<p>" What really made Elliot sick to me was his beliefs. His perception of the world."</p>
<p>His beliefs are more troubling than his hacking to death of 3 people and shooting 3 others and injuring maybe a dozen more? Astounding. </p>
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<p>So your point is that although he was clearly mentally ill, if he were alive he wouldn’t be able to be not guilty by reason of insanity. That’s true, but I don’t see how thinking about it helps us understand the situation. He’s dead. It doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>It doesn’t. It was an throwaway sentence in a paragraph from this morning that you wanted explained. Nothing more. Understanding the situation is never going to happen, though. It just isn’t possible.</p>
<p>It’s a fact that fewer guns = fewer gun deaths. Without such easy access crazy people, evil people, vengeful people would have to find some other way to take out their enemies. Crime would not completely disappear, and no one is saying that it would. But it would change things. </p>
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<p><a href=“Epidemic: Guns kill twice as many kids as cancer does”>http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/11/guns-child-deaths-more-than-cancer/2073259/</a></p>
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I define that as more cruel and troubled. Astounding isn’t it? </p>
<p>I wonder, if we took away the guns, how much more creative the killings would get. </p>
<p>It’s interesting to learn what it’s like parenting a mentally ill child or other family member: “An insightful, deeply caring look at mental illness and at the larger picture of contemporary values, The Burden of Sympathy is required reading for caregivers of all kinds, and for anyone seeking broader understanding of human responsibility in the postmodern world.”</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.amazon.com/The-Burden-Sympathy-Families-Illness/dp/0195152441”>http://www.amazon.com/The-Burden-Sympathy-Families-Illness/dp/0195152441</a></p>
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<p>He seemed privileged only in that he got to go to some parties and events that other people can’t get into.</p>
<p>However, as posted by someone earlier, it seemed that $500/month of spending money was a real stretch for the dad who was recovering from some financial issues. </p>
<p>Taking away guns from schizophrenic young men works for me.</p>
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<p>That is completely irrelevant.
What is relevant is fewer deaths, not fewer gun deaths.</p>
<p>As someone posted earlier about the deaths in 2001 from an attack in Santa Barbara, if we had fewer Saab’s, we would have fewer Saab deaths.
As many people died from a car attack in SB in 2001 as died by a gun in this attack.</p>
<p>By the way, it isn’t a “fact”. Facts require proof.
It is a “theory”.</p>
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<p>Thanks for posting that - I’m going to order it. I’m still figuring out how to cope. When I wake up every morning, I’m fine until I think about DS, and then my heart sinks. I mean, it feels like that, literally! He is always, always on my mind. I’ve gone to a counselor, which helps some, but the burden is always there. I sometimes wonder if this will change. I guess some young people do improve as they get older, so I’m holding on to that for now.</p>
<p>If you took away guns, killers would actually have to get their hands dirty.
They couldnt be removed, like it was a video game any more.
I expect many of them would find, killing is hard work & messy.</p>
<p>Okay, the dad is not a titan. He’s basically a camera operator, albeit on a very successful film franchise. But, until 2009 he was a nude photographer, mostly. The kid did grow up around Hollywood types and the influence is very clear in his writing. It’s like he expects life to be a movie and just happen and then boils over with rage when it doesn’t look like it going to go his way.at about age 14. It’s also not the healthiest of environments to raise children. A fact.</p>
<p>It would weed out the “wealkings” per se. </p>
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<p>Do you mean like hacking people to death with a hammer and knives?
Or running them over with a Saab (as happened in the same town)?
Or blowing them up in Oklahoma?
Or blowing them up in the largest school massacre in the US?
Over a third of homicides in the US were non-gun deaths.
“In 2008, even as gun killings fell, the number of killings committed with knives or other “cutting instruments” rose 50 percent in New York City, the Police Department said”</p>
<p>People have always found ways to kill other people.</p>
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Was less than two thirds gun deaths?</p>
<p>Yes.
That is how the math works.
For 2010 anyway, don’t have more recent info.</p>
<p>Well, unfortunately, he did not mind that “killing is hard work and messy” since he hacked his poor roommates to death.</p>
<p>Would reducing the availability of guns reduce the number of mass murders?</p>
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<p>Well that certainly wasn’t a problem for Elliot Roger who did the hard and messy work of murdering his 3 roommates with a machete and still managed to follow that up by killing and injuring people with guns and a car.</p>
<p>The ones who don’t want to get their hands dirty probably confine themselves to video fantasy. The ones who really want to kill seem to be able to with whatever means they have at hand.</p>
<p>OK, fluffy. You’re right. We agree we want fewer deaths. You can see from the data that there are thousands of gun deaths each year. These are not deaths that necessarily would have happened anyway. (Which is why your Saab analogy is irrelevant–if people weren’t driving the Saabs, they’d be in other cars that might or might not end up in accidents.)</p>
<p>In contrast, think of all the accidental shootings in which a young child kills his sister or grandfather or neighbor because the idiot gun owner failed to secure his weapon. These people were ONLY at risk because of the gun. The toddler was not out to kill members of his family. And yet people say there is nothing we can do. Really?</p>