Gun Crime in the USA ~ Shootings and Killings

[Solkia]

I can see where you're coming from.

[Patticus]

Additionally, you might be surprised to learn that Columbine High School had security guards in 1999. Boy, their faces must've been so red when it turned out their presence meant jack diddly squat to the gunman there!

 

Also, it would be worth Biden's while examining the link between psych medication and mass killings:

 

NEW YORK – From the moment news emerged Friday that a young man had carried out a horrific massacre of elementary-school children, politicians from local city halls to the White House have been restoking the age-old push for more gun control. While guns have been a common denominator in mass slayings at schools by teens, there’s another familiar element that seems increasingly to be minimized.

 

Some 90 percent of school shootings over more than a decade have been linked to a widely prescribed type of antidepressant called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs, according to British psychiatrist Dr. David Healy, a founder of RxISK.org, an independent website for researching and reporting on prescription drugs.

 

Though there has been no definitive confirmation that drugs played a role in the Newtown, Conn., assault, that killed 20 children and six adults, media have cited family members and acquaintances saying suspect Adam Lanza was taking prescription medication to treat “a neurological-development disorder,” possibly Aspergers.

 

Healy cautioned that the public needs “to wait to find out what Adam Lanza was on, and whether his behavior does fit the template of a treatment-induced problem.”

 

However, in an email to WND, he said he suspected prescribed psychiatric medications was the cause of Lanza’s violent behavior.

 

Healy said that while the public waits to learn more about Lanza, there are two general points that can be made.

 

First, he said, “psychotropic drugs of pretty well any group can trigger violence up to and including homicide.”

 

“Second, the advocates of treatment claim both that it is the illness and not the drugs that causes violence and that we are leaving huge numbers of people untreated.”

 

But Healy argued that if this were the case, “we should not find that comfortably over 90 percent of school shootings are linked to medication intake.”

 

Dr. Peter R. Breggin, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and former full-time consultant at the National Institute of Mental Health, told WND it’s likely that problems for Lanza began with “getting tangled up” with psychiatric medicine.

 

Breggin insisted there has been overwhelming scientific evidence for decades correlating psychiatrically prescribed drugs with violence.

 

Writing in Ethical Human Sciences and Services, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, in 2003, Breggin concluded SSRI drugs could be a factor in suicide, violence and other forms of extreme abnormal behavior, as evidenced in case reports, controlled clinical trials, and epidemiological studies in children and adults.

 

Since the 1970s, Breggin has testified in approximately 100 trials, including one in which Judge Robert Heinrichs ruled the adverse effects of taking Prozac drove a 16-year-old in Winnipeg, Canada, to commit an unprovoked murder.

 

Breggin appeared before the Veterans Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010 in support of his 2008 book “Medication Madness: The Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide and Crime.”

 

Breggin testified to Congress that research conducted in the medical science demonstrates a causal relationship between antidepressant drugs and the production of suicide, violence, mania and other behavioral abnormalities.

 

He warned Congress of the risks of giving these drugs to heavily armed young men and women in the military.

 

Mainstream religion

 

Breggin asserted that establishment media “ignores the scientific evidence linking psychiatric medications and violent behavior because psychiatry is the religion of the mainstream media, and they don’t want to see the dangers of psychiatrically prescribed drugs.”

 

“Besides, the drug companies also have incredible influence through advertising such that they can call the shots,” he said.

 

He believes the Lanza case fits the pattern of school shooters in some of the most famous incidents in recent memory, including the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado and the massacre at Virginia Tech in 2007.

 

“Adam Lanza has in common with many of the young men who were shooters that they were outsiders who lived in the shadows, who deal with a lot of shame, humiliation and isolation,” Breggin explained.

 

He calls the psychiatric diagnoses “worthless.”

 

“We know exactly who they are,” he said. “They are called ‘geeky’ in the extreme. Not a single one has ever come forward with a close friend. They are alienated from their families, and they have been involved in psychiatry.”

 

Breggin insists that instead of psychiatric treatment, children of this kind need “more reaching out, more socialization, more caring, more involvement.”

 

“Our schools, our families, and our communities need to be aware of the kids who are withdrawn and violent, not because they are going to become violent – hardly any of them are going to become violent – but because these are really hurt kids,” he said.

 

“We can call them evil, we can call them mentally ill, but the pattern is really quite clear,” Breggin continued. “They are highly intelligent and highly withdrawn and they are all involved with psychiatry, so the claim psychiatry is going to do some good is really ridiculous.”

 

In many school shootings carried out by minors, court documents are sealed and the extent of chemical use is unknown to the public.

 

But in a number of high-profile cases, the link has been reported:

• Kip Kinkel was withdrawing from Prozac and had been prescribed Ritalin when he murdered his mother and stepfather then shot 22 classmates, killing two, in 1998.
• Christopher Pittman was withdrawing from Luvox and from Paxil when he killed his paternal grandparents in 2001.
• Elizabeth Bush, who fired at fellow students in Williamsport, Pa., in 2001, wounding one, was on Prozac.
• Jason Hoffman, was on Effexor and Celexa when he opened fire at his El Cajon, Calif., high school, wounding five.
• Shawn Cooper of Notus, Idaho, was on antidepressants when he fired a shotgun on students and staff.
• T.J. Solomon, on antidepressants, wounded six at his Conyers, Ga., high school.
• Eric Harris was taking Luvox when he and fellow student Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 24 others before turning their guns on themselves at Columbine High School in Colorado.
• At Virginia Tech in 2007, where 32 were murdered, authorities found “prescription medications related to the treatment of psychological problems had been found among Mr. Cho’s effects,” according to the New York Times.

“Violence and other potentially criminal behavior caused by prescription drugs are medicine’s best kept secret,” Healy said in a statement last month. “Never before in the fields of medicine and law have there been so many events with so much concealed data and so little focused expertise.”

 

In the past six years, Healy has authored two best-selling books analyzing the degree to which the pharmaceutical industry has influenced medical doctors to prescribe antidepressant drugs to patients with psychiatric problems: “Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression,” in 2006 and “Pharmageddon” in 2012.

 

Recently, Healy’s RxISK.org added a “violence section” to its website, allowing users to enter the name of a prescription drug to find out the side effects recorded in the more than 4 million adverse drug event reports filed with the FDA since 2004.

 

Was Lanza on meds?

 

Writing for Slate.com Monday, Emily Willingham was quick to warn against demonizing Asperger’s syndrome, or autism in general, as the cause of Lanza’s violence. Likewise, in a New York magazine piece titled “Asperger’s is a Red Herring to Explain the Newtown Massacre,” Adam Martin wrote, “As the nation sets out to understand how Friday’s massacre came to pass, some are rightly worried that the high-functioning form of autism will become unfairly stigmatized.”

 

Nevertheless, credible sources have not withdrawn published claims that Lanza was on prescribed psychiatric medication at the time of the shooting.

 

On CBS’s “60 Minutes” Sunday, Mark and Louise Tambascio, friends of the shooter’s mother, Nancy Lanza, said Adam Lanza was being medicated for Asperger’s.

 

“I know [Adam Lanza] was on medication and everything, but she homeschooled him at home cause he couldn’t deal with the school classes sometimes,” Louise Tambascio told CBS reporter Scott Pelley. “So she just homeschooled Adam at that home. And that was her life.”

 

Her comment followed Mark Tambascio explaining to Scott Pelley that “friends told us that [Asperger's syndrome] did dominate the Lanzas’ lives.”

 

In addition, the Washington Post reported over the weekend an unnamed former neighbor of Nancy and Adam Lanza in Newtown, Conn., recalled Adam as “a really rambunctious kid” who “was on medication.”

 

The story became confused when a now discredited source claiming to be Adam Lanza’s “Uncle Jonathan” told several publications, including the Sun in the United Kingdom, that Adam was being treated with the strong anti-psychotic drug Fanapt.

Later reports found no relatives who knew “Uncle Jonathan.”

 

Separately, law enforcement officers have found evidence Lanza played graphically violent video games, the Hartford Courant reported on Sunday.

 

The Express in the United Kingdom reported Monday that Lanza had “an unhealthy obsession for violent video games” and that his favorite video game was said to be a “shockingly violent” fantasy war game called Dynasty Warriors, which is “thought to have given him inspiration to act on his darkest thoughts.”

 

http://www.wnd.com/2012/12/psych-meds-linked-to-90-of-school-shootings/

 

So, not only is the lack of affordable, easy access to mental healthcare in general a serious issue in need of resolving, but the medications it sometimes doles out to troubled young people are a serious issue in themselves. Wonderful.

[Nepenthe]

Well, here's an interesting revelation. A mass murder happened during the NRA's press conference calling for more guns in the streets. This stuff practically writes itself.

[Tornado]

Gonna make a quick comment about the "armed guards in school" thing:

 

Many schools already have CCTV systems and restricted access unless you go through the front door near the main office/reception desk (they started putting them in at my Elementary school in 1998 after a kidnapping scare thing that happened then; they were already all there at my high school by the time I got there; and every high school I've visited since was set up that way probably because of Colombine), and many schools already have police officers on duty during school hours with their own office and everything (usually acting as a policeman, a truant officer and a D.A.R.E. officer).

 

 

 

Well, except guns are made by major manufacturing plants while drugs are made by some asshole in his garage with a "My first chemistry set". Gonna figure it's going to be easier to regulate gun manufacturers...

 
Actually, 3D printers have now advanced to the point that they can (at least temporarily) replicate the complex parts in the lower receiver that change something from a steel tube to a gun. I think there was even a CSI episode about it.

 

 

 

 

And shotguns... You can make a shotgun out of two water pipes and a nail.

 

Now you have the police and the army to protect the populace the only time American citizens would have to arm themselves is if they were invaded and the army couldn't protect them any more.

Irrelevant of everything else, having a trained police force is not the same thing as personal self defense. It can act as a deterrent, but when a crime is already in progress a police force means little. Whether you agree with the idea that such self-defense use justifies private firearm ownership or not is still down to personal opinion, I suppose, but "you have police" isn't a rebuttal against the sentiment in and of itself.
 
 

When Congress opens tomorrow, a bill will be introduced banning the ownership, transfer, or sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines (which is supposedly one of Obama's priorities). Time will tell if it will get killed in the House by the lobbyist bullies who have bribed their way into the government. I really hope it passes. If you want to hunt, use a rifle. A pistol's fine for self-defense. But there is absolutely no reason for any civilian to own a weapon like the Bushmaster .223 caliber AR-15, the gun used in the massacre. It looks like this:

 
 
 

As did the DC beltway sniper. It's the gun of choice for mass murderers.

 
 
 
 

Yeah, and it wasn't exactly effective. Wasn't it the vague nature of the ban that was the issue? "Assault weapons" is a fuzzy term.

 
 
 

The NRA and their supporters then essentially blackmailed Congress, telling senators to strike down the bill or lose their re-election.

Actually, even the staunchest supporters of the bill realized that it was so poorly written () that it didn't accomplish anything that they wanted it to, so they didn't mount up a serious attempt to renew it. Supposedly the idea was to mount up an attempt to draft a new one, but...
 
 
 
 

This is absolutely fucking unbelievable, That the NRA has so much influence when it espouses dangerous shit like this is incredibly frightening.

I'm not seeing the issue with this part specifically. Not if it is supposed to relate to preventing mentally unstable people from purchasing firearms. I probably misread it though.

Edited December 21, 2012 by Tornado

[turbojet]

NRA was not founded by the Ku Klux Klan. 

[Patticus]

I'm not seeing the issue with this part specifically. Not if it is supposed to relate to preventing mentally unstable people from purchasing firearms. I probably misread it though.

 

This is the NRA we're talking about here; they think the solution to gun crime is to arm as many people as possible and relax gun laws, as if that would turn America into some wonderful crime-free paradise. So, when they say that a database of the mentally ill is needed, I fully expect them to follow up the creation of such a thing with moves to disenfranchise and ostracize the mentally ill as well. They might not have been founded by the KKK (I really should've fact checked that one... d'oh!), but they seem to me to occupy positions equally ridiculous.

[turbojet]

This is the NRA we're talking about here; they think the solution to gun crime is to arm as many people as possible and relax gun laws, as if that would turn America into some wonderful crime-free paradise. So, when they say that a database of the mentally ill is needed, I fully expect them to follow up the creation of such a thing with moves to disenfranchise and ostracize the mentally ill as well. They might not have been founded by the KKK (I really should've fact checked that one... d'oh!), but they seem to me to occupy positions equally ridiculous.

It's no problem. I am trying to be as neutral as possible because I really don't have an opinion of gun legislation. I sort of believe that it is inevitable at this point because anybody with a brain can see how transparent most politicians who suggest anything other than the most simple method in order to protect their special interest.

[Stacy]

The NRA weren't founded by the KKK but they were founded around the same time, maybe it is just a ironic coincidence?   

Edited December 21, 2012 by BW199148

[SonikkuForever]

The NRA caters to the gun manufacturers. Of course they're going to want more guns, it's their bread and butter. At this point, though, I think that the large majority of citizens are in favor of some regulations, and the "gun nuts" who want their own personal arsenal are just a very vocal minority.

 

Here's what Obama has to say to all of the people petitioning the government for stricter gun control. It sounds good to me, but it probably sounds pretty radical to gun lovers. I hope he can keep his promise.

 

Edited December 21, 2012 by SonikkuForever

[Autosaver]

Apparently there was another shooting on a highway - 4 people dead.

[Stacy]

I agree with pretty all of what he is proposing but the "Culture" part worries me. Does he mean gun obsessed Rednecks that glorify guns or violent based entertainment when he means culture? 

[KHCast]

Apparently there was another shooting on a highway - 4 people dead.

Ugh. Again the whole "publicity" thing is probably a big contributor to the reason why these things are becoming more frequent. Seriously, in less than 3 weeks we've had major Shootings everywhere.  They want to try and be more popular or just as, than the last. It's disgusting. I don't want to live in a country where shootings are as frequent and expected as taco tuesday. 

[Patticus]

@BW199148: Culture isn't merely theater, art museums, poetry readings, jazz bars and fine dining; culture is communities, it's family, it's hobbies and trends and a people's way of life.

 

@Riku: The media has a lot to answer for in its complicity in providing unstable people with an incentive to go out and murder others, but it will not do so if it can successfully hide behind the whole 'free speech' thing.

[SonikkuForever]

Armed security guards everywhere? A national, active database of the "mentally ill" (which is most of the population, depending on how you define mental illness)? Sounds like a repressed, dystopian prison state to me!

[SenEDDtor Missile]

As insensitive as this might be, I can't help but feel that mass murderers (or murderers in general) are the real life version of trolls, while the media are the dumbasses who keep feeding them. The only difference is that real lives are involved and real deaths occur.

 

To put it bluntly:

 

Media, stop feeding the murderers, for fuck's sake!

Edited December 22, 2012 by Malpercio

[Patticus]

The media is certainly a part of the problem, even if it is somewhat unwitting in its complicity (that TotalBiscuit video was quite the eye-opener). However, as a complex problem with several different contributory factors, any solution is going to need to take each factor into due consideration and try to tackle it effectively within some kind of larger solution framework or something. That is what Biden and his little task force should hopefully be doing, if my understanding is correct. I really hope something positive comes out of his efforts; Obama's not up for re-election now, so he's freer to take more "radical" (as if I could ever consider gun control radical, but, this is America...) positions on controversial subjects, and maybe in the process make a lasting positive impact on such a tragic issue.

[Stacy]

That is what Biden and his little task force should hopefully be doing, if my understanding is correct. I really hope something positive comes out of his efforts; Obama's not up for re-election now, so he's freer to take more "radical" (as if I could ever consider gun control radical, but, this is America...) positions on controversial subjects, and maybe in the process make a lasting positive impact on such a tragic issue.

 

I am all for Obama taking chances and being a bit radical but he does have to think about impact this could have on the Democratic parties chances of getting back in the White House after Obama's second term when he leaves.

 

If Obama is too radical and plans don't get past or get watered down because of the Republicans that dominate congress this could give fuel for the Right-Wing to use. Most American people will probably vote Republican and we get another retarded monkey like George W. Bush or worse and the cycle repeats itself....

 

Its happened before it could happen again.

 

Sorry being cyncial again. 

Edited December 22, 2012 by BW199148

[Linkabel]

Ryan Lanza "I am the victim"

 

 

Adam Lanza's brother has taken to Facebook to mourn the 27 people--including his mother and 20 schoolchildren--killed by Adam in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, before the younger Lanza turned the gun on himself.

"I am a victim," Ryan Lanza told the New York Post via Facebook on Saturday. "I [lost] my mom and brother."

The 24-year-old, who lives in Hoboken, N.J., was initially misidentified by several media outlets as a suspect on the day of the shootings. He was questioned by police and later released.

On Facebook, Ryan Lanza posted a photo of Adam under the message:

R.I.P

Adam Peter Lanza

April 22, 1992- Dec. 14, 2012(20 years old)

"I will miss you bro. I will always love you as long as I live"

-Ryan

When another Facebook user wrote that Adam deserved to "rot in hell," Ryan responded: “You have no right to call my brother names when he isn’t here no more. Just let my brother rest in peace. Please. Respect that."

Ryan also posted a photo of his mother, Nancy, who was shot and killed by Adam in their Newtown home before the troubled 20-year-old fired his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School, killing 20 children and 6 adults.

“You all will be truly be missed,” Ryan wrote on Facebook. “God Bless.”

Ryan Lanza's Facebook profile is private, though at least dozen pages have been launched supporting him in the wake of the massacre.

"The real shooter was his brother," a message on one of them reads. "Please stop blaming him for the shooting. He had nothing to do with it."

 

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/ryan-lanza-facebook-181924426.html

 

Must be very difficult losing your mother and lived with what you're brother did.

[SonikkuForever]

Ryan Lanza "I am the victim"

 

 

 

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/ryan-lanza-facebook-181924426.html

 

Must be very difficult losing your mother and lived with what you're brother did.

 

 

Agreed. Not to downplay the severity of what happened, but all of the public memorial services were for the 26 who died at the school. There is absolutely no sympathy for the Lanzas whatsoever. Remember, 28 people died that day. To say that only 26 of them deserve to rest in peace seems unfair. And hoping that somebody rots in hell? I've personally never been able to do that, no matter how heinous the crime. The way I see it, it's God's business, not mine.

[Speederino]

Agreed. Not to downplay the severity of what happened, but all of the public memorial services were for the 26 who died at the school. There is absolutely no sympathy for the Lanzas whatsoever. Remember, 28 people died that day. To say that only 26 of them deserve to rest in peace seems unfair. And hoping that somebody rots in hell? I've personally never been able to do that, no matter how heinous the crime. The way I see it, it's God's business, not mine.

 

 

I have a really hard time counting Adam Lanza as a "victim" here, much less muster up sympathy for him. His mother and brother, sure, but not Adam. I don't care if he had a bunch of mental health problems, anyone who kills 20 kids does not deserve sympathy. Ever.

Edited December 24, 2012 by Speederino

[Patticus]

I have a really hard time counting Adam Lanza as a "victim" here, much less muster up sympathy for him. His mother and brother, sure, but not Adam. I don't care if he had a bunch of mental health problems, anyone who kills 20 kids does not deserve sympathy. Ever.

 

Unless they happen to be suffering from a mental illness, which went undiagnosed due to the absurd difficulty in acquiring mental healthcare, or because the parents didn't "believe" he/he was mentally ill, or because the psych meds they were on made them do it.

[Speederino]

Unless they happen to be suffering from a mental illness, which went undiagnosed due to the absurd difficulty in acquiring mental healthcare, or because the parents didn't "believe" he/he was mentally ill, or because the psych meds they were on made them do it.

 

The only thing he has been openly diagnosed with is Aspergers, and Ryan has admitted the possibility that he might have had a more severe personality disorder. The thing is, I don't really care what he had. I will admit that this may sound insensitive, after all I have had absolutely zero experience with people who truly belong in a mental ward and I'm not exactly knowledgeable with psychology. So perhaps I risk sounding like a fool here. But the way I see it, unless he had some sort of ultra-bad split personality that completely robbed him of any and all free will, he still made the choice to open fire on an elementary school.

 

Mental issues or no, it takes a truly sick person to make that kind of decision.

[Nepenthe]

The mental issues that completely rob you of your free will like some kind of demonic possession are pretty rare compared to the ones that merely proceed to alter or impair your rationality or empathy. This doesn't mean people with these illnesses cannot be victims of the bad circumstances that may come as a result of their behavior. Of course this doesn't get Adam off the hook and I'm not going to cry for him, but his brother does have a point. He is, in some ways, a victim both of his health and of the circumstances and culture that gave him the means to carry out such a heinous crime in the first place. 

[Speederino]

The mental issues that completely rob you of your free will like some kind of demonic possession are pretty rare compared to the ones that merely proceed to alter or impair your rationality or empathy. This doesn't mean people with these illnesses cannot be victims of the bad circumstances that may come as a result of their behavior. Of course this doesn't get Adam off the hook and I'm not going to cry for him, but his brother does have a point. He is, in some ways, a victim both of his health and of the circumstances and culture that gave him the means to carry out such a heinous crime in the first place. 

 

I can see the argument. Still, there is no way that I'm going to act like he's just as much a victim in this as the people he killed, or that his actions are solely the fault of society. His actions were still monstrous regardless of the circumstances surrounding them.

[Nepenthe]

I don't think anyone here is acting like he is completely innocent in the matter, or that he is more of a victim than the people he killed. However, claiming he had complete autonomy and that his mental issues are irrelevant is just as irrational.