“It’s a mental health problem!” say the right wingers about the recent spree killers.
No. Mental health in the United States is no worse today than it’s ever been. Yet spree murders continue to rise, to the point where we had two spree killings this weekend alone.
We don’t have a mental health crisis causing spree killings. What we have is a Nazi crisis. We have a problem with young white men being radicalized with white supremacist and neo-Nazi ideologies in much the same way that the Middle East has a problem with young Arab men being radicalized in Islamist ideologies, with the same result — they commit terrorist acts.
Because that is what these are: terrorist attacks. They may claim these are “lone wolf” attacks, but you look at what these young white men actually believe, you’ll see that they’ve been radicalized just as much by neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideologies as Middle Eastern terrorists have been radicalized by Islamist ideologies. They choose to engage in spree killing rather than don a suicide vest because guns are easier to buy here than bomb-making materials are, but that’s a difference in murder technique, not a difference in motivation — which is terrorism, period.
And it doesn’t help that Hair Twitler encourages them….
– Badtux the Observant Penguin
Exactly
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I see a fair number of mentally ill young men here who make me think “If this guy was in Amerika, he would shoot a bunch of people. He’s that angry and delusional.” Like the United Shoots, Australia has a mental health problem. And a methamphetamine problem (which makes the mental illness go on steroids, if I may mix a medicinal metaphor.)
The reason why the men with mental health problems here haven’t shot a bunch of people is, as you say, BECAUSE THERE AREN’T HEAPS OF GUNS FLOATING AROUND EVERYWHERE IN AUSTRALIA! Mental illness plus guns equals lots of death. Mental illness minus guns isn’t great for the ill person and people around them, but there’s not nearly so many dead bodies that way.
FWIW, I also encounter Muslim men of various ages who make me think (especially the young ones) “If you were in Syria or Iraq, you’d be driving the car with a bomb in it.” Coz they’re hopped up on hatred and insanity with a religious tinge to it. But again, as you say, they’re not ensconced in a society where there are political forces working to recruit and radicalise guys whose anger is stronger than their desire to live.
(A lot of the mentally ill ones are tormented by the voices in their heads. The voices shout the hate those sad souls feel for themselves. For them, life itself is torture. When they hear people — often in the tones of their family or what they perceive as Allah — saying “You’re a worthless piece of shit. You’re a dog. You should kill yourself” eventually they want to do that. It’s not super-hard for a terrorist recruiter to convince them to take a few of the enemy along with them when they go.)
It’s not perfect here, especially for young Muslims. But it’s also not the post-apocalyptic world of the war-wrecked Middle East and Asia (blasty shout-out to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Punjab!) It’s not a like France, the U.S. and other whitefella countries where The System increasingly spits on Muslims, amping the anger. For the young Muslim men here with snarling, gnarly grievances, the overall culture has not turned so hostile to them that they want to kill it, and themselves. It also helps that the influencers in their lives, like the stable Muslims who are making out OK in this society, add a voice of moderation. Unlike in shithole countries where everybody would be saying “Fuck those bastards from the government/that other sect/the rival mob from the next village. They deserve to die!” Hooray for a semblance of social stability! Helps keep the crazoids from exploding.
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I propose a campaign of savage mockery of all mass shooters, their fans, their enablers, and their suppliers. Unleash the comics! It’s a lot better than polite numbness. Let the humor be black, bitter, and unsparing, about their insanity, their stupidity, their wicked wrath, and above all their mini-manhood. For instance:
How long is an incel’s shooter?
Half as long as his gun.
How many NRA spokesmen does it take to change a light bulb?
None. They’d rather that you stayed in the dark.
Would a gun-seller honor a mass shooter’s coupon?
No. Whoever sells guns to a mass shooter has no honor.
When an 8-channer ended by shooting himself, what was his mistake?
Not starting by shooting himself.
Why don’t white terrorists blow out their brains?
What brains?
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I reckon that Amish-style shunning the gunfuckers would be better, and would require less work. I mean, it takes brain power to think of jokes! And it forces one to contemplate the bastards. I don’t want to spend time with them on my mind.
Everyone who’s a decent human being we should turn their back (sometimes literally) on arseholes who talk in glowing terms about hatred of women, dark-skinned people, doG-botherers with delusional religious beliefs that differ from the speaker’s — the whole range of nasty shit that some folks spout. Do it in-person and online as much as feasible. Some social interaction would be inevitable. We work with these dickheads in many cases. But it doesn’t mean we should hang out with them when it’s avoidable. When they say horrid things, meet ’em with silence and a stare. Gossiping about them would be OK by me, even though that uses a bit of brain-time to do. It would help the herd identify which diseased animals to exclude.
It won’t extinguish the fuckwits’ warped mindset, but it will mean they increasingly have to hang out with each other. Since these people are toads (no offence meant to actual toads, who have a place in Nature) it will make their lives more unpleasant. Cockroaches don’t want to spend all their time with rats! Concentration of inter-scumbag interaction might amplify their antagonism the way 8chan seems to have done, but they’ll be dickish no matter what. If they’re walled off to the best of kind-hearted peoples’ abilities, it will be like a social quarantine.
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I propose the following as legislation before Congress.
The Second Amendment Restoration Act
1. The right of the people to keep and bear arms in a well-regulated militia shall not be infringed.
2. Well-regulated militias shall not arm those under adult age, nor arm those found guilty of treason as defined by the Constitution.
3. States have the right to enforce additional regulation of their militias.
Commentary by the author:
Compare clause 1 of SARA to the original 2nd Amendment:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Alas, poor Amendment! The sentence lies there, broken into four fragments, as if someone had dropped it on the floor. My critique of the 2nd Amendment is both literary and political; for its shattered incoherence is due to an unresolved political dispute. Washington insisted on good regulation of Jefferson’s popular militias; his objection was jammed on as a subordinate clause given top billing.
Clause 1 of SARA fixes the grammar of the 2nd Amendment. It’s a single coherent clause; that prevents partisans from exaggerating one clause and ignoring another. The original had well-regulation as an explanation for the need for the right to bear arms; here well-regulation is part of the right itself. This makes explicit the necessary link between rights (arms) and responsibilities (well-regulated). Clause 1 is as much about gun control as about gun rights.
This re-emphasis on regulation empowers clause 2. No children in arms, nor traitors; that’s necessary. If the militia is well-regulated, then it may not arm children or adolescents, who are not well-regulated people; and if the militia is of the state, then it may not arm those levying war upon the states. I choose these two regulations for the sake of clarity. Age is on public record; and treason is defined in the Constitution. (Article 3, section 3.)
Clause 3 establishes that militias belong to the states, which they may regulate as they see fit, as a matter of state’s rights.
This proposal is very conservative, in the non-Orwellian sense of the word ‘conservative’. It makes few changes in the original text, beyond rewriting it for clarity. This rewriting explicitly mandates both gun rights and gun control. Such rewriting is necessary because of the 2nd Amendment’s fragmented condition.
Since DC vs Heller in 2008, we have been living with a partial reading of the shattered 2nd Amendment, one that ignores the first two fragments and fetishizes the next two. So due to Scalia’s judicial activism, for over a decade the 2nd Amendment has been half-repealed, to malign effect now self-evident.
I propose that we repair it, and restore it.
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