While many have bought into the simplistic idea that availability of firearms is the cause of mass shootings, a number of experts have pointed out a more uncomfortable truth, which is that mass shootings are far more likely the result of how we’ve been mistreating mental illness, depression and behavioral problems
Gun control legislation has shown that law-abiding Americans who own guns are not the problem, because the more gun control laws that have been passed, the more mass shootings have occurred
97.8% of mass shootings occur in “gun-free zones,” as the perpetrators know legally armed citizens won’t be there to stop them
Depression per se rarely results in violence. Only after antidepressants became commonplace did mass shootings really take off, and many mass shooters have been shown to be on antidepressants
Antidepressants, especially selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), are well-known for their ability to cause suicidal and homicidal ideation and violence
While many have bought into the simplistic idea that availability of firearms is the cause of mass shootings, a number of experts have pointed out a more uncomfortable truth, which is that mass shootings are far more likely the result of how we’ve been mistreating mental illness, depression and behavioral problems.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a mass murder occurs when at least four people are murdered, not including the shooter, over a relatively short period of time during a single incident. Over the last 30 years, the United States has seen a significant increase in mass shootings, which are becoming more frequent and more deadly.
Seemingly every time a mass shooting occurs, whether it’s at a synagogue in Pittsburgh or a nightclub in Orlando, the anti-gun media and politicians have a knee-jerk response – they blame the tragedy solely on the tool used, namely firearms, and focus all of their proposed “solutions” on more laws, ignoring that the murderer already broke numerous laws when they committed their atrocity.
Facts matter when addressing such an emotionally charged topic, and more gun control legislation has shown that law-abiding Americans who own guns are not the problem. Consider the following: The more gun control laws that are passed, the more mass murders have occurred.
With virtually all details about the perpetrator behind yesterday’s tragic Jacksonville shooting, David Katz, having been disclosed in the past 24 hours, one question remained: what was his motive to open fire at the Madden NFL 19 competition at the Jacksonville Landing entertainment complex, killing twp people and wounding 11 before taking his own life.
David Katz
One day later, the Associated Press reports that according to court records and people who knew him, Katz had a “weird” online presence and spent time in and out of psychiatric facilities as a teenager. and had been hospitalized for mental illness. Divorce filings from Katz’s parents say that as a teenager he was twice hospitalized in psychiatric facilities and that he was prescribed anti-psychotic and anti-depressant medications.
In the United States, there are one million children under the age of six on psychiatric drugs. This number is particularly disturbing, considering the horrifying side effects and ineffectiveness of a good number of these types of harmful drugs.
One in six Americans overall regularly take some type of medication in this category. However, children are now being swept up in Big Pharma’s desire to make money, not improve health. Mental health watchdog group Citizens Commission on Human Rights is drawing attention to the concerning fact that more than a million kids younger than six in our nation are currently taking these psychiatric drugs.
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Tucker Carlson said Thursday on Fox News that psychiatric drugs, social alienation, the destruction of the nuclear family and the war on men are far more relevant topics to discuss than gun control if our goal is to stop mass shootings.
In the wake of the Florida school shooting, many on the left have renewed their calls for stricter gun control legislation.
Tucker Carlson suggested the attack on the Second Amendment isn’t about protecting American citizens, and it’s actually “a kind of class war.”
He said it’s important for our country to get to the bottom of what is actually causing the mass shooting epidemic, but that’s not happening.
“That vital conversation has been drowned out and made impossible by mindless screeching about gun control, led by blustery charlatans in the media … and in Congress, whose only real agenda is moral preening,” Carlson said. “They aren’t trying to solve the problem. Their aims are darker.”
He argued that many liberals want a landmark gun control bill like the one Australia passed in 1996, which amounted to “gun confiscation.”
He said the liberals’ goals are gun seizures, ammunition regulation and disarming the American population, resulting in a country where only the people in charge have guns, and everyone else obeys.
“The calls you’re hearing today for gun control have nothing to do with protecting Americans from violence. What you’re witnessing is a kind of class war,” Carlson said. “The left hates rural America, red America, gun-owning America, the America that elected Donald Trump.”
“They call it ‘gun control.’ It’s not. It’s people control. For the left, voters who can’t be controlled can’t be trusted.”
Following recent media reports of high-profile mass shootings, a Republican assemblywoman from Nevada is calling for an investigation into whether psychiatric pharmaceuticals commonly taken by mass murderers can cause side effects that may contribute to their mental health decline.
According to KSNV Las Vegas, GOP Assemblywoman Michele Fiore says that, rather than blaming mass shootings on the guns used by the perpetrators, studies should be done on the drugs that many of them have a history of having taken to treat mental health disorders.
“We have to look into what is being prescribed and what is in these meds just like clinical studies. Why don’t we do studies on the medication all of these shooters were taking and take that medication off the market? Obviously, medications can alter your mind just as alcohol can alter the mind,” said Fiore.
Though it is not yet known whether the perpetrator in last week’s tragic shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon was on psychiatric medication, early reports from The Oregonian note that he identified himself by the social media screen name “lithium love,” he mentioned anger and depression in a note that was found in connection with the attack, and he had a long history of behavioral problems in school.
He had also been discharged by the U.S. Army midway through basic training in 2008 and graduated from a school that The Oregonian described as “geared for special education students with a range of issues from learning disabilities, health problems and autism or Asperger’s Disorder.”
In August of this year, a CBS46 Atlanta Reality Check report by Ben Swann raised questions about the possibility of a connection between mass murderers and pharmaceutical drugs used to treat mental health disorders, noting that 26 high-profile perpetrators had been taking psychiatric medication.
Latest nutjob to become famous for killing people.
I actually agree with Obama for once. The savior in chief again stepped up to his teleprompter and attempted to capitalize on another mass shooting tragedy for his own political purposes. He thinks the murder of 9 people by another mentally defective, emotionally disturbed, unemployed, male loser from a broken home should be politicized to do away with your Second Amendment rights. He blames guns for the mass murder.
That’s funny. I think this should be politicized for an entirely different logical reason. I focused on a couple key facts the MSM and Obama will ignore:
Records show Harper-Mercer, 26, lived in a ground-floor apartment on Arlington Avenue at 230th Street in Torrance with his mother, Laurel Harper, from 2011 to 2013. Lists of South Bay graduates from 2009 published in the Daily Breeze showed Harper Mercer graduated from the Switzer Learning Center in Torrance with four other students. Switzer teaches students with learning disabilities and emotional issues. A former behavioral aide at Switzer, who did not want her name used, said the majority of the students at the school are from foster, low-income and single-parent homes. Some of these students were expelled from other schools or had been in trouble with the law. The school is divided among special needs students and those with behavioral problems.
It is pretty clear he has been emotionally disturbed for years if he graduated from a school for emotionally disturbed kids who can’t function in traditional public schools. Then there was another tidbit that he posted on some social media site with the alias Lithium Lover. Lithium just happens to be a drug as described below:
Lithium is useful in the treatment of bipolar disorder. Lithium salts may also be helpful for related diagnoses, such as schizoaffective disorder and cyclic major depression.
So we have another male loner who has been emotionally disturbed for years from a broken home. Can someone please ask his father or mother whether he was taking psychotropic drugs of any kind? Or is that a private matter that has nothing to do with this mass murder? Virtually every mass murder over the last 10 years has been committed by mentally disturbed young men who were on psychotropic drugs. Jared Lee Loughner, Adam Lanza, Seung-Hui Cho and James Holmes were all on psychotropic drugs. Why is no one in the mass media exploring this key fact? I’ll tell you. It’s because they have an anti-gun agenda. Obama should be calling for a ban on psychotropic drugs being distributed to teenagers.
The mass murder issue should be politicized. Obama and the mass media should be politicizing why there are so many emotionally disturbed young men being drugged up by Big Pharma with dangerous drugs that have proven to spur anger and mass murder. It will take a non-mainstream media to uncover the truth about what drugs this dude was taking.
Both mental illnesses and intellectual disabilities can make it difficult for someone to function in society. But they’re distinct groups of problems, and the treatments you’d use for one simply won’t be effective for the other.
A new study suggests that doctors in the UK haven’t kept those facts in mind when writing prescriptions. The study found that antipsychotics were frequently being prescribed to those with intellectual disabilities, even if the patients had never been diagnosed with symptoms of a mental illness. Evidence suggests that this may have been done simply to deal with behavioral problems.
Intellectual disabilities interfere with a person’s ability to process information. While this would obviously interfere with academic achievement, it also limits a person’s ability to develop social and practical skills. As a result, you might expect some behavioral issues when these individuals interact with society at large.
The libs are already using the latest mass shooting as a rallying cry for gun control. Before it was semi-automatic weapons. Now it’s handguns. Obama will do his usual jibber jabber about the dangers of the 2nd Amendment. MSNBC will spend hours on the subject. They will mention he was a member of the Tea Party 4,000 times in the next week. No agenda there, I’m sure.
Why isn’t there an uproar about the Drug Company responsibility in this murder? The Reuters article buries the best stuff at the very end of the article. What a surprise.
Here are the pertinent passages:
A 59-year-old man who had been committed to a hospital for psychiatric care was identified by authorities on Friday as the gunman who fatally shot two people in a rampage at a crowded movie theater in central Louisiana before turning the gun on himself as police closed in.
Houser had a volatile relationship with his family, who said he had a history of mental illness. In April 2008, he was ordered not to contact his wife, daughter and other relatives after they filed a request for a protective order against him in Carroll County, Georgia.
In the request, Houser’s estranged wife, Kellie Houser, said she feared for his “volatile mental state” after he threatened to stop the wedding of his daughter and her boyfriend, according to court records. She said her husband was on daily medications for manic-depression and bipolar disorder at the time.
Earlier, Houser was involuntary committed to a hospital for psychiatric care, according to court documents. His family was concerned he could be a danger to himself and others, according to the petition.
He was denied a concealed carry permit in Russell County, Alabama in 2006 because of a report or domestic violence filed against him by his wife in 2005 and a previous arrest, authorities said.
I am not against the manufacture and sale of psychotropic drugs. These medications have helped millions of people deal successfully with mental disorders ranging from mild depression to severe psychoses such as schizophrenia. What I am against is the increasingly wholesale prescription of these drugs to those under the age of 25, when the brain is still maturing. This must be done very carefully to insure these young patients are, per a Food and Drug Administration warning, regularly monitored for behavioral changes by both the attending physician AND caregiver(s) of the patient.
What do I mean by “wholesale prescription?” Here’s an example. The granddaddy of anti-depressants on the market today is Prozac, a product of Eli Lilly. It first came on the market in 1989. In 2010, 24 MILLION prescriptions for Prozac and its generic cousin (fluoxetine) were written just in the U.S. alone. Wow, from zero to 24 million in just 21 years. And Prozac is no longer the most prescribed anti-depressant; it is #3. The #1 and #2 spots are held by Zoloft/generic and Celexa/generic, respectively. Do you think that these potentially dangerous, to those under 25, psychotropic drugs are being over prescribed? I do. And they are wrecking havoc both here and abroad.
Andreas Lubitz was born in Germany on December 18, 1987 and died by suicide on March 24, 2015. In 2009, at the age of 21, he was diagnosed with severe depressive disorder and treated with psychotherapy to include taking two powerful anti-depressant drugs, Mirtazapine and Cipralex (aka Lexapro). Both of these drugs qualify for the following warning by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, quoted verbatim from its website:
Looks like I was right again. Now the cover-up will begin. The U.S. corporate media is not reporting the fact that anti-depression drugs are the cause of this crash. The drug companies know their drugs result in mass murder, suicide, and ruining people’s lives, but they are the major advertisers on the mainstream media and the media whores will cover-up these facts to keep profits flowing. The drug companies are also huge contributors to politicians, who will never ask the tough questions about these drugs.
Will they report the drugs this guy was on? We know the U.S. media will not. Maybe the German media has more credibility and will report the truth. But, I doubt it.
Germanwings crash: Co-pilot ‘treated for depression’
The man suspected of deliberately crashing a Germanwings A320 plane in the French Alps required treatment for depression, German media say.
Regular assessments were recommended in Andreas Lubitz’s official notes after a serious episode some years ago.
The Barcelona-Duesseldorf plane crashed on Tuesday, killing 150 people.
Data from the plane’s voice recorder suggest Mr Lubitz purposely started a descent as the pilot was locked out of the cockpit.
Several airlines have now pledged to change their rules to ensure at least two crew members are present in the cockpit at all times.
Police have searched two German properties used by Mr Lubitz, taking away boxes and a computer.
‘Heavily depressive’
When Mr Lubitz finished training in 2009, he was diagnosed with a serious depressive episode and went on to receive treatment for a year and a half, the German news site Bild reports.
Internal documents quoted by Bild and German broadcaster ARD say a note on Mr Lubitz’s aviation authority file recommended regular psychological assessment.
Mr Lubitz’s employers have confirmed that his training was interrupted for several months six years ago.
But they have not said why. Carsten Spohr – the head of Lufthansa, the German carrier that owns Germanwings – said on Thursday that Mr Lubitz was only able to resume training after his suitability was “re-established”.
“He passed all the subsequent tests and checks with flying colours,” Mr Spohr was quoted as saying.
German media are also reporting that investigators have found evidence of mental health problems at Mr Lubitz’s Duesseldorf flat.
Earlier, another media report quoted a police spokesman as saying “a very significant clue as to what has happened” had been found during the search of the house the 27-year-old shared with his parents in Montabaur, north of Frankfurt, without specifying what.
Police said the discovery was not a suicide note.
French Prime Minister Manual Valls said the investigation was ongoing, but that “everything is pointing to a criminal, crazy, suicidal action that we cannot comprehend”.
He said investigators and Lufthansa would have to “shed light on the career and profile of this pilot”.
Police continued to come and go at the Montabaur house throughout Thursday morning, reports the BBC’s Anna Holligan who is outside.
She says there are concerns for Mr Lubitz’s parents, who have suffered not just one trauma – their son dying in a crash – but the subsequent shock of finding out he may have been responsible for the tragedy.
