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Tucson Shooting: The Coming Blame Game


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As more information comes out about the shooter, it is becoming obvious that his mental problems were not hidden from those in the community or his parents. Who could have prevented this? There are two obvious answers to this question, number one is his parents, number two would be the sheriff. The parents thus far haven't made any statements, we know the sheriff has been in all out propaganda mode drumming up as much attention as possible to the right wing vitriol, ect. ect. Prediction: When the parents finally speak, we will find that their son did have some problems but never became violent until watching/listening right wing television and radio. The left stream media has provided the sheriff and the parents with their scapegoat.

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The central issue here- as will assuredly go totally unaddressed by all sides, since we as Americans have a remarkable capacity for blowing past the real problem in favor of focusing on the various sideshows that spring up around it- is how much latitude we allow the mentally ill in our otherwise 'free' society.We used to not do this... We used to take the apparently mentally ill, lock them away in awful institutions and provide them with inadequate but well intentioned 'treatment' via the lowest contracted bidder. While the 'treatment' may have been ineffective, the program itself had the desired effect of giving us an excuse to securely warehouse them somewhere, far away from our daily lives. Of course, due to a lack of oversight, these places eventually evolved into houses of horror; places like Byberry in Philadelphia. The stories that came from the Byberries of the world- routine sexual and physical abuses of patients by "staff", people wallowing in their own shit, neglect so terrible it would've been unbelievable in a Hollywood script- things like a criminally insane inmate from the Forensic unit raping and killing a female patient, then hiding her body on the overgrown hospital grounds where the forensic unit inmates used it as a 'toy' for weeks, only to be discovered when one of them finally told a staff member that Jane Doe didn't run away, but rather was rotting in the bushes behind the utility shed (one of the many tales from Byberry)... As a reaction to all this, the "patients rights" movement took hold and by the time Glasnost was in full swing, we threw out the baby with the bathwater and shuttered the state run mental hospitals to prevent any more embarrassing Geraldo exposes. Obviously, the problem didn't go away, so we shifted most of the onus to deal with the mentally ill onto prisons. To be certain, the general appearance of the charges locked up in any given US prison circa 2011 will strongly resemble any given lunatic asylum, circa 1971, save for the more benign cases. We also started to expect pathetically inadequate local civic resources to handle the severely mentally ill, without furnishing them any substantive authority to lock them up for their own safety, or the safety of others. Over time, some states employed certain statutory mechanisms... The Baker Act in Florida, 5130 Hold in California where the most immediately dangerous nutcases could be held over for examination, but this did nothing to address those whackos who weren't flailing about that very minute... The boiling pots. The ones who everyone knew were completely nuts but because of 'patients rights' and bad memories of our own failures in treating these people, we just let them run amok instead, then wring our hands when they do something horrific and 'ask ourselves why...' As if on cue, the howling has begun about how a mentally ill person was able to acquire a firearm. It shouldn't come as any shock. Disregarding the irrational opposition some people have to firearms in general and would use this event to further that agenda, "how this happened" didn't result from an insane individual being able to buy a firearm, as much as it resulted from an insane individual being able to roam freely in our society on the pretext of some contorted, grotesque concept of 'rights' where people unable to formulate a lucid thought are given a wide-berth to make decisions on their own.

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The central issue here- as will assuredly go totally unaddressed by all sides, since we as Americans have a remarkable capacity for blowing past the real problem in favor of focusing on the various sideshows that spring up around it- is how much latitude we allow the mentally ill in our otherwise 'free' society.
I agree, I forced myself to watch many hours of cable news the last couple of days. All of them are unwatchable to me. I did see one tea party lady make the case on Anderson Cooper 360 about a mentally ill person being allowed to be so disruptive without anyone doing anything. She was quickly shouted down on all sides, by the GUNS! GUNS! GUNS! cry. There is some discussion on some other sites. The link below was started by a guy whose Aunt was one of those killed in Tucson. He isn't just a random commenter, he is a charter member of the site and is one of their "contributors". http://ricochet.com/main-feed/A-Plea-for-M...l-Health-ReformI worked in the mental health field for over 10 year, and Youth Services another 5. My father has worked in mental health in different capacities for the past 15+ years. He currently works for a children's psychiatric hospital. Your post is so spot on, I wish you would cross post it on the ricochet site.
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Anybody hear that the Little Girl Victim of the MASSACRE was born on 9/11?...seems pretty relevant and doesn't seem to be mentioned in any of the News Stories about the incident.
Except for all of them.
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2 days until this gets blamed on rap music or video games
I know, and the pot smoking once again gets brushed under the table.How is this different than the Ft Hood shooting? That guy spouted off anti-America, pro-islamic rhetoric while wearing a US uniform all the way up until he shot 40 people.Or the Columbine kids, anyone with a brain could see where they were going.OR any of a number of examples.Fact is we have decided that esoteric notions like freedom mean you can't do anything to someone who 'looks like they are about to kill a bunch of people' until they actually try to kill a bunch of people.It will not change because we have become a nation where the idea of freedom, personal liberty etc is more important than the safety of the masses. It will not change without many many more serious incidence.And the examples Scram pointed to regarding how we dealt with it before is one the biggest reasons it won't change.That and Oprah...but there's no stopping that woman now.
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Except for all of them.
Yes, I have seen it mentioned several times.
Oh. They're reporting that (Vietnam)?Good (Pitbull).Because I think (Handgun Violence) it is a really important aspect (SUV Kills Pedestrian) of the story. I mean 9/11 (Hitler) and all.Its about the Children.
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Anybody hear that the Little Girl Victim of the MASSACRE was born on 9/11?...seems pretty relevant and doesn't seem to be mentioned in any of the News Stories about the incident.
Oh. They're reporting that (Vietnam)?Good (Pitbull).Because I think (Handgun Violence) it is a really important aspect (SUV Kills Pedestrian) of the story. I mean 9/11 (Hitler) and all.Its about the Children.
Hmm, apparently nobody understands your sarcasm. I was about to ask why you thought it was relevant.
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Hmm, apparently nobody understands your sarcasm. I was about to ask why you thought it was relevant.
Ah. Welcome to the internet, Pot Odds. Spread it a little thicker next time. We dumb.
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Hmm, apparently nobody understands your sarcasm. I was about to ask why you thought it was relevant.
yes, sorry I missed it, but don't be offended, I love Dennis Miller but only get about 25% of what the Hell he is talking about.
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yes, sorry I missed it, but don't be offended, I love Dennis Miller but only get about 25% of what the Hell he is talking about.
That's why he's so funny! His references are so obscure! Hilarious!
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Hmm, apparently nobody understands your sarcasm. I was about to ask why you thought it was relevant.
It is at least 10% of the reason that I am often dismissed as a simple hot-head troll.The remaining 90% being attributable to my actual posting style and content.
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The fact that she was born on Sept. 11, 2001 is a somewhat somber and/or sad coincidence. Of course it's irrelevant to the facts of what happened, and of course every story mentions it because it tugs at the heartstrings. I don't think it's strange that everybody keeps mentioning it. In the last 50 or so years, probably at least since JFK's assassination and maybe all the way back to Pearl Harbor, September 11, 2001 is literally the ONLY date that is extraordinarily meaningful to everybody in the country. If she was born on that date in 2002 or 2003 I might roll my eyes at the mention of it, but she was born on the exact day. Yes, so were thousands of other kids. It doesn't make her special, but it also shouldn't be the least bit surprising that people take note of it.And actually, I don't even think it is entirely inconsequential to helping the public understand the story. The congresswoman and the judge are getting 90% of the victims' coverage, but clearly the biggest tragedy of all is that this 9-year-old girl was murdered. What can you say about her in one line that will make everybody go, 'Aww man, what a tragedy?' That she was born on September 11, 2001. The reader might even then think about her birth, what her parents must have been feeling that day, the juxtaposition of mass murder vs. birth, death vs. life, etc. I think it's perfectly reasonable for the press to tell us about that fact, and it helps personalize the story for people, even if those people don't know anything else about her.

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Fact is we have decided that esoteric notions like freedom mean you can't do anything to someone who 'looks like they are about to kill a bunch of people' until they actually try to kill a bunch of people.
i've decided you must be a super-troll, sent back through time to annoy the shit out of everyone with ridiculously stupid comments on every subject.
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Might as well blame it on the fact that he loved Cheerios.
Go look at the last page of the marijuana legalization thread. He's just fucking with you guys. He doesn't care about pot.
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Go look at the last page of the marijuana legalization thread. He's just fucking with you guys. He doesn't care about pot.
What an asshole. He uses the internet like a 12-yr-old.
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Might as well blame it on the fact that he loved Cheerios.
Do we in fact know that he didn't love cheerios?And what's with that graph? What does it say?that pot usage is pretty constant? On a slight uptick?
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i've decided you must be a super-troll, sent back through time to annoy the shit out of everyone with ridiculously stupid comments on every subject.
It never surprises me that you are clueless about what is being said.Wait till someone explains it to you...then you can realize how dumb you look.
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