Pulaski

I understand that perfectly well, and I never said that being mentally ill did make someone insane. However it was your statement of the mirror image situation I take issue with, where you said "...This guy could very well be 100% sane, ....". As I said earlier in the thread, running amok with guns, killing people is, IMO, one defining example of insanity. It is an extraordinarily "bad decision" with no merits or redeeming benefits, and as such is a perfect example of an act of insanity. Unfortunately the US penal-medical system has virtually no place for such individuals and that results in people with all sorts of mental issues ending up in the prison system with little or no treatment.

md95065

... who would observe their behaviour and actions ...

md95065

I wasn't suggesting that you could diagnose all mental disorders simply by observing someone's actions.

However I was suggesting that certain actions (such as going out and killing a bunch of people) just might be pretty damn good indicator that someone was insane.

RoadWarriorFromLP

Insanity is a legal term to describe one who can't separate reality from fantasy. Very few people are "insane," even if they have some sort of mental disorder.

The videos would suggest that this guy was competent. Not insane. Angry, yes, but he knew what he was doing.

RoadWarriorFromLP

That's true, but it had nothing to do with what I'm saying. Why you brought that up, I don't know.

Once again: Gun fans like to think that we can determine a priori who shouldn't own a gun; identifying and disarming the bad guys is enough. Of course, they're wrong, but some people find facts to be awfully inconvenient.

md95065

While "insanity" certainly does have a specific legal meaning (which, I venture to suggest, is probably not identical in every jurisdiction) it is also a perfectly normal word that you can find in the dictionary and which is used every day by people who are neither attorneys or internet pedants.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines it thus:

"insane: not of sound mind, mentally deranged, extremely foolish, irrational"

I submit to you that the person that we are talking about here meets every single one of those criteria and that, in plain English, they are clearly "insane".

Whether they meet the legal definition of insanity is a different question and one which only a court can decide.

RoadWarriorFromLP

This is the problem to which Robin was alluding: when colloquial (mis)uses of terms are confused with the definitions used by experts, then we end up with this kind of distortion, which leads to the wrong conclusions being reached.

I get it: terms such as "crazy" and "insane" pepper our language. That's fine for a chat, but it becomes a problem when one mistakes that commonplace usage for some kind of clinical diagnosis.

More to the point, blaming crime on "crazy" people is a barrier to understanding the problem of crime. Mental health professionals are quick to point out that crimes and mental disorders are not usually linked to one another, which is contrary to the gut feelings of the average uninformed citizen. We won't reduce crime rates by singling out the "crazy" people.

http://www.apa.org/news/press/releas...ess-crime.aspx

Sally Redux

The disarming is done by shooting them though. Nicely circular.

Steve_

I don't agree with your characterization. In a free society you have this thing called: "freedom" which implies that people can be irresponsible and commit criminal acts. So a safeguard would be having background checks. I don't think anyone has ever argued that it would be a complete panacea.

The most classic example being locking up people in prison - they can't commit much crime while in prison but others can.

Anyway I think with the advent of 3D printers that can print in metal the whole thing is rapidly becoming academic.

As I was saying above, no-one can explain away why California has seven times the rate of firearm-related homicide that Canada has in terms of gun laws. The gun laws aren't that much different in their severity, in fact I would say California has greater checks on mental health.

You made me look up the ATF trace statistics last time this happened and they show that most guns used in crime in California were originally sold in California and in any event you can smuggle guns into Canada across the border (and even if you assume CBSA do a fantastic job, I doubt it would account for such a huge difference in the homicide rate).

Searching the web, the household ownership rate of firearms in California is 21% and in Alberta for example it's 20% based on household surveys, but people don't shoot each other anywhere near as much. The firearm-related homicide rate in California is just over 3/100,000 whereas in Alberta it's 0.76/100,000 - so four times the rate when comparing just that province.

There's more going on here than anything to do with guns.

Pulaski

More Americans are insane.

scrubbedexpat099

300 million population

Say 4 million die a year

Say 10,000 a day

If you want your death to hit the news you know what to do.

robin1234

Live in a small town. Your death will be listed in the paper.

RoadWarriorFromLP

It's more difficult to get a gun in Canada.

Guns make it easier for people to turn violent impulses into action. Not very tough to understand.

scrubbedexpat099

In this case it was a knife that started it.

Then a car that allowed transit to to the next location.

Where there is a will there is a way.

RoadWarriorFromLP

If it was true that will = way, then we can just arm the military with knives and take their guns away, since their sheer willpower will overcome the opposition.

If it was true that will = way, then the guns nuts should stop arguing that they need guns to defend themselves, since they should have enough will to defend themselves by other means.

It isn't just about will. Having the right tools for the job makes it that much easier.