It’s Sunday, the Eagles are not playing (Go Ravens!) and many of us are still outraged, grieving and otherwise engaged with making sense of a country where freedom seems to mean being free to endure the mayhem of others.
I want to talk more about the “it’s the mental illness, not the guns” argument that still shifts and disregards the fundamental issue of safety for us all later. But here is a great piece that summarizes some of the facts of mental illness and violence. Go read the whole thing before indulging in the handwringing about mental illness:
– “Although studies suggest a link between mental illnesses and violence, the contribution of people with mental illnesses to overall rates of violence is small, and further, the magnitude of the relationship is greatly exaggerated in the minds of the general population (Institute of Medicine, 2006).”
Everyone who is interested in more gun control, take note — On Meet the Press this AM, not ONE of the pro-gun Senators would show their faces. Right? Even they can’t bring themselves to support the kind of mayhem that their polices inflect on the rest of us.
From the Atlantic — Guns, Parents and Sandy Hook: Time to Take The Bullet:
Whatever else it means, Friday’s tragedy is just another awful reminder of the disconnect that exists in America between the lengths to which we as parents (and teachers and school administrators) are always willing to sacrifice for our children when the bullets are flying and what we all are always unwilling to sacrifice for our children when the guns go silent. We rush to protect our kids from imminent death by gunfire but are content to allow thousands upon thousands of our children to die each year as a result of gun violence. […]
But it also would be foolish to dismiss the idea that the Sandy Hook shootings won’t change something. Our nation’s inability to protect our school children from gun violence is not just a basic failure of law and government. It’s a personal failure on the part of every adult — and especially every parent — in America. Nancy Lanza’s love of guns may have given her disturbed son an opportunity to use an arsenal of weaponry to slaughter a classroom of first-graders. But we all have enabled that love of firearms, have nurtured and protected it, at a terrible cost.
Via Occupy Posters — an interesting thought piece about guns being regulated the way cars are. The liability insurance is probably key here.
So there you have it. What interests you today?