me.  Because they did something you don't understand, they're mentally ill?  Was everyone in Rwanda taking a machete to their neighbors mentally ill too?  Is the person who murders their spouse in a rage mentally ill?

I think that yes, it points clearly to a mental illness outside of another explanation. Being manipulated by a political overlord or racial hatred would provide another explanation. Murder of a single person you consider to be a strong antagonist provides another explanation, though mental illness cannot be ruled out as a contributing factor.

Killing 50 people and then providing no reason would point towards a mental illness, because mental illness is in fact described as "any psychiatric disorder that causes untypical behavior". So unless they find his note that says "I did it for the Russians" or whatever, then yes, it would be almost logically guaranteed. Terrorism, for instance, loses all meaning unless the people you are terrorizing know why you are doing it.

I realize it's preliminary to discuss motive before they find/don't find one, though.

That's not even the definition of mental illness.  The medical definition of mental illness (very very broadly) any mental condition that causes significant distress or disability to the sufferer.  A mental condition that harms others but not you isn't mental illness, its being an asshole.  There is no valid non-medical definition of mental illness; a harmless mental condition isn't an illness anymore than you could be sick with a harmless bacteria or need surgery because you're slightly stronger than average or such.

(side note: this is why antisocial personality disorder is largely outside the sphere of modern medicine, because it only hurts the effected individual if they're dumb or reckless.  A smart "sociopath" may be advantaged rather than harmed)

No, it actually is the definition of mental illness. That it not affect others negatively is not part of any medical definition, and I'd say if it turned out to be mental illness then it affected him pretty decisively, since he is now dead as a result of his actions.

And I'm not talking about gun laws, I'm talking about addressing why we, as a nation more than any other, have a culture that is totally fine with things like "problem with Trump/Hillary/Nazis/SJW/Immigrants/GOP/Literally anything? A gun can fix that, maybe these 2nd amendment folks can finally do something positive/maybe those liberals wish they had a gun now ha ha I'm so witty" and then acts shocked when someone follows through.

We created a culture that encourages this as a solution. It's not a politician's job to fix that. That's on you and me.

Click on your own links.  All but one of the definitions include the word "disorder" and "disease", which in the medical context means that it hurts the sufferer.  The one definition that uses "atypical behavior" as the standard is from Bing.  Not even harvested from the first result Bing found, Bing's internal definition.  I don't use Bing for what its intended as, not going to start trusting it as a dictionary.

[misko27]

The Times is reporting 59 dead, 500 wounded. It's nasty business.

Also, Stephen Paddock appears to be a mild-mannered man with few political or ideological leanings. His father, however, is interesting:

Mr. Paddock’s father, Benjamin Patrick Paddock, had a troubled history. He was convicted in 1961 of committing a series of bank robberies, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He escaped from La Tuna federal prison in 1968, and was on the F.B.I.’s “Top Ten” most wanted list, through most of the 1970s, according to someone familiar with the investigation.

News accounts from the time said that Benjamin Paddock “employed violence in attempting to evade arrest, and has been diagnosed as being psychopathic, with possible suicidal tendencies.” He was recaptured in 1978 in Oregon, where he was running a bingo parlor.

Benjamin Paddock was also convicted in Illinois in 1946 on 10 counts of auto theft and five counts of running a confidence game. Eric Paddock said the brothers did not know their father.

So that's interesting.

Las Vegas is often used as a symbol of degeneracy by extremists, but if his social media is clean then I have to doubt it. Even normal people can't keep their mouths shut on the internet, much less extremists.

I'm always surprised by mass shooters having active social media. I'm not sure how to feel about the fact that terrorists and mass-murderers have a more lively social presence online than I do.

I believe that it was found in WW2 that 9/10 (?) soldiers didn't fire at the enemy without hesitation.

The question about those studies is: how many people are willing to admit, in a study, that they shoot to kill? It's one thing to say "I am a soldier and I do rough things", but there is another to tell someone interviewing you "yes, I tried to murder people." or worse "yes, I killed a man." And again, there is another thing to be said about the morals of the war. Particularly ww1, which that man talks about a lot, is not a strong example of a war where soldiers felt they were fighting for their country. The rates of mutiny are extremely high across the board. Now imagine, instead, you asked a veteran of the ww2 Eastern Front that question, you might get very different answers.

Spoiler: The result of 1/50 men, apparently (click to show/hide)

I don't know. Maybe I'm in the 2% minority that finds it ok (and if we'd like to be charitable, we can say, as this fellow does, that it's my well-honed big brother instinct), but I find it difficult to believe that people really find it that difficult to kill. I don't know. Again, I'm most certainly not neurotypical or whatever, but I get this sense that that might be less intrinsic than he might want to admit.

(And of course, it says absolutely nothing about pre-rifle times, when spears and shields ruled the day, but whatever).

(side note: this is why antisocial personality disorder is largely outside the sphere of modern medicine, because it only hurts the effected individual if they're dumb or reckless.

I'm displeased by the fact that the conversation has moved to APD. I know someone with APD, and with what I'm pretty sure (although definitely not 100%) they, with a killcount of zero (probably), have fewer kills than my godfather in the special forces.

Although that's a good point. When I become Dictator of Earth for life, I'm reclassifying Antisocial Personality Disorder from a medical issue to a criminal one.

[Dunamisdeos]

Spoiler: Spoilering for length (click to show/hide)

I mean, he also shot 50 strangers at a music festival. Unless they find some kind of manifesto, I feel like that counts as solid evidence that something wasn't right upstairs.

I don't mean to be a broken record, but we've created a culture where you can publicly advocate murder and not only get away with that but also be heralded as brave and right by thousands of people. That's where we are right now as a society in the USA.

This logic bothers me.  Because they did something you don't understand, they're mentally ill?  Was everyone in Rwanda taking a machete to their neighbors mentally ill too?  Is the person who murders their spouse in a rage mentally ill?

I think that yes, it points clearly to a mental illness outside of another explanation. Being manipulated by a political overlord or racial hatred would provide another explanation. Murder of a single person you consider to be a strong antagonist provides another explanation, though mental illness cannot be ruled out as a contributing factor.

Killing 50 people and then providing no reason would point towards a mental illness, because mental illness is in fact described as "any psychiatric disorder that causes untypical behavior". So unless they find his note that says "I did it for the Russians" or whatever, then yes, it would be almost logically guaranteed. Terrorism, for instance, loses all meaning unless the people you are terrorizing know why you are doing it.

I realize it's preliminary to discuss motive before they find/don't find one, though.

That's not even the definition of mental illness.  The medical definition of mental illness (very very broadly) any mental condition that causes significant distress or disability to the sufferer.  A mental condition that harms others but not you isn't mental illness, its being an asshole.  There is no valid non-medical definition of mental illness; a harmless mental condition isn't an illness anymore than you could be sick with a harmless bacteria or need surgery because you're slightly stronger than average or such.

(side note: this is why antisocial personality disorder is largely outside the sphere of modern medicine, because it only hurts the effected individual if they're dumb or reckless.  A smart "sociopath" may be advantaged rather than harmed)

No, it actually is the definition of mental illness. That it not affect others negatively is not part of any medical definition, and I'd say if it turned out to be mental illness then it affected him pretty decisively, since he is now dead as a result of his actions.

And I'm not talking about gun laws, I'm talking about addressing why we, as a nation more than any other, have a culture that is totally fine with things like "problem with Trump/Hillary/Nazis/SJW/Immigrants/GOP/Literally anything? A gun can fix that, maybe these 2nd amendment folks can finally do something positive/maybe those liberals wish they had a gun now ha ha I'm so witty" and then acts shocked when someone follows through.

We created a culture that encourages this as a solution. It's not a politician's job to fix that. That's on you and me.

Click on your own links.  All but one of the definitions include the word "disorder" and "disease", which in the medical context means that it hurts the sufferer.  The one definition that uses "atypical behavior" as the standard is from Bing.  Not even harvested from the first result Bing found, Bing's internal definition.  I don't use Bing for what its intended as, not going to start trusting it as a dictionary.

.....Descan, I feel like you clicked them and read the first sentence, because 3 of them specifically mention behavior abnormalities as an indicator.

Also, none of them state mental illness may not affect others. I don't understand why this is such an important point in relation to the Vegas shooter's actions. He could absolutely have been "motivated" by mental illness, we don't know yet. A person can be driven by mental illness to violent actions, or can even be targeted by terrorist/political groups because of their susceptibility to mental illness.

Also, are we actually discussing whether its normal to be able to kill other living people with ease? Because that neatly highlights my point about how our American culture contributes to the frequency of these events.

[Folly]

Unconfirmed report that the guy actually had up to 20 guns, including some AR-15 and AK-47 types.

CNN currently reporting 16 guns in the room with him, 18 more guns/explosives at his house.

[smjjames]

Theres more developments, turns out he had fertilizer based explosives in his car and they found several thousand more rounds of ammo and more explosives at one of his homes. It's obvious that he was planning on taking out as many people as possible.

One doesn't amass an arsenal like that without some kind of agenda and there are no hints that he was a collector or a survivalist nut or any other plausible reason for legally having such an arsenal. If it's even legal to have that arsenal in the first place.

edit: Ninja'd by folly's brevity.

[Dunamisdeos]

I'm going to be fully honest here and say that I will be shocked if he wasn't politically motivated somehow, or otherwise supplied by a larger organization of some kind. I've been harping on the mental illness side of things and maybe it contributed and maybe it didn't, but that is a level of personal planning normally only seen in a die-hard movie.