Comments on: What We Really Need To Be Talking About

By: ken anthony

ken anthony — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 18:23:39 +0000

Responding to actions should cover any mental illness issues. We don’t have to figure out if someone may harm. We just have to look at have they harmed.

I seriously doubt many killers haven’t done something before their public debut.

By: Bart

Bart — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 06:40:14 +0000

Sort of like replicants with implanted memories of Tyrell’s niece. How can one cope with daily existence when one is not even sure which perceptions are real, and which are not?

By: Bart

Bart — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 06:37:44 +0000

All of the people I have known in that situation have spoken to me of things that they did which had an impact on me, or of things we did together, which quite simply never happened. Some are absurdly fanciful. Some are ordinary but just never were. I am under the impression that they have dreams, or something like them, which they cannot separate from reality.

Not arguing with you, just trying to fill out a picture of my experiences FWIW to anyone reading. That’s what makes it so difficult to tag them as “evil” or any other characteristic which suggests rationality. The stimuli upon which they act may not even have genuinely happened. You can try to tell them things like this did not, or could not, happen, but they will not believe you because, to them, they saw it and heard it with their own eyes and ears.

By: Larry J

Larry J — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 13:29:48 +0000

An irrational “why” is really not a “why” at all.

Not to you and me but to him, it may have made perfect sense. That’s one of the problems with mental illness – it makes it difficult to impossible for people to make rational decisions because their very thought processes are disrupted.

By: Bart

Bart — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 10:07:35 +0000

Assume for the sake of argument true. On the one hand, it could have crashed and he destroyed it in a fit of rage and shot his mother when she refused to buy a new one – delicate electronics tend not to last long with these folks, and she may have bought several before.

On the other, people with such afflictions can often be highly intelligent – I’ve known three people afflicted with severe schizophrenia and they were all very high IQ, one just off the charts, one well up there, and one a musical savant.

I can’t point to any specific study, but I’ve often thought there may be something to the effect that the more complex the wiring, the more likely you are to get a short. They’re not totally bereft of thought, they’re just unstable and unable to maintain coherence or concentration for very long.

By: Engineer

Engineer — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 02:43:08 +0000

Not sure on validity with so much misinformation but saw one report the hard drive of his computer was intentionally damaged and left on the floor. If true sort of leads me to believe he had some sort of rational thought going and wasn’t just crazy cause he was crazy.

By: Bart

Bart — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 01:54:42 +0000

Like, “because my dog told me to”, or “because the Beatles told us to”. An irrational “why” is really not a “why” at all. It’s like asking “why did the dice come up snake eyes”, only even more random, because the dice don’t even exist except inside the person’s head.

By: Larry J

Larry J — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:26:28 +0000

While your point is valid, there may be a “why” but likely one we couldn’t possibly understand. Like you said, we have no common frame of reference.

By: Daver

Daver — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:10:02 +0000

A bit of a quibble–their goal isn’t to keep the guns out of the hands of everyone, just everyone without the right connections. As the Instpundit has pointed out, look how many of the gun controllers either have their own guns or have bodyguards with guns.

By: Bart

Bart — Mon, 17 Dec 2012 21:02:36 +0000

I want to make this point very strongly . There is no "why".