In the aftermath of the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, America is having a long-overdue national conversation about guns, mental health, and avoidable violence. The slaughter of elementary schoolchildren has a way of clarifying things.Much of the conversation thus far has focused, quite rightly, on the guns. President Barack Obama has presented a package of valuable measures that closely match the recommendations of the nation’s leading gun violence experts. If enacted into public policy and American law, the president’s proposals, especially closing loopholes on background checks, have the potential to save many lives.But there’s a certain irony in the timing of this national conversation, and the way in which we are conducting it. High-profile mass shootings are relatively rare, resulting on average in a few dozen deaths a year; ordinary, day-in, day-out gun crimes, on the other hand, wipe out more than 10,000 lives a year.Mass shootings are also quite difficult to prevent. I hope the sheer horror of Newtown catalyzes passage of a strong assault weapons ban, but the number of lives we will save through such a measure is likely to be modest. That’s because the overwhelming majority of gun-related murders and injuries, whether by angry spouses or by professional criminals, aren’t committed with assault weapons (defined, loosely, as semiautomatic firearms with military-style characteristics).Rifles and shotguns of all types, assault versions and not, together account for less than 12 percent of murders for which the type of gun is recorded; handguns account for the rest. The flow of ordinary crimes committed with ordinary weapons doesn’t command the same attention, but it accounts for many more gun deaths.
i agree mental halth detection is not 100% sure not just because of breakdown at state levels but those who go unreported, unnoticed and those yet to be, these last few may have had a record but noone believed it to be a first sign.
indifference like any other dismissing results in that that was dimissed in other words we get what we fet either way but one way disclousre cold effectively bring down those numbers we mourn today.
A similar irony applies in the area of mental health. The Newtown massacre has elicited serious calls to do something to stop the violently prone mentally ill. Yet the fact is that very little of the violence perpetrated by people with mental illnesses takes the form of mass shootings. Much more common are cases in which deranged individuals commit assaults, muggings, and robberies, or cases in which individuals with mental illnesses commit crimes connected with the misuse of alcohol or illicit drugs. In many cases, the primary victims are not strangers, but the perpetrator’s own loved ones and friends.Just like those ordinary crimes committed with ordinary weapons, these individual acts of violence seldom make headlines. And of all the mentally ill likely to commit violence, mass shooters may be the hardest to identify in advance—in part because of the unusual, often idiosyncratic nature of such atrocities.
ah conformation, i do think it is an extremely difficult endeavor primarily because it requires a multitude of people not all on the same page. some legitimate others blowing a banwagon horn and also those the subject of this article. i don't know if there is a answer but there are solutions to lessen the fatal impact.
