Pistols, Prozac, Rifles and Ritalin
It appears to me that America is a country of great contradictions. A peace loving nation that wages war (77 in just over 200 years), the country that boasts the highest standard of living yet suffers from the greatest obesity and heart disease. The OECD rates U.S education at 36th in the world just above Lithuania but trailing the Slovak Republic, Russia, Latvia and Viet Nam.
By far the greatest and most dangerous contradiction that currently exists in the United States is that they are the biggest consumers and producers of psychiatric medication in the world and at the same time have some of the most liberal laws in the world pertaining to gun ownership. Any fool can work out that a high number of mentally ill people in a society that proliferate fire arms like baseball cards and bubble gum, will be prone to the odd massacre. So I am left wondering, how can a country so blessed with resources and wealth have got it so wrong?
America is a sensible country? Surely they are getting a grip on the problem? Statistics would imply the contrary. Between 1990 and 2000 (the time in which the Columbine tragedy occurred) there were 32 reported shootings in U.S schools. One would believe the Columbine massacre must have been enough to inspire legislation limiting the chances of such an event recurring. 2001 – 2010, 50 gun related incidents in U.S schools. So it must be a multifaceted, complex, nebulous problem that it will take time, but while school children wait for Washington to deal with the problem it’s worth noting that from 2011 to date there have been 70 gun related incidents at schools leaving 93 people dead and 96 injured. While America respects the right every child has to an education, it also seems to think they will learn better under the very real fear of being gunned down whilst they’re handing in their homework.
As I stated earlier the United States are the biggest producers and consumers of psychiatric pharmaceuticals making it an incredibly lucrative industry, the sector of society that has seen greatest growth in the use of anti-depressants are people aged between 16 and 24. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)11% of all Americans over the age of 12 are on anti depressants, how many of these do you want armed? Mentally ill students, easy access to guns, school shootings, I still don’t get it, what’s the connection?
Eli Lilly the pharmaceutical company most well known for producing Prozac has spent more than $35,000,000 dollars in lobbying during the period 2010 -2014. To put that in perspective that compares to the NRA’s slightly less than $12,000,000 for the same period. But surely that is the question how can these two industries co-exist in lobbying a government. I would imagine Eli Lilly try to convince senators that everyone’s mad and needs medication, meanwhile the NRA state the importance that everyone has at least one firearm. These two opinions cannot co exist, they simply contradict one another, one has to be right and the other wrong, you cannot allow the two such diametrically opposed issues to exist at the same time. A responsible government cannot accept its population having a greater dependency on psychiatric drugs and the listen to a group of people pursuing greater liberty to own firearms. The fact that these two arguments get given consideration has lead to the two agendas coalescing into the situation allowing mentally ill people to be armed.
Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, Seung –Hui Cho, Adam Lanza and Elliot Rodger, responsible for the deaths 78 people and then themselves. Prior to their actions each one of them had received support for mental illness. How can young mentally ill men gain access to firearms, you wouldn’t allow a blind person to drive. The acts of these 5 men were abominable but society failed to protect them and their victims. With the memory of Isla Vista still fresh in our minds, I ask myself when will this once great nation acknowledge this problem, get serious and deal with it?
If you feel angry, or misrepresented do something about it. When Benjamin Franklin left Independence Hall just after the second drafting he was approached by a woman on the street, the woman said ‘Mr. Franklin what manner of government have you bequeathed us?’ And Franklin said ‘a Republic mam; if you can keep it.’ The responsibility of a country is not in the hands of a privileged few. We are strong and we are free of tyranny, as long as each one of us remembers his or her duty as a citizen. Whether it’s to report a pothole at the top of your street, or lies in a State of the Union address, speak out, ask questions. Democracy is not a free ride. Constitutionally each American is empowered with the right and due process to change their country. As long as you stay sitting there, turning a blind eye, doing nothing you become complicit in the next Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, Columbine or Isla Vista.
How many more candle lit vigils before you think enough is enough?
Below is the link to the video Elliot Rodger made just prior to him killing 6 people then himself:
My Blog 
Mr. Roberts,
Nice piece.
I agree, in principle, with your conclusion that it would be nice to live in a world without guns but that isn’t realistic. They are the foremost instrument of coercion and tyranny, used by criminals and governments alike to forcibly compel others to their will. This is the way it is.
When America was born, it was created as a result of such tyranny and the drafting of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were simply affirming the natural rights of man. These laws already exist and are inalienable. They cannot be revised upon; they exist forever and always have.
One of those rights, is the second amendment. It re affirms our right to keep and bear arms. The fore fathers were bright enough to realize that government, by it’s nature, is capable of enacting great cruelty and implementing tyrannical control over it’s citizens. Firearms are after all, the great equalizer. To deny that these tyrannies do not exist is obscene.
The state of Connecticut recently enacted some legislation that required that all owners of assault weapons either register them or move them to another state. Interestingly, some 300,000 of the owners decided that they weren’t going to go along with that. Registration is was happens before confiscation. That’s the way it’s always been with guns. So, with the stroke of a pen, the state created 300,000 felons not because they did anything illegal, but because the government decided to impose restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms. Not surprisingly, the state government has not decided on a plan to confiscate the guns of 300,000 of it’s armed citizens.
As a Libertarian, the core of my beliefs is in the NAP. The NAP or Non Aggression Principle, simply states I will live my life as the constitution and bill of rights defines it. Basically, it’s a live and let live kind of deal. Unfortunately, there are folks out there that don’t live by this code. There are people out there that want to take my stuff, like with force. In order to protect myself, I have the right to use force against such a threat.
In the United States, there currently exists a fanatical movement that seeks to restrict the constitution and the bill of rights and apply force to achieve these goals. They are the Progressive Liberals. Their neo marxist philosophy requires exercising positive rights. For example, “I have the right chew gum. Therefore, you must pay for my gum”. Their philosophy requires that I surrender my property rights in order for them to exercise their rights. The exercising of my rights are Negative Rights, where I do not require some to surrender their rights to accommodate my own. Progressive liberals seek to impose heavy gun restrictions upon existing restrictions. Some may argue, “why not be flexible?” Unfortunately, these same gun control advocates would actually like to live in a world where no one can hunt their Unicorns at all. Period. So, it is next to impossible to engage them in sensible constructive debate.
To suggest that gun owners advocate gun ownership by the mentally deranged or otherwise unfit is ludicrous. No one believes that.
Full circle….gun ownership. Ownership of firearms will never be infringed upon in the United States. It’s the country we live in. The fact is that countries like Mexico (non existent personal firearms possession) is rife with murder and mayhem. I have to be careful not to slip into the ramble of anecdotal summaries….to be clear though, I read more often about some cleaver wielding berserker in China or machete slashing maniac in Africa than I do about “mass shootings” in the US. Fact is, you have a better chance of being struck by lightning while being eaten by a shark than you do of being a victim of a mass shooting. They are news worthy though.
That nut case, Elliot Roger, was just that…a nut case. In my opinion, he was a spoiled, narcissistic brat that was a product of progressive liberalism. He wasn’t pissed off that he didn’t have a regular old girlfriend…he was pissed off cause he figured he was entitled to a super hot one and didn’t get it. It’s no coincidence that the shooting took place at UCSB. According to some reports, that school enjoys a “1 out 6 women will be assaulted on campus” statistic. Those same sources also suggest only 10 to 20% of cases of assault are reported. While those figures are clearly inflated, perhaps if women were allowed to pack a little heat on campus, they might have a 50/50 chance of getting through college without getting gang raped or gunned down by a deranged manic the Quad.
Hi Kevin,
I don’t disapprove of gun ownership, I disapprove of one group of lobbyists pushing psychiatric pharmaceuticals, whilst another pushes more liberal laws on gun ownership. If government listens to both groups, which given the sums of money they donate it’s well worth the government to listen, an amalgam of both arguments leads to the arming of the mentally ill.
If we agree people have the right to defend their property, which is fair, there is a judgement to be made by the defender. A judgement that I would rather a mentally sound person to make as opposed to a person on a concoction of psychiatric drugs.
It comes down to the evil of money as it nearly always does. Pharmaceutical companies are among the most powerful in the U.S and they will naturally wish to increase their share dividends, by selling more Prozac (for example) thus defining an ever larger number of people as mentally ill is their goal. Meanwhile the NRA are hugely powerful lobbyists given the constitutional rights in America. My problem is you can’t have an increasing population of supposedly mentally ill people and sell more guns.
Mr. Roberts,
While your points are well articulated, I have to point out the fact that the NRA or other lobby groups of the like, do not seek to expand gun laws. They work to preserve existing gun rights. You see, the constitution and the bill of rights were written to re affirm our natural rights and for the government to impose on those rights, they must provide a compelling argument to make exceptions. They are very difficult arguments to make for the most part but they try every day to curb the very laws they were charged to protect and defend.
Progressive liberalism and their band of what Lenin called “useful idiots” have taken up the crusade to abolish guns and gun ownership. They justify their cause with the implementation of Positive Rights. “I have the right to live, therefore you must surrender your right to possess the means to take my life.”
Are you suggesting that these mentally deranged shooters are not getting enough of the right meds or that they are getting too much medication?
The question and answer seem simple to me. Crazies don’t get to have guns. Will some crazies get guns? Of, course but there are laws that can prevent this. Are they 100% effective? No, of course not.
The path of liberty is a bumpy and uncomfortable course but it’s something we all travel down. Check your emotions at the door when considering legislation that can be defined as a positive right action.
I suppose this and many other arguments come down to what political philosophy you subscribe to. If you believe government is a necessary function of liberty that exists for the sole purpose of forcibly compelling the people to conform to a certain set of moral standards that are decided by mob rule (aka democracy) or you can subscribe to a system of free markets and free minds where people choose their own path and are free to do as they please, provided they don’t infringe on the rights of others.
The United States was once a great nation but has lost it’s way over the last several decades and is more divided than ever. The divergent characteristics of the left / Progressive Liberalism movement has radically shifted the democratic party to the extreme left while the conservative movement has shifted far to the right with the social conservative values of the tea party. My hope is that this divergence has created a void large enough in the middle where libertarianism and more moderate independents can thrive.
I’m sure these concepts are puzzling to you being a UK subject…or is it citizen, now? That’s ok though, because the concepts of true liberty are not inherent to us americans, they are for everyone for all time. Your Ben Franklin quote is a great one, but not sure it means what you think it means.
Did I stray off topic again? Sorry about that but the topics feel to heavily connected to me.
That’s great that you feel strongly about this.
Oddly over the past week my views on U.S gun laws have changed considerably. Initially I considered them to be antiquated, which I do still in view of the fact they were drafted when mental health was not such an issue. I have no issues with gun ownership as long as the person who owns it is, mentally healthy, not disabled physically or mentally, has satisfactory eyesight, is over the age of 21 etc.
The sad thing is, that all those kids I named had significant mental illnesses, Elliot Rodgers had been prescribed an anti-psychotic (which he had not taken), how did he get weapons? No society on earth can condone the arming of mentally ill people.
This brings me to the corruption in the responsibility of the pharmaceutical companies. According to these companies America suffers from the greatest per capita and gross number of mental illness cases of any country in the world (you’ve been to Thailand, you know that can’t be true). These companies are pushing psychiatric drugs onto a huge number of people, many of whom I believe don’t need them. The over diagnosis of mental illness means those who really need can be overlooked. All the names I mentioned should have been sectioned with the illnesses they were suffering from.
The argument still remains Pharmaceutical companies can not continue to sell ever more psychiatric drugs and yet the U.S retain the same gun laws. One group is stating the U.S is a very mentally ill society, whilst the other group supports giving that same society guns.
My whole point is that these two opinions directly contradict one another
and could not coexist in a sensible society.
Therefore the Franklin reference is to encourage people to ask this question. Why have these mentally sick people been able to get access to guns? Why haven’t they received the treatment they needed and why wasn’t society protected from them?
There have been too many, and the number and frequency is rapidly increasing. For me the problem can not be ignored any longer.
I feel strongly as I have family in California and I believe a strong U.S does bring stability to the world.
James,
The argument that the 2nd Amendment is antiquated has been circulating for some time and anyone exercising common sense can see that it is not. It is a difficult concept for a non american to grasp. The amendment says nothing about self defense or hunting unicorns. It was drafted for the sole purpose of enabling citizens the right, if need be, to defend abuse of all of their other rights. Force meets force. More people in the 20th century have been killed by democide (governments killing their own people) than by all the wars combined. This is not fantasy, it is fact. Gun ownership simply dissuades tyrannical governments from being able to perform the final solution. China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, the Phillipines..the list goes on.
The second amendment is guaranteed to all citizens. It is the burden of the government to show otherwise. Contrary to what you may believe, disabled persons have this right. Legally blind people are issued hunting licenses on a daily basis in the United States. Naturally, they have hunting partners that assist them. Just the other day, I saw a defense contractor/ spook of some kind with cerebral palsy and he had a side arm. Riddle me that!
There are laws that prevent people with psychiatric problems from getting firearms. Clearly they don’t work ALL the time. Just because government fails to enforce laws, does not justify the creation of MORE laws that they will not enforce. Legislation seems to be largely political rather than practical. That’s how bad government has gotten.
On a side note, when Republicans take over control of the senatehtis November, El Presidente will likely veto every piece of legislation that comes across his desk. Lame duck as they say. I’m totally ok with that. The government could use a break from passing ridiculous ineffective laws and scheming to spend my tax dollars…hell, take two years off!
I really can’t speak to your pharmaceutical company conspiracy because I don’t know enough about it. The loosely packed vitriol you tossed about can mean many things. Are you suggesting a nationwide conspiracy between doctors and pharma companies to push anti psychotics? Really? Is the Evil Free Market Puppet Master doing his deadly dance and enslaving a population by means of over medication / under medication and mis medication? One thing is for sure, it is in the interest of HMO’s (or used to be) to spend as money as they can on your treatment.
Again, the NRA DOES NOT seek to loosen gun laws! They seek to protect EXISTING gun laws. You cannot show me one instance which proves your statement that they are “pushing more liberal gun laws”. Let me help you though…there was one piece of legislation that is currently moving through the system, but I would hardly categorize it as a “pushing of liberal gun laws”. It involves the 1898 gun statute (that’s not the name obviously). Basically, federal law states any gun manufactured before 1898 is classed as an antique firearm and not subject to the same rigorous background check/ FFL requirements of modern firearms. The new law, would push that date to the right, by 13 years. Not a ginormous victory. Hell, I’m not even sure the NRA pushed the issue. In either case, the issue is so insignificant it is hardly worth mentioning…except for the bone I threw you to support your statement.
I only mentioned the Franklin quote because your tone sounded awfully progressive….and you know how I feel about them.
“Democracy is not a free ride. Constitutionally each American is empowered with the right and due process to change their country.”
If your intention is progressive, then what you mean is that people have the right to modify the constitution in order to “change” the country. They believe that the constitution is a “living, breathing document”…super gay terminology for: “can be edited”. This NOT the case. The government and progressives are constantly trying to do this on a daily basis but it will not happen. If you believe the document is antiquated then you are not alone but you are certainly confused about the nation the founding fathers were seeking to create.
Whatever “change” you are talking about should be consensual and not a product of force or mob rule, but that’s the Libertarian in me speaking. If you are of the progressive belief, then the elite of the party will let you know what crusade will be waged and the people who are not wise or moral enough to understand, shall be henceforth, forced.
Democracy does not trump the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. End of story.
On a happy side note, I read recently, that UKIP recently won some important electoral hoopla in the your homeland. If you are a Libertarian, this should make you so very happy….if you are a progressive…not so much I’m afraid.
Libertarianism is on the rise globally. In the future, Progressivism will be regarded as a freakish neo marxist anomaly and the people will lament: “how could we have been so foolish”.
James,
Hey, I really appreciate the debate – good banter. I enjoy your writing, too! Keep up with it. Have faith in liberty and reject the Nanny State! If you ever come to the Tucson, I’ll take you out to the desert and we’ll do some shooting. I bought three really cool colt .45’s manufactured in 1933. Whiskey, six guns and red light ladies!
James,
I just wanted to address this legislative solution that you seem to be gagging for.
The relationship of mental illness and firearms possession is the question at hand. Something has to give. Already there exist laws to prevent the mentally ill from obtaining these weapons and any reasonable person will consider this a sensible act. There are also laws that prohibit felons from firearm possession….excellent! Although, some may argue that after they have been rehabbed, they should be allowed, but that’s another subject.
The funny thing about laws is that they can only prohibit an act with the threat of a negative consequence. The laws don’t automatically prevent the event from occurring, they just trigger a violent response from the government, usually in the form of a penalty or incarceration
This is how a progressive nightmare plays out….
So, you (society) has decided that speeding is bad. It’s not in the public interest to have licensed drivers (remember driving is a privilege, not a right) imitating NASCAR on a public street. It’s bad…so we made some laws saying it’s bad and you can’t do it. You know that speeding still occurs, right? MMMM….This is indeed troubling. Society has decided that speeding is bad so we made laws and people STILL speed. Let’s make more laws! Not just regular old speeding but speeding in school zones, construction zones, civil speeding, criminal speeding, reckless endangerment speeding…..whew….I’m tired….but I think that about covers ALL the speeding that our society has been victimized by.
Why are people still speeding? We can’t make anymore laws regarding speeding, we’ve built prisons just to accommodate habitual speeders and yet….people still speed. What can we do??? What about the children?
I know! We will shoot people who speed…for the children. That’s what we’ll do! The firing squads form up and the prisons begin to empty. Now we are onto something!
Oh, no…someone was caught speeding today. I just don’t understand it. We’ve made laws against it, we’ve imprisoned people and we are even shooting people for it….why are people still speeding??? Yes, of course there are less people speeding, but that’s because we’ve shot the majority of them….but not all of them. There are still a few hold outs…
James. If I haven’t made my point, I never will.
The banning of guns in America is not an answer and never will be given tradition, also it would be like banning cars because a few people drink and drive.
But surely if we look at the growing number of people taking psychiatric medication gun ownership should be decreasing.
Guns and mental illness is like letting blind kids running around with scissors, amusing for a while but ultimately irresponsible.
I found a sobering link the other day.
http://www.naturalnews.com/039752_mass_shootings_psychiatric_drugs_antidepressants.html#
The rise in these occurrences is not due to an increase in gun ownership but an increase in the prescribing of psychiatric drugs. Doctors in the U.K very rarely diagnose someone with bipolar disorder before the age of 18. In the U.S it is common for children under 10 to be on medication for that condition.
It’s not the guns it’s the meds. It’s like blaming the car for the drunk driver.
James,
You are correct, Sir!
Banning guns will not stop the crazies from shooting a few innocents from time to time. You know in the Phillipines, following gun confiscation and gun ownership by F. Marcos, thousands of “home gunsmith” operations sprung up all over the country. You can’t ban technology or erase it from the collective experience of a civilization…although a few have tried; Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Progressive Liberals.
You should switch teams to the Libertarian side. You are a sharp, free thinker, James!