Monday, December 17, 2012

Ghoulish grave-dancing, or attempt to find solutions?

Karl Denninger at Market Ticker doesn't pull punches when he tackles any subject. Today he is writing about the Newton massacre, and trying to come up with rational ideas. He deals with facts about homicide and facts about mental illness.

The dystopia and ridiculous nature of a government proclaiming that "we must do something about guns" while it in fact illegally armed Mexican drug lords should make your head explode.

I support people carrying concealed -- including teachers and staff who are willing to and want to -- because unlike many I accept that no matter what we do we cannot have perfect defenses and that the last line of defense when someone has decided to commit murder is the ability to stop the assault. It's not a perfect line of defense but at that instant in time it's either that or nothing, and I believe that a fighting chance at life is preferable to certain death.

At the first sign of trouble we reach for the pill bottle and then expect a teen or young adult to self-report symptoms that by their nature will mark the person as nuts, and they know it.

Immediate revocation of prescriptions for all psychotropic substances, including but not limited to SSRIs, outside of psychiatric practice for anyone under the age of 25.

Where such drugs are prescribed under psychiatric care insist on continual professional monitoring on a schedule of no less than once every two weeks.

Change the law. If you're under psychiatric care involving medication that has a black-box warning then during that time you should be inhibited from purchasing or owning firearms. This won't stop someone from acquiring them via illegal means (e.g. murdering his mother) but it will stop him from buying them in a gun store.

Many other suggestions are being made this week by some of our best thinkers. Rush Limbaugh had much to say about this today on his program. Will we act on these and other good proposals? In the name of the children who were slaughtered in Newton, we must.

Read more here: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=215021

1 comment:

Terri Wagner said...

Unfortunately our mental health is dismal...but what is the answer? I've never been fond of drugs or mainstreaming...what think you?