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Terrorism in Charleston, SC

If mental health is the issue, why aren't other industrialized countries going through similar tragedies with similar frequencies?

Is Germany, France, Spain, Canada, etc really less "mentally ill" than we are?

If gun regulation does nothing but drive guns into the black market and bad guys will always just find the black market then why does the black market end at the U.S./Canada border? Why aren't these black markets as prevelant in other European countries?

I get tired of these two excuses when I think the real reasons why gun violence is off the charts here is just too inconvenient for Those on the right to admit. Just like global warming, the truth is just too inconvenient
 
Mental health issues may have some bearing in some of these notorious mass shootings (ie. Jared Loughner, James Holmes, and Adam Lanza) but really have little to do with most homicides

Calling the prevalence of gun violence in our society a mental health issue does a real disservice to the victims.

Does having an intense hatred of blacks, or gays or Muslims automatically qualify a person as having a mental illness? Is "hatred" a recent entry in the DSM?

There are multiple issues at play, and it is far from simply being a problem related to mental illness.
 
The Thriller said:
If mental health is the issue, why aren't other industrialized countries going through similar tragedies with similar frequencies?

Is Germany, France, Spain, Canada, etc really less "mentally ill" than we are?

If gun regulation does nothing but drive guns into the black market and bad guys will always just find the black market then why does the black market end at the U.S./Canada border? Why aren't these black markets as prevelant in other European countries?

I get tired of these two excuses when I think the real reasons why gun violence is off the charts here is just too inconvenient for Those on the right to admit. Just like global warming, the truth is just too inconvenient
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Yes they are way less mentally ill than we are.

There is no Roswell, Germany. People aren't claiming to have seen Bigfoot by the millions. America has had more prophets in the last 200 years than Germany has had in the last 1000. More often than not our prophets hand out magic cool aid. Theirs are just reformers. They don't have millions of people preparing for the SHTF. Half of Germany doesn't deny scientific facts when they are uncomfortable. They are on average 10 years older than we are. They don't have the same income inequality. They don't have the racial dysfunction.(at least not to the same degree)

We are nuts.

You know what though. Part of me kinda likes the crazy.

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I don't know if that is a fair analysis heyalt. "Burnout" is so common here that everyone just nods and looks sad when it is mentioned that someone who gets between 5 and 10 weeks of vacation a year has burnout and has to take another 2-3 months off for treatment. Racial attitudes are not necessarily better or worse but different, and more widely held. When I mentioned to more than a few people that the apartment building we were moving into originally had been taken over by the state for a home for refugees they were at first not very happy about these, well more or less black, countries that were running rampant into Germany, then backpedaled about how sad it is for them to lose their home. Here is one article about the rallies there have been in Germany, both for and against open immigration. To say it is less of an issue is not truly representative imo.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/06/world/europe/pegida-rally-dresden-germany.html?_r=0
 
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Yeah, Germany recently had that whole Nazi thing which was a little bit touch and go for a while. Living through that is probably going to leave am indelible mark on your society. The whole millions of murders for Communism was pretty suboptimal. France has had some issues with Guillotines if I recall correctly. In the United States we sometimes have unrepentant homicidal maniacs, and sometimes they get guns. We don't however give them the keys to government as a general rule. It's a much better system overall.
 
♪alt13 said:
Beats the hell out of 14 bombings. Yes I seriously believe these would all be bombings if these people couldn't get their hands on guns.(which they would be able to anyway:reference drug war)

What most people on the left on this issue (especially foreigners) don't seem to get is that Americans aren't crazy for lack of gun control. Americans are just a little bit crazy. We're not Pakistan crazy but we are certainly more nuts than you think we are.

Srsly imagine some crazy bull ****. Someone right now in America is doin it.
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Does it? More people died in this attack than the Boston bombing.


This was a terrorist attack.
 
framer said:
Yeah, Germany recently had that whole Nazi thing which was a little bit touch and go for a while. Living through that is probably going to leave am indelible mark on your society. The whole millions of murders for Communism was pretty suboptimal. France has had some issues with Guillotines if I recall correctly. In the United States we sometimes have unrepentant homicidal maniacs, and sometimes they get guns. We don't however give them the keys to government as a general rule. It's a much better system overall.
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Dude, this isn't the 1700s. Your ****ing milimetre peters wouldn't stand a chance against the government if they decided to engage in war against its own people.
 
So I've realized ppl who are all like "we need to improve mental health in this country!" in the wake of this tragedy so with zero legitimate nuanced propositions-- and many who take up this opinion only do so to defend their right to gun ownership
 
Can you imagine the ****-storm that would he taking place if a Muslim dude shot up an American church?
 
note to parents: If you think your teen-aged or young adult child is having problems in life, don't buy them a gun as a birthday present thinking it will help them.

though apparently that's not quite the case here...
https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/19/us/charleston-church-shooting-suspect/

Roof turned 21 in April, and a short time later he had a gun.

On Thursday, investigators did a trace of the handgun used in Wednesday's shooting and determined that it was a .45-caliber handgun Roof purchased from a Charleston gun store in April, two law enforcement officials told CNN's Perez and Bruer.

His grandfather says Roof was given "birthday money" and that the family didn't know what he did with it
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very, very sad...

Roof’s sister, Amber, was the one who notified the police after seeing surveillance footage of her brother on the news, the Post reported. Amber Roof had planned to get married Sunday...
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LINK

https://www.wsj.com/articles/charleston-church-shooting-suspect-dylann-roof-in-police-custody-1434642237

About a month ago, Dylann Roof’s family became concerned. The once-quiet, bright boy from a middle-class family had been drifting and began to tell relatives he was involved in racist groups.

“He turned into a loner in the last couple of years and no one knew why,” said a woman reached at the house of his former stepmother....

...Mr. Roof had lived off and on with his father, Ben Roof, in Columbia, a family friend said. He described the father as a hardworking, friendly, churchgoing man who had recently expressed concerns about his son’s lack of direction.

The friend described the suspect as a lanky young man who was a loner who rarely smiled. “You could see that he was troubled,” he said.

The elder Mr. Roof has a racially diverse set of friends, and wouldn’t have taught his son racial intolerance, the friend said....

...Mr. Roof’s grandfather, Columbia lawyer C. Joseph Roof, declined to speak at length about his grandson, but said, “I can tell you that I love him.”
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dalamon said:
So I've realized ppl who are all like "we need to improve mental health in this country!" in the wake of this tragedy so with zero legitimate nuanced propositions-- and many who take up this opinion only do so to defend their right to gun ownership
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Do you think improved mental health of people in the in the U.S. would lead to less of these situations as well as less racism, and all "isms" for that matter?
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No I don't own a gun. No I don't plan on buying a gun. Yes I still believe the citizens of the U.S. should have the right to bear arms despite all the wackos doing stupid things like this and laws to stop citizens from owning them would be as effective as the "War on Drugs".
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dalamon said:
Dude, this isn't the 1700s. Your ****ing milimetre peters wouldn't stand a chance against the government if they decided to engage in war against its own people.
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1) You think the entire military would attack their own citizens? I think 50% would be an incredibly optimistic number.

2) The chances of winning a fight make no difference on the constitutional right that we have to bear arms. If we take that right away, what's next?

dalamon said:
So I've realized ppl who are all like "we need to improve mental health in this country!" in the wake of this tragedy so with zero legitimate nuanced propositions-- and many who take up this opinion only do so to defend their right to gun ownership
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1) Gun ownership has decreased since the 1970's, yet somehow we have a lot more shooting like this (or they're just more publicized). So why are we trying to blame guns here? People are the problem. Take guns away and they'll find something else. You're not solving problems by taking them away.

2) You can be a racist and not want to kill somebody. I'm not advocating for racism, I think it's a sick belief, but wanting to kill multitudes of people is a sign of illness. Those aren't normal thoughts.

3) How are you going to get rid of guns? An outright ban will start a civil war, waiting periods accomplish nothing, what else do you suggest?
 
dalamon said:
Can you imagine the ****-storm that would he taking place if a Muslim dude shot up an American church?
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Would the ****storm be justified?
 
dalamon said:
Does it? More people died in this attack than the Boston bombing.


This was a terrorist attack.
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Because of the number of people killed? I don't think that's a good way to define a terrorist attack. Terrorists have an agenda. They use violence in order to market their ideology and/or force outcomes they desire. It has nothing to do with number of people killed. The New Town shooting wasn't a terror attack. The shooter didn't have an agenda aside from spreading pain and misery. This isn't either. We should try and avoid Orwellian wordsmithing that only serves to comfort us, while robbing important concepts from their actual meaning.
 
Siro said:
Because of the number of people killed? I don't think that's a good way to define a terrorist attack. Terrorists have an agenda. They use violence in order to market their ideology and/or force outcomes they desire. It has nothing to do with number of people killed. The New Town shooting wasn't a terror attack. The shooter didn't have an agenda aside from spreading pain and misery. This isn't either. We should try and avoid Orwellian wordsmithing that only serves to comfort us, while robbing important concepts from their actual meaning.
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I don't think we have evidence to believe this was a terrorist attack. I think all we have is evidence that this guy hated "them darn N***ers".

Which makes this a hate crime, as he was doing it out of hate, not to inspire terror.

Adding more links:

https://www.cnn.com/2015/06/19/us/charleston-church-shooting-suspect/

"He said he thought the black (race) in general as a race was bringing down the white race," Meek said.
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Witnesses told investigators the gunman stood up and said he was there "to shoot black people," a law enforcement official said.
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ElRoach0 said:
I don't think we have evidence to believe this was a terrorist attack. I think all we have is evidence that this guy hated "them darn N***ers".

Which makes this a hate crime, as he was doing it out of hate, not to inspire terror.
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CNN is reporting he said he wanted to start a race war. If that's not terror I don't know what is.
 
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