Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of American firearms (2015)

Re:Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of Ameri... by dgfitz on Thursday May 26, 2022 @10:46AM (#31518984)

> • Universal background checks;

Break that one down.

Universal for everyone, or just those who want to buy a gun? If I buy a gun because I pass the background check, and then snap and shoot up my place of employ 4 years later, what good was the background check? Who pays for the background check? Who does the background check? What do they check? HIPPA laws would eliminate anything health/medical related. Do they comb all the discoverable social media accounts? Are we just checking criminal history? Should a background check be re-done every 2, 3, 5, n years?

I like the idea, but I've been chewing on this problem for the past few days and I don't think background checks would be as simple or effective as we would all like them to be. This is not an argument against background checks in that I think they're a bad idea. I don't think they would do much.

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Re:Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of Ameri... by pnutjam on Thursday May 26, 2022 @11:10AM (#31519300)

This is a solved problem, other countries do good background checks by requiring a reason for gun ownership. Collecting (maybe you can't buy as much ammo), range club (they need to vouch for you and you buy ammo at the range), hunting (you have a subset of hunting rifles allowed), self-defense (again, how much ammo do you need for self defense).

I'd like to see the Feds designate all schools crime as federal crimes since they interfere with the civil rights of students. Then make school shootings automatic death penalty, unauthorized guns would have a hefty sentence like they did with drug dealers.

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Re:Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of Ameri... by dgfitz on Thursday May 26, 2022 @11:14AM (#31519348)

You mean something like this?:

https://mdsp.maryland.gov/Organization/Pages/CriminalInvesti...

Sure hasn't worked in Baltimore.

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Re:Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of Ameri... by pnutjam on Friday May 27, 2022 @09:03AM (#31529117)

Yellow flag, chetXrry picking on the field. Please tell me what Uvalde, TX has in common with Baltimore.

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Re:Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of Ameri... by dgfitz on Friday May 27, 2022 @11:47AM (#31530976)

15x more people are killed each year in Baltimore than Uvalde. What happened was tragic there is no question, but the fact that the rest of the country is numb to the murder rates of Baltimore, Chicago, etc, makes me quite sad.

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Re:Mental illness, mass shootings, and the politics of Ameri... by karmelapple on Friday May 27, 2022 @02:32PM (#31533097)

Understand that you don't think they'll do much, but states that have that, along with the two other items, have witnessed roughly 30% fewer gun homicides.

If we test this out in more places, we can have better evidence than, say, what you or myself think are a good or bad idea. :)

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