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Comment count is 17
Anaxagoras - 2015-10-11

I dig John Oliver, but why'd you submit this particular clip?


infinite zest - 2015-10-11

I work for one of those organizations at the end. My family also runs a grassroots nonprofit arts organization for the developmentally disabled. It runs in my family. I grew up with a little brother with autism, and my mom actually worked with Rosemary Kennedy in Wisconsin, as well as did speech pathology work at Fairview, one of the many institutions that this clip describes, and saw firsthand the horrible conditions. One of my dudes spent 50 years of his life in that place before my organization was founded back in the 80s.

There's nothing wrong with discussing gun control and mental illness in the same conversation, but my fear is that people will take the old occham's razor approach and just assume that everybody with a developmental or intellectual disability should get locked back up, or if they weren't before, just do it to be safe, so us "normal" people can enjoy our guns. Cuz guns make more money than struggling non-profits like mine do. And you know the last people who did that were the nazis. And I have worked with a few potential Harper-Mercers myself. So anyway that's kinda the short version.


infinite zest - 2015-10-11

fuck i starred my own submission


Old_Zircon - 2015-10-11

You nut!


Monkey Napoleon - 2015-10-11

John Oliver, while usually great if a little preachy, kinda lost me on this one. The news is the news, and asshole politicians are asshole politicians, but blaming these things on mental health and implying we should just lock people up is the moron media telephone game version of the argument.

The argument I heard from the gun community before Sandy Hook was that society stigmatizes the mentally ill. People who are well enough to know they need treatment are terrified of seeking it, and people who are very ill tend to believe they don't need it. When you're labelled crazy, you become something people either want to lock away or totally ignore. What we actually are in dire need of is the manpower and infrastructure to handle these types of things on a case by case basis, deciding what level of treatment or not is needed by caseworkers who don't have 50 other people to see today and then 50 other tomorrow and so on.

Additionally, there is still a lot of societal stigma towards people who aren't mentally ill but could benefit from a little treatment in dealing with some tough emotions.

Like I said, it's true that the less sophisticated in media and politics try to blanket the issue by sort of lumping all these people together and that's dangerous... but go on and try to tell people that a kid who writes a 50 page manifesto and then goes and shoots 15 people is totally fine and is just evil and if he couldn't find a gun would never be troubled and never cause any serious problems.


Monkey Napoleon - 2015-10-11

I should also mention, just in case it wasn't clear, that I'm against any additional gun control EXCEPT maybe closing private sale loopholes.

Having said that, I'll admit that my opinions on it aren't exactly cut and dry. There's room for convincing. What I am sure of is that focusing on just the guns feels a lot like sweeping the other issues under the rug so we can continue to pretend like they don't exist.


SolRo - 2015-10-11

gun ownership should require;

a license, with strict training and testing to get said license.

biannual mental health screenings to renew the license.

minimum 30 day waiting periods before getting a gun.

registration of every gun to the owner, and registration must be renewed annually in person to confirm weapon ownership. (only way you'll ever get close to closing the private sale loopholes)

identifying/traceable serial numbers on all ammo sold.

forfeiture of guns/license when owner lives in a house with kids.


Or just fucking ban the murder toys already, no one "needs" them aside from stroking their insecure and paranoid little egos.


Monkey Napoleon - 2015-10-11

And here's exactly why I'm against further controls:

Your proposed legislation is clearly motivated by what you find scary or distasteful and is not rooted in any kind of knowledge of how guns function or how they are used in crimes. It has the not so sly ulterior motive of just banning all guns outright by taxing them to the point where only the wealthy can afford them, which cannot even be considered for technical reasons and explicitly violates even the most restrictive interpretation of a constitutional amendment.

It's as short-sighted for your side as "FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS" and "SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED" as the other, because you are horribly under-funded if your goal is to repeal the second amendment and you will lose as certain as the sun will rise in the morning.

It's like politicians trying to make decisions about the internet; they're ALWAYS shitty decisions because they're never properly informed.


SolRo - 2015-10-11

countries that have banned guns have massively lower gun related death rates, and general homicide rates are lower too.

you can prance around with your "oh blub, blub, you don't know guunnnz!" all you want, but facts are facts at the end of the day.


SolRo - 2015-10-11

and yes, guns should be expensive.

stupidly expensive.



they shouldn't be something you can trade an xbox for.


Monkey Napoleon - 2015-10-11

These countries almost always experience a corresponding increase in violent crime by other means and the ones that don't always have much better social safety nets, justice systems, and health care programs.

But please, continue explaining how banning guns does a single thing to address the underlying causes behind crime and how well banning things regular, innocent, otherwise law abiding citizens like has worked out in the past.


SolRo - 2015-10-11

You don't know what the hell you're talking about and just pulling blatant lie NRA talking points out of your ass.


ashtar. - 2015-10-12

One of the reasons the gun debate is so useless is that people, on both sides, made decisions based on either emotion or a priori armchair reasoning about how they think guns work rather than looking at empirical evidence. It's largely a technical question of what things we could do in the world would have which effects, but we treat it as if it's a question of ideology.

For instance, I have no idea if background checks would reduce gun crime. They might, or they might be just a burden to legitimate gun owners. We do have the social science resources to do studies and pilot programs to see what their actual effects are. I'd have to look at evidence to have an opinion about this. But no one seems interested in actually answering questions of fact on this issue.


SolRo - 2015-10-12

We know two facts;

Countries that have banned gun have significantly less homicides and no annual mass shootings.

The NRA and their zealots will never allow experimentation or testing of strict gun control laws.


Binro the Heretic - 2015-10-11

I wonder if JFK's decision to reform mental health care had anything to do with what happened to his sister Rosemary?


infinite zest - 2015-10-11

They're definitely connected. For one thing, JFK's other sister created the special olympics, but as far as I know "what happened" to Rosemary was basically nothing at all outside of what the institution she was in could provide for someone who'd undergone a lobotomy because they ran out of ideas.


gmol - 2015-10-13

Look at the Carson clip in the hopper where he discusses his adolescent tendencies to kill people with knives.


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