His post is excellent, but I want to drop this little snippet:
Mental Health Issues
And right here I’m going to show why I’m different than the people I’ve been arguing with the last few days. I am not an expert on mental health issues or psychiatry or psychology. My knowledge of criminal psychology is limited to understanding the methods of killers enough to know how to fight them better.
So since I don’t have enough first-hand knowledge about this topic to comment intelligently, then I’m not going to comment… Oh please, if only some of the people I’ve been arguing with who barely understand that the bullets come out the pointy end of the gun would just do the same.
I certainly agree that we need to have a discussion on how to better serve those of us who are having some serious mental troubles. But like Larry, I’m not an expert in mental illness, or its treatment. I have some severely mentally ill family members, who I feel perfectly safe around. I’ve been around a mentally ill coworker who had a serious psychotic episode, and I was really glad I had a gun during this event, and I’m very glad he got the help he needed VERY soon after things took the turn for the worst.
I don’t know what can be done better, I do know I can sniff at proposals for abuse, and maybe get a good rebuttal from the expert.
as I said on The Squirrel Report, that people on BOTH sides of the gun-control issue want the same end-goal.
We were ALL HORRIFIED and saddened by the event at this shooting. We ALL want the world to be as safe a place that we can possibly make it. The huge difference is people who talk about “Assault Weapons”, “Illegal Sales”, “Gun Availability”, and “High capacity bullet clips”, don’t really know much about these items, or why we have them, and the dangers of taking them away.
Yeah, I’m a gun-nut, I’m a collector, and I enjoy target shooting. I’d like to get into hunting a little more. Still if it is shown to me that my guns are causing more harm to society than the good they’re doing, I’ll have them melted down this weekend, and I’ll use this blog, and my influence to make sure everybody else does too.
Only I’m not hearing that, I’m hearing to opposite, when I look at the facts of the issue.
They, on the other side are going from a position of emotions and ignorance. We want the same thing, but we’re arguing for 100% different solutions. Who are you going to listen to?
