Trump Suggests That Soldiers Who Suffer From PTSD Aren’t “Strong”

[HereSince1628]

150. Suicide is not social violence. And I was only talking about social violence

My youngest brother committed suicide and he chose a gun as his second and final attempt to do that. Like most people who commit suicide he was not seeking assistance with mental health. The last thing he did before he killed himself was go bowling with his wife. Well hidden problem, I think...

There is no doubt that suicides that involve guns are a form of gun violence, but the public is most concerned about someone approaching them or a family members and doing violence against them. The public is concerned about going about normal things in their lives...such as going to school, the mall, the doctor, or church doesn't end in being gunned down. Suicides of avg citizens don't make front page news. Mass shootings in impoverished areas don't either, but, mass shootings in middle class environs almost always do, and the middle class is politically empowered.

A small number of suicides involve acts which put others at risk, although, murdering others prior to suicide or to engage suicide by cop is certainly a very contemporary concern. Still if you look at gun deaths that might be part of the mass-murder-plus-suicide category, the number of innocent victims killed per year is a fraction of the number of people intentionally killed by police. Police account for roughly 10% of gun homicides. Mass shootings account for less than 1% of gun deaths annually.

Forgetting suicide, getting killed randomly during some stranger's act of mass shooting is not a huge problem by the numbers, but it is undoubtedly THE most terrifying thing about gun violence. And that fear has tremendous capacity for political leverage based on nothing more than shared fear of it. Scapegoating that is important to dealing with that. And random mass shootings by mentally ill is THE THING which most promotes the most fear, thanks to the NRA's campaign about monsters amongst us.


To repeat, statistical analysis says it really ISN'T the most COMMON aspect of the gun violence problem. But it fits into the gestalt on the street. Who but crazy people shoot masses of people? The NRA pushes this, politicians buy it... the mentally ill are the gun wielding monsters among us. Politicians don't fight popular views, they go along with them and so Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Gary Johnson and Jill Stein aren't significantly different on their approach to ending gun violence.

All of them argue targeting the mentally ill as a way to end gun violence.

And so the mentally ill must have less privacy protections. The mentally ill must be more regularly evaluated as to their dangerousness. And if they have not already been charged with violence they must be considered as pre-perpetrators of social violence, just waiting for an opportunity. Hell why take the chance with crazy people? Right?

That shit is why a mentally ill person confronted by the police has a 30 times greater risk of being killed by a cop than a non-mentally ill person, it's 9mm/38 calibre prejudice. And everyone KNOWS it and buys it, and that socially acceptable prejudice is the reason persons diagnosed with mentally disorders have a bit more than 80% unemployment rate nationally.

And THAT is a very serious problem. Because, no one really knows how many people needing mental health care are just too damned afraid of the consequences of a mental illness dx to seek help.