Crime and Punishment: Oklahoma (& Texas) style!

[GIThruster]

Em. . . No. . .I don't think so. At least here in NJ, anyone deemed to be a danger to themselves or others is involuntarily committed and confined. That doesn't mean we don't still have crazies on the streets, but most crazies aren't dangerous.

I have a friend who works in both in and out patient facilities. The in patient is a clearing house for long term. She gets them first and if after a few days they look like they need long term care they can commit themselves or alternatively, if they're a danger, they are involuntarily committed.

The trouble is, most people sick enough to kill others are not stupid enough to tell people before hand.

[choff]

True. I think first you'd want to establish a correlation between mass murderers and anti-depressant use. I'm not aware of any link here. I think there is an almost unique situation with mass murderers as opposed to simple murderers. Mass murders who go after large groups of kids are looking to maximize their evil. There's something driving them beyond depression. There's a special hideousness about a woman who were drown her 4 kids and then kill herself, but I think it pails in comparison to the guy who calmly plans to murder as many people as possible.

In any event, mass and serial murder is nothing like a new phenomenon. I doubt its linked much to anti-depressents.

It wouldn't just be video games, long before these people get depression, they've been exposed to comic books, movies, and news broadcasts all containing violent images, Goth scenes and trips to gun ranges thrown in. Again, a normal kid won't become more prone to violence from this exposure.

Take a depressed person, let's say these drugs work because they create a hypontic suggestive state a therapist can reach them in. Now give the kids these drugs but the only therapy they get is all the above mentioned inputs they've always been getting.

A lot of people will dismiss the online video series 'Programmed to Kill' because it lays claim to government conspiracies and cults programming these people. The evidence of programming they present may be valid, but the actual source of the programming is simply the popular culture.

The theatre in the one shooting looked like an image from a Batman comic, the word Sandy Hook appears on a map in the Batman movie. Ridiculous as it sounds, that may have been the trigger that set the last incident off.

[ladajo]

I'll concede the argument, you have convinced me you are correct on guns in schools. One point I would make, perhaps people on antidepressants should be on hospital supervision, especially if they have access to firearms and any other risk factors. As per the other thread, this common factor gets scant coverage by the media. It might violate their civil rights, but should society take the risk.

Choff,
It is a difficult problem. My biggest concern in it is that folks want to argue it from insufficient knowledge basis and emotion. Once they actually take a step back and consider all sides equally, they can then make a decent conclusion. More often than not, they will enter the argument and toss up hearsay chaff generally lead with "What if..."

They do not want to take the time to actually try and lookup the "What ifs" for themselves, they just assume it is a "bad thing" and supports the emotional position they feel impelled to take.

You are not the first to concede that the argument is spun very heavily by the media and those with a personal agenda. it is ironic that the core of hard "Gun Controllers" are folks with an agenda for Dominating Intrusive Government, and using the useful idiots from "My beloved was shot by a guy who should've have had a gun..." land. Of course the useful idiots can not distinguish between Shooter and Gun. Or if I rephrase, Killer and Tool. The conceptual argument on the Gun Controller side is based around, "If there is no gun, then there can be no killer", they do not want to understand, "If there is no gun, then there can still be a killer" or the idea that, "Bad people will break rules and don't a crap".
Most criminal killings are done by folks who are already not allowed to have weapons. You know, "Gun Control".
So much for Gun Control...

Please also remember that this argument goes back to the core being of the US and who we are as a country. By this I mean what and why the 2nd Amendment says what it does. Please also remember it does not say guns, but arms. This was a heated topic revolving around Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison. Ironically later on (not that much), these same guys were at the heart of the establishment of a navy and army (which is related to the 2nd Amendment as well). The establishment of a navy was one of the core arguments had during the Constituional Drafting process, as it was seen as the potentially largest expense the government could face, and be the ruin of the nation (as had happened to several European countries). It was an argument which truly brought to the forefront the idea of big government verses small, and the national split we see today in the political parties and people. Thus was born the first parties, "Republican" and "Federalist". Not to be confused by any means with today's "Republicans" and "Democrats".
If you have never read the Federalist Papers, I highly recommend you do so. Some really interesting work by Hamilton (51 Essays), Madison (34), and John Jay (5 - word has it he was sick). They are especially of interest when you place them in the historical timeline of world events, and not just internal US drama seeking to move on from the "Articles of Confederation".

[ladajo]

The theatre in the one shooting looked like an image from a Batman comic, the word Sandy Hook appears on a map in the Batman movie. Ridiculous as it sounds, that may have been the trigger that set the last incident off.

You can find imagined relationships in most anything if you stare at it hard enough.

It is like saying "wearing Nike Sneakers can make you a killer, because killers have worn Nike Sneakers."

Granted, these loons get some tactical ideas from digging into comic books & movies. They really think when you shoot someone they will fly 10 feet backwards. They try to copy the "cool guy" gear and dress. It matters not what reference they use, what matters is that they will seek them out. If not a movie, then the local library to look at War history books with lots of pictures...

The first time I saw the Batman "Sandy Hook" thing I almost fell out of my chair laughing.
Tell you what, there is a video circulating the internet right now that shows the "Real Story" of what has been going on inside Syria. It really is not the Syrian government bombing its own people and using the military and paramilitary and whoever to attack the opposing populace. Check it out. It is amazing how we have all been mislead...

[Diogenes]

If you have never read the Federalist Papers, I highly recomment you do so. Some really interesting work by Hamilton (51 Essays), Madison (34), Hamilton and John Jay (5 - word has it he was sick).

Yes, he was very sick. He had been hit in the head with a brick which was thrown by a rioter during the "Doctor's riot." He was knocked unconscious and came close to dying. He was never the same afterwards.


If you have never heard of "the Doctor's riot", you are in for a treat. I found the story fascinating. I was quite impressed with John Jay's bravery in the whole incident. Here is one reference to it. It is not the best description of it. I'm still looking for the one describing how Jay and others faced the mob.

[ladajo]

Thanks for the link. John Jay was a very interesting man.

Note: I also saw a fixed a couple of typos in my post.

[hanelyp]

This talk of connections reminds me of a study I read about recently. They were looking for correlations of better than 95% confidence between variables, but looking at enough variables against the variable of interest that chances were high of at least one match by random chance. And they found such a match and published their paper proclaiming the statistical link.

[paperburn1]

This talk of connections reminds me of a study I read about recently. They were looking for correlations of better than 95% confidence between variables, but looking at enough variables against the variable of interest that chances were high of at least one match by random chance. And they found such a match and published their paper proclaiming the statistical link.

Hmmm there does seem to be a link between drugs for depression and teens that mass murder, at least on the casual look.

[ladajo]

Yes it is true, a lot of young nutcases under "professional care" are prescribed drugs under said care's regimen.

Yes it is also true that most mass shooters are previously documented nutcases.

Ergo, it would follow that there is a good chance that the previously identified nutcase was also probably prescribed drugs.

Also note that when pruchasing firearms, gun control rules require that you not only be old enough, you also must declare if you are under mental care or have a history.

How long will it take before people realize you can write all the rules you want, but it matters not to those who do not care?

[GIThruster]

I looked around and although there are plenty of people proposing a link between anti-depressents and mass murder, I haven't found any studies.

Just saying, I don't see it. It's easy to see how depression could lead to murder or suicide, but mass murder--we're not talking domestic violence here, even when killing several of one's own children--mass murder of innocents one is not acquainted with is a rare form of evil. We should not be talking about it as if it were a sickness. It is not. It is a very deliberate decision to be and do as much evil as possible. This is not something you can diagnose, or prescribe, or cause with a drug. It's a moral choice there is no way to influence.

I think it was in C. S. Lewis' little book The Abolition of Man where he takes up this issue. It's been 30+ years since I read it but just saying, the whole notion that we can explain and treat evil as a disease is entirely mistaken. Evil is not a disease, nor a mistake, nor something you can treat, nor can have any measure of control over. Treatments are for diseases, like drug addiction. Punishment is for evil, like murder. The two are entirely different. I have a close friend who did his doctoral thesis on this back about 1985. He's been the head of the psych department in the CA state prison system for a couple decades and he has yet to see a challenge to his position.

[ladajo]

Maybe we should ban the color black.
Don't most mass shooters wear something black?
Obvouisly the color black makes them mass shooters.

[Stubby]

Yes it is true, a lot of young nutcases under "professional care" are prescribed drugs under said care's regimen.

Yes it is also true that most mass shooters are previously documented nutcases.

Ergo, it would follow that there is a good chance that the previously identified nutcase was also probably prescribed drugs.

Also note that when pruchasing firearms, gun control rules require that you not only be old enough, you also must declare if you are under mental care or have a history.

How long will it take before people realize you can write all the rules you want, but it matters not to those who do not care?

I laughed at the irony of your last sentence. Simon uses all the time.

[ladajo]

I wrote it with Simon in mind. The difference that he does not see is that arms are self policing. If you are an idiot with your weapon, someone else with a weapon will correct you. If you are an idiot with drugs, someone else with drugs will be an idiot with you.

[choff]

I'll repost the link from the other thread.

http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/the-giant-ga ... reporting/

Big pharma has a motive in downplaying any links between drugs and adverse reactions, but I suspect a whole cocktail of factors plays into these incidents.

[GIThruster]

Fascinating. I would note there are a couple problems in this. First, it mixes multiple murderers with mass murderers and the profiles for these kinds of murderer are very different. Killing your children is a very different kind of crime with a very different kind of criminal than killing the children at the nearby elementary school. For instance, note that Yeats was convinced she needed to murder her children to save them from Satan, whereas the average mass murderer is not trying to save anyone from anything. Rather the opposite.

Too, the original claim is not true, that ". . .most perpetrators of school shootings and similar mass murders in our modern era were either on – or just recently coming off of – psychiatric medications". The piece then goes on to list only one of the most notorious mass murder settings in the last 30 years. Likewise, it does not look at the numbers of such murders before and after these meds came available, and it does not offer any statistical analysis at all.

All we can really say from this is that many mass murders have already been diagnosed with things like depression, and received treatment for this. This is no surprise.

There are some other, more minor misrepresentations here. The issue that Effexor was not marked that it could cause “homicidal ideation” until after the Yeats episode is in no way surprising, but any decent psychologist knows that all of these SSRI's could be linked to such things. There has never been a causal relationship demonstrated, but all psychologists know to warn their patients, as do their pharmacists; that these drugs have been linked to such things. Trouble is we don't know if people taking these drugs would have had homicidal ideations without taking the drugs as a natural part of their depression.