Monday Open Thread

32 thoughts on “Monday Open Thread”

1. Or do you sue? This from Buzzfeed: Mitt’s Diner drops the tab.  http://www.buzzfeed.com/mckayc…  

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2. Is this the solution, or a knee-jerk reaction to the problem?

   Or is the problem best addressed by a greater awareness and treatment of mental disorders and increased efforts to keep guns out of the possession of someone with a mental disorder?

   Or do we need both?  

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3. You probably saw the “I am Adam Lanza’s mother” story that went viral over the weekend — it’s very moving and illustrates the genuine, complete absence of options today for parents whose children are mentally ill in a violent, threatening way. However, combine this with the early reports that Lanza may have been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and you have a recipe for a nation afraid of autistic people–which is a pretty damn ridiculous notion.

   Autism comes with difficulty interpreting things like facial expressions, implications, subtext, and subtlety. It doesn’t come with a lack of emotional empathy, the ability to “feel for” others. In fact, many autistic people feel emotional empathy MORE strongly than neurotypical people do. People with Autism are four times more likely to be the victims of crime than neurotypical people, but less likely to commit a crime.

   If you happen to know anyone on the Autism spectrum well enough to have their permission to hug them, ask if they need a hug today. It can’t be fun to have your diagnosis splashed all over CNN as a possible reason for a horrific mass murder.

   The Newtown shooter was probably mentally ill, and we desperately need mental health reform to be a constant part of the national conversation, not just after tragedies. However, nobody who has actually, in real life treated this young man has come forward to explain his diagnosis, and it is irresponsible reporting to put classmates’ “I think I heard he had…” speculations in the news. It is already challenging enough for people with Autism-spectrum diagnoses to bond with their schoolmates, without labeling them as possible mass murderers, too.

   Whatever the Newtown shooter “had,” the more important thing is what he made: The decision to kill 27 people, including himself. He may have made that decision because he was desperately mentally ill, because he was delusional, because he had no access to treatment, but many desperately ill, delusional people with no access to treatment do not make the same decision. They are not ticking time bombs, and you won’t become a target for being kind and friendly toward a mentally ill person.

   We can and should all push for mental health reform and demand meaningful options for inpatient treatment of seriously mentally ill adolescents who cannot be effectively cared for by their parents. But in the pursuit of that very, very good and necessary outcome, think carefully about arguments that depict autistic, schizophrenic, personality disordered, or otherwise mentally ill people broadly as ticking time bombs or the next school shooters. If anything, a mental health diagnosis is just the layer on top of whatever “evil” is that can, in some cases, separate a shooter from reality and consequences far enough to allow him to carry out an evil act. We do not and may not ever understand why some people have the “evil” layer, and blaming the “mentally ill” layer for it is erasing the millions of mentally ill people who are NOT evil and who also desperately need better care and more options, not to “prevent another shooting” but because caring for human beings who are sick and suffering is the right, humane thing to do.

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4. Guns and the Decline of the Young Man

   There is also the issue of race. Not all of the men I listed in the beginning of this piece are Caucasian. However, take a moment and imagine what the archetypical image of a mass murderer in the United States looks like. Is he white in your mind? This stereotype can only be attributed to the truth of those patterns that have established themselves, from Charles Whitman’s 1966 shooting spree at the University of Texas, to Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, to the 1999 Columbine massacre. The mass murderer is a type. And his race is white.

   . . .

   The angry black man has been usurped by the angry white man.

   I would argue that maleness and whiteness are commodities in decline. And while those of us who are not male or white have enjoyed some benefits from their decline, the violence and murder that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary will continue to occur if we do not find a way to carry them along with us in our successes rather than leaving them behind.

   http://opinionator.blogs.nytim…

   I’m not saying that I agree or disagree with this article, or even identifying those parts I might agree or disagree with; I’m noting that the conversation has begun.

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5. I think we’re starting to get a more complete picture of the background to Sandy Hook…

   A few updates not everyone might have seen:

   1) There were 4 weapons recovered, not 3. The weapon found in the car was a shotgun; a Bushmaster assault rifle was used in the shooting.

   2) The coroner reports that each victim was shot multiple times – up to 7 times each – with a .223 assault rifle, most shots occuring at range. This puts the minimum bullet count over 150, and ups the apparent skill level of the shooter.

   3) It is reported that the shooter fired “hundreds” of bullets, and had hundreds more remaining. The bullets were all in 30-round high-capacity clips (apparently for both the rifle and the handguns – hard to read this exactly from reports so far, but that was my interpretation).

   4) The shooter’s mother was a “Doomsday Prepper” – a gun enthusiast and survivalist convinced the economy was going to crash and everyone would live by the gun. She had (at least) a dozen weapons in her collection.

   5) She regularly took her sons to the shooting range regularly. (This would be why the shooter had good skill with the weapons.)

   6) It is reported that the son had mental problems (beyond Autism Spectrum Disorder).

   Conclusions and next questions:

   Given the woman’s reported actions, I’m guessing the son had full access to her gun collection – “just in case”. No need for the son to break in and steal weapons; he was being trained for that inevitable day when he’d need to use them. Same goes for body armor – it was probably a Christmas present.

   So… WTF was this woman thinking, giving training to a person who was reported to have mental health issues and allowing him full access to her gun cabinet (room/shelter)?

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6. Not actually “everything you need to know” but a good starting point, and surprisingly very well-balanced and sensible.

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7. Another charity preying on the nation’s regard for veterans turns out to be less than what it seems.

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8. Has anyone noticed that if you click on the Penalty Box, you end up at a website about Ugg Boots?

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9. A Southern California judge is being publicly admonished for saying a rape victim “didn’t put up a fight” during her assault and that if someone doesn’t want sexual intercourse, the body “will not permit that to happen.”

   The California Commission on Judicial Performance voted 10-0 to impose a public admonishment Thursday, saying Superior Court Judge Derek Johnson’s comments were inappropriate and a breach of judicial ethics…

   Johnson, a former prosecutor in the Orange County district attorney’s sex crimes unit, said during the man’s 2008 sentencing that he had seen violent cases on that unit in which women’s vaginas were “shredded” by rape.

   “I’m not a gynecologist, but I can tell you something: If someone doesn’t want to have sexual intercourse, the body shuts down. The body will not permit that to happen unless a lot of damage is inflicted, and we heard nothing about that in this case,” Johnson said.

   The commission found that Johnson’s view that a victim must resist to be a real victim of sexual assault was his opinion, not the law. Since 1980, California law doesn’t require rape victims to prove they resisted or were prevented from resisting because of threats.

   http://www.sacbee.com/2012/12/…

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10. It appears that their only business purpose is to make AR-15 based weapons.  

    rcdaec@earthlink.net

    We used to be so upset about Raven (??) Saturday Night Specials.  But here is a company whose sole purpose is to make money off of paranoia and stupidity.  Bushmaster is where the revolt needs to begin.

    You can be damned sure that converting them to fully auto is easy……oh, that was hard to find:

    http://www.keepshooting.com/fu…

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11. As Huffpo put up today, it’s not just school massacres.  

    Another Day, More Deaths: Man Accidentally Kills Himself Demonstrating Gun’s Safety… 3 Gunned Down In Grand Rapids… 2 Police Officers Shot And Killed In Kansas… 3-Year-Old Accidentally Shoots Himself, Dies… Man Shoots Wife… One Person Shot In San Antonio, Gunman Later Shot By Cops… Woman Shot At Campground… Woman Shot To Death, Son ‘Thought She Was Sleeping’

    A few days ago a father gets in his truck.  He had just spent time at Dave’s Reloading Shack or something. The gun goes off, his 7 year old is dead.  “Oh, I didn’t know it was chambered.”  

    And interesting source is the list of countries and their firearm murder and suicide rate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L…

    Every country with a per capita rate higher than the US is what we would call a third world nation.  And many of them don’t include suicides.  

    For the countries reporting both, almost always suicides are more numerous than murders.  I was surprised.

    If you live in the US, you are 128 times more likely to die via a bullet from somewhere else than in Japan.  

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12. And that’s obviously saying a lot.  I heard he did walk this back a bit today.

    Christian-owned businesses are told to surrender their values under the edict of government orders to provide tax-funded abortion pills. We carefully and intentionally stop saying things are sinful and we call them disorders. Sometimes, we even say they’re normal. And to get to where we have to abandon bed rock moral truths, then we ask “well, where was God?” And I respond that, as I see it, we’ve escorted him out of our culture and marched him off the public square and then we express our surprise that a culture without him reflects what it’s become.

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201…

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