my sorrow to the conn school shootings

[DinnerX]

All being declared sane by the courts means is that you're capable of understanding that what you did was wrong and can be held accountable for it.

That's precisely what I mean. Some folks I know essentially think, "Oh, only people totally out of their mind commit mass murders." They don't want to think someone who knew what they were doing could.

[ninjainspandex]

So what do they think hitler was insane and just needed meds and therapy?

[AppleQueso]

You guys don't actually believe that people declared criminially insane just get let off the hook and are fed 'meds and therapy' all day do you?

Most never see the light of day again.

[ninjainspandex]

No i was just wondering if they thought there was no such thing as just plain evil people.

[Luke]

It always comes back to Hitler.

[DinnerX]

You guys don't actually believe that people declared criminially insane just get let off the hook and are fed 'meds and therapy' all day do you?

No.

My gripe is many people don't seem to understand how off-key a person's principals can get.

Suppose I believe it's good to kill others. Suppose I believe other people don't matter. Suppose I believe the people I'm killing deserve to die. If I commit murder based on some thought like that, I knew exactly what I was doing and thought it wasn't really wrong. I'm not out of my mind, unless having sufficiently deviant morals is considered being insane.

[Breetai]

I'm not out of my mind, unless having sufficiently deviant morals is considered being insane.

Colloquially, I think it does. If anyone, sane or insane, believes that killing a bunch of young children is justifiable, I still say there is something wrong with their mind.

Yes, and saying "you have ebola" is a much more certain diagnosis than "you are going to kill a school full of children."

Agreed.

Mental illness, from my perspective, is like almost any other disease; early detection can prevent the exacerbation of the condition.

This. The problem is, there is such a stigma, even today, surrounding mental illness. People observe it in others, often those closest to them, and either don't want to admit it, or they ignore it in hopes that it'll go away. And the people who do have the mental illness are often too sick to realize that they have a problem, and instead believe that they're fine and it's everyone else that's wrong. There's still a lot of shame associated with admitting you have a mental illness, when the real shame comes in not seeking help.

In my opinion, the real conversation we should be having now should not be about gun control (though I do think that issue needs to be discussed at length as well), but about mental illness and how we can destroy the stigma associated with it so we can better help and treat people in the future and hopefully try to prevent more tragedies like this from transpiring.

Michi, you hit the nail on the head here I think.

[Hobie-wan]

http://gawker.com/5970386/police-raid-g ... pular=true

[dsheinem]

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/12/20/ ... deo-games/

^^the video is of a 7th grader from Newtown starting a movement to round up and destroy violent games (all of which the reporter hilariously calls "first person shooters").

[prfsnl_gmr]

Do we even know if the shooter played "violent" video games?

The recent focus on video games seems like a distraction from the real issues surrounding the shooting...