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Originally posted by Storymark:
If they are honest about this, I suggest they invest in a large mirror.

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Originally posted by Niki2:
I knew it was coming...

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In his Friday morning news conference, National Rifle Association chief executive Wayne LaPierre floated the idea of a national registry of the mentally ill as one way to stem gun violence.

“How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?” he asked.

Turns out, many states are ahead of him: 38 states require or authorize the use of certain mental health records for use in a firearm background check, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that tracks state level gun legislation.

The Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibits gun sales to individuals who have been committed to a mental institution or “adjudicated as a mental defective.”

“The federal law pretty much says that anyone who has been involuntarily committed or anyone who has been determined by a court to be a danger to themselves or others, those two categories are prohibited from possessing firearms,” says Lindsay Nichols, an attorney with the Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

That prohibition stands today but is pretty difficult to enforce, partially due to the issue LaPierre mentioned: Reporting on mental health status is incomplete, with a hodgepodge of state laws that specify what information does, or does not, go into the federal background check system. More at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/21/the-nra-wan
ts-an-active-mental-illness-database-thirty-eight-states-have-that-now/

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Mind you, as put forth, I have no problem with such a registry of those Nichols described, who have been INVOLUNTARILY committed or are a danger to themselves or others. But the NRA's "national registry of the mentally ill" sickens me--let's put everyone who's ever had a mental illness on a national registry, but gawd forbid we should consider a registry of those who own weapons. There are FAR more people with a mental disorder who've never been violent than there are gun owners who've killed someone! Like we don't have a big enough problem trying to overcome the stigma that comes with a mental illness AS IT IS! How many years have we been trying to counter that stigma with education and information...and he wants to further stigmatize us?

It's a distraction, I realize that. We need to deal with the SERIOUSLY mentally ill AS WELL AS dealing with assault weapons and the gun-show loophole. What good is a national registry of ANYONE when guns can be bought without even a background check? Which of course the NRA would fight tooth and nail...

"Hey! Look over here! Don't look over there!"

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"So, if poison pills or a lethal injection can be considered “medicine,” why can’t a Colt 45 be deemed a palliative medical device? The result is the same, after all."
-Wesley J. Smith attorney at law blog, Cartoon Illustrates Need For Conscience Clause Protecting Hippocratic Physicians
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/author/wesley-j-smith/p
age/6/

“You will never get accustomed to killing somebody. Writing a prescription is like giving a patient a loaded gun and just asking him not to shoot before you leave the house.”
-Dr Pieter Admiraal M.D., leader of The Netherlands euthanasia movement, American Medical News 9/15/1997

"The most stunning statistic, however, is that the total number of deaths caused by conventional medicine is an astounding 783,936 per year. It is now evident that the American medical system is the leading cause of death and injury in the US. Using Leape's 1997 medical and drug error rate would add another 216,000 deaths, for a total of 999,936 deaths annually. Our estimated 10-year total of 7.8 million iatrogenic* deaths is more than all the casualties from all the wars fought by the US throughout its entire history. Our considerably higher figure is equivalent to six jumbo jets are falling out of the sky each day."
—Gary Null, PhD; Carolyn Dean MD, ND; Martin Feldman, MD; Debora Rasio, MD; Dorothy Smith, PhD, "Death by Medicine", March 2004 (plus 10-Million annual aborticides in USA)
http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2004/mar2004_awsi_death_01.htm

"Harold Shipman, the British family doctor who murdered more than 200 of his patients to become one of the worst serial killers of all time, hanged himself in his prison cell on the eve of his 58th birthday, prison officials said. Shipman was sentenced to life imprisonment in January 2000 for the murder of 15 female patients between 1975 and 1998, and faced no prospect of parole. Two years later an inquiry concluded that he was responsible for the deaths by lethal injection of at least another 200 mostly female and elderly patients at his greater Manchester area practice. Most of Shipman's victims died suddenly without having experienced any life-threatening symptoms. They were, by and large, elderly women who died after being given a lethal injection, usually of morphine, while Shipman visited them in their homes."
—Reuters, "Britain's worst serial killer Dr. 'Death' dies in prison," January 13, 2004
www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1024925.htm

"The Centers for Disease Control says that 100,000 young athletes between the ages of 13 and 30 drop dead every year, either during exercise, during a sporting event or immediately after. Or twice that."
-Dr Joel Wallach ND DVM, Nobel Prize nominee, Dead Athletes Don't Lie, author of Dead Doctors Don't Lie (46-million copies sold)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9000052717197218681&hl=en
http://firstamendmentradio.com
http://www.wallachonline.com
http://www.deaddoctors.com

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I remember the blame started being laid on tv back when I was a child then in high school it became movies and video games. As an young adult it became music's fault for the violence in society.

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On another note mental illness isn't the only thing that people don't understand. Say the word seizure and you can get similar reactions. I was talking to someone I know, just an acquantance and I mentioned that I experience seizures. This person backed away from me. Like I was going to have one right in front of her.

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Originally posted by Niki2:
Frem, "stigma" is not "stigmata". The two terms are not interchangeable, in any way.

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
I'm between both of you, I think everyone actually IS crazy and could snap at a moments notice under the right circumstances, but at the same time I don't think we should be diagnosing basic human behaviour.

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