> So you have all this talk of "bump stocks" and "ghost guns" and "assault weapons" and whatnot, but it's all just smoke and mirrors to assuage fears. The goal isn't to save lives. The goal is to assuage fears. I don't take any gun policy seriously that purports to save lives if it isn't focused on handguns and suicides.
It's also politics. If you actually wanted to solve the problem, well, like two thirds of US firearms fatalities are suicides. So a real solution is going to look like "improve mental health" and not "restrict who can buy a gun" or else you're only going to be diverting people to other methods of suicide, or keeping people "alive" but still in such a precarious mental state that the only thing preventing them from taking their own life is access to an effective means. Neither of which is actually acceptable.
But from a political perspective, proposing useless gun restrictions makes the other team have to spend political capital to oppose them, because even if they're completely ineffective at their stated purpose, they upset or inconvenience the other team's constituents. Which seems to be the goal of modern US politics.
CDC lists causes such as childhood trauma, trauma from medical issues, biological factors, alcohol or drugs, and loneliness or isolation.
How do you set out to tackle loneliness or isolation? How do you help prevent alcohol or drug addiction? What are the reasons that people become addicted to drugs or alcohol?
> Use and misuse of alcohol, nicotine, and illicit drugs, and misuse of prescription drugs cost Americans more than $700 billion a year in increased health care costs, crime, and lost productivity.
> Some must cope with the early loss of a parent, violence, or sexual abuse. While not everyone who faces these stresses develops a mood disorder — in fact, most do not — stress plays an important role in depression.
This is a big interconnected problem. My point is that just giving directly to mental health resources rings hollow. A tougher holistic approach needs to examine why American society just plain sucks for so many people. Why do people want to kill themselves or others? Why does life suck so much for so many? We have a rotten system and drug addiction/gun violence/suicide are symptoms and not causes.
>How do you set out to tackle loneliness or isolation?
Not having your media contributing to hyper-polarization of your populace through algorithm enforced bubbling, or riling them up through fear mongering helps. Lack of public works may also be a contributing factor. One thing I will say for the Great Depression/New Deal generation: they didn't have anywhere near the isolation issues our generation seems to grapple with.
> How do you help prevent alcohol or drug addiction? What are the reasons that people become addicted to drugs or alcohol?
Inability to escape or alter their situation except by altered mental state. Get people something they can constructively do (and fairly pay then for their time) and it's amazing how positive coping skills materialize.
For those with non-economic contributing factors, a big part of it seems to be social enablement, removing them from the stressor, etc... Which a robust framework of social services may help more with as long as you don't start trying to turn reaching out into a life tainting thing (no publically available by default records for info brokers to suck up that would adversely effect future prospects).
Also, unironically, a better justice system, post-release process.
These aren't hard. Just not terribly popular, due to the fact you have to pay people to help other people improve their lot. Or literally just inspect to make sure people are effectively using resources available to get their stuff straight.
A very simple step in the right direction would be to create more places where the exchange of money for goods and services is not a requirement for attendance. It sucks to be too poor to go to the library 8 miles away because you can't afford the bus pass.
On many occasions in the past, I’ve found that doing anything often works better than doing nothing, like the US usually advocates.
Turns out that there are no perfect solutions, but there are a lot of partial solutions that in aggregate add up to the mental health the rest of the developed world has.
In particular, by the time a problem becomes prominent enough to be noticed by politicians, it has often already been solved and the ensuing legislation is nothing but a deadweight loss.
For example, before 9/11 the assumption was that hijackers would try to ransom the passengers for money, so it was better not to resist so they didn't hurt anybody. After 9/11, the assumption had to be that they were planning to crash the plane, at which point all the passengers resist and a hundred passengers can easily take on half a dozen hijackers and it's well worth the risk of one or two getting hurt in the process.
So by 9/12, another 9/11 was no longer possible. It was already solved. None of the government action that followed was actually necessary and the TSA is completely pointless.
Thank you for making an account to attack a point that I did not make.
I did not say to do nothing. I said it will probably take a holistic approach. Holistic means look at the issue as a whole rather than trying to attack one symptom. A holistic approach would likely implement plenty of small partial solutions.
It seems like free therapy would help with all of this? Therapy is part of free health care in other countries if I recall. Also free health care would help prevent people from ending up in dire straits.
> just giving directly to mental health resources rings hollow. A tougher holistic approach needs to examine why American society just plain sucks for so many people
I don't think they are mutually exclusive, mental health can incorporate a systems approach. It seems patently foolish to ignore lifestyle factors like diet, exercise, sleep or social factors like friends, family, religion & other communal institutions.
While I agree with the message I don't think this will sell well. Many people do not even have the faintest idea of what depression is like and understand it as an illness. So they see it as a personal choice and therefore not a thing for the government to solve. Similar to drugs. This is of course despite the connections to environmental causes and government regulations. You greatly decrease rates of depression and drug usage, which are highly correlated, by the same thing. Making life better and less stressful. That even helps non-depressed and non-drug users.
Despite that, I think we should just talk about other types of gun violence. The vast majority of which involve hand guns. Which if you understand this, makes the national conversation seem extremely odd.
I'd encourage everyone to watch Sapolsky's lecture on Depression[0].
[0^] My running hypothesis is that the since we have a new fiasco every other day that it causes over stimulation (like a stress response) and causes socio-motor retardation (analogous to psychomotor retardation)
> or else you're only going to be diverting people to other methods of suicide
It's important to point out that you can do comparisons between the US and other countries where guns are far more restricted and a lot of the US gun mortality shows up as other forms of suicide.
> because even if they're completely ineffective at their stated purpose
Ineffective measures are actually politically superior: They don't cure their ill, so you can keep using them again and again.
If $random_gun_restriction actually worked passing it would diminish your ability to campaign on gun issues in the future. This bad incentive applies on all sides too, not just pro-gun control. The gun control lobby is one of the single most effective promotional tools of anti-gun-control politicians.
> It's also politics. If you actually wanted to solve the problem
The pairing of politics to problem is a challenge in that solving a problem means shifting focus to a different problem set. A different problem set will likely emerge a different politics which is effectively a threat to the people engaged in the current politics.
While I agree with the idea that removing a quick and accessible means of suicide can reduce suicide rates, there's a huge caveat on that article.
> we did not have the ability to control for differences between the two countries including poverty, unemployment, health systems, cultural, or other differences
The authors go on to suggest that they may in fact be underestimating the amount of suicides that could be averted with reduced gun ownership, but there are an awful lot of confounding factors that are simply not addressed in this paper.
It's also politics. If you actually wanted to solve the problem, well, like two thirds of US firearms fatalities are suicides. So a real solution is going to look like "improve mental health" and not "restrict who can buy a gun" or else you're only going to be diverting people to other methods of suicide, or keeping people "alive" but still in such a precarious mental state that the only thing preventing them from taking their own life is access to an effective means. Neither of which is actually acceptable.
But from a political perspective, proposing useless gun restrictions makes the other team have to spend political capital to oppose them, because even if they're completely ineffective at their stated purpose, they upset or inconvenience the other team's constituents. Which seems to be the goal of modern US politics.