Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
This is clearly a breakdown in the system. When you have teachers fearful of someone bringing automatic weapons to school and nothing is done, the system is fatally flawed.
What could have been done?
PErhaps anyone with a mental illness could be placed in an institution???
PErhaps anyone with a mental illness could be placed in an institution???
There are systems in place to put someone into treatment involuntarily. However, it is fraught with red tape and quite difficult to do. I think the parents, in this case, would have been in the best position to get the treatment necessary for this young man. Since I have no knowledge about their efforts, I cannot speak to whether they did or did not do so.
One thing is sure; there is a balance of rights, from medical and privacy concerns to should the mentally ill own weapons. It's not something that can be answered in a quick two second conversation but hopefully we can get off the mantra of which political persuasion this young man had and start having a conversation of what to do with these young people that are found to be suffering from mental illness and yet are so often not treated properly. Is this a failing of the institutional systems, the medical community, the parents or what?
I've followed all 137 pages of this thread from the very beginning. I have seen the reaction from some that immediately, before hardly any details were in, that wanted to blame the Tea Party, Beck, Fox, and especially Sarah Palin.
It was after this that I saw the reaction from right wing supporters to these types of statements. First, the reaction was all the facts are not known, let's wait. Next reaction was this is a disturbed young man, let's not bring politics into it. Finally, it was demonstrating that the left had employed similar rhetoric in political discussions. Finally, it was an effort to show that this young man was more aligned with the left than the right.
Look, the smart thing here would be to reserve and hold judgement until all of the facts are in. However, you cannot insult someone while doing so otherwise that is just begging for a response in kind.
Take a deep breath and decide if you're part of the problem or the solution. I think healthy debate is great but disparaging and insulting remarks are not.
I do believe that is what quite a few posters from the right tried to do,in the face of more and more leftist posters piling on that this was the fault of politicians from the right....
ABC News reported Saturday night that Loughner had identified among his favorite books "The Communist Manifesto" by Karl Marx, Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and the fiction classic "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest" -- hardly the reading list of a Palin supporter.
Other clues have emerged about Loughner's persona from Arizona press reports:
He is "described by friends and former classmates as a loner, prone to dressing in black regalia of boots, trench coat and baggy pants even on the hottest days."
He was removed from Pima Community College "for causing disruptions in classrooms and the library, college officials said. His dispute with college officials led him to post a bizarre YouTube video declaring the college illegal under the U.S. Constitution and culminated in his suspension from campus."
His rants against the government that have surfaced on the Internet don't suggest he had a conservative perspective on big government. Instead Laughner's MySpace featured a photo "showing a close-up picture of an automatic handgun sitting atop a book or paper titled 'United States History.'" Another video shows a masked man burning the American flag.
"I can't trust the current government because of fabrications," Loughner wrote in a YouTube slideshow. "The government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar."
Loughner suggests that he was rejected from entering the U.S. Army to which he applied because he was offered a "mini Bible" during the recruitment process, but that he declined to "write a belief on my Army application and the recruiter wrote on the application: None."
It's disingenuous to pretend Palin's hunting metaphor was hate speech.
Currently, there's also no rational reason to believe Palin's speech was in any way related to the killings.
The only reason that a person would try to associate Palin with the killer is because they want to discredit her politically, and they are willing to do that off the backs of a dead 9 year old girl, a Judge, and a handful of other victims.
That's the most hateful speech I see in this whole affair.
There are systems in place to put someone into treatment involuntarily. However, it is fraught with red tape and quite difficult to do. I think the parents, in this case, would have been in the best position to get the treatment necessary for this young man. Since I have no knowledge about their efforts, I cannot speak to whether they did or did not do so.
He was an adult,did his parents have any legal say really?
Quote:
One thing is sure; there is a balance of rights, from medical and privacy concerns to should the mentally ill own weapons. It's not something that can be answered in a quick two second conversation but hopefully we can get off the mantra of which political persuasion this young man had and start having a conversation of what to do with these young people that are found to be suffering from mental illness and yet are so often not treated properly. Is this a failing of the institutional systems, the medical community, the parents or what?
That is what I was getting at,should the desire to be safe from violent mentally ill people mean those people do not have the same rights as others???
The reason I pointed out the killer was a left winger was to discredit the idea that he killed because of something Palin or Beck had said.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
