Ex-LDS Mother Responds to the Shootings

[Guest]

I am not sure how I feel about this one. A woman from Boise, ID writes about her own son as potentially being the kind of child who could one day perpetrate a mass shooting like the Sandy Hook incident:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/16/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother-mental-illness-conversation_n_2311009.html

A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7 and 9 year old siblings knew the safety plan -- they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.

That conflict ended with three burly police officers and a paramedic wrestling my son onto a gurney for an expensive ambulance ride to the local emergency room. The mental hospital didn’t have any beds that day, and Michael calmed down nicely in the ER, so they sent us home with a prescription for Zyprexa and a follow-up visit with a local pediatric psychiatrist.

What a choice to face. What a position to be in. One has to be at wits end in order to write very publicly about your own son as someone who very well could perpetrate such a crime.

[_madeleine]

Isn't pulling a weapon on someone and threatening to kill them a crime, already? Mentally ill, or not, should such a person be on the loose?

[_Uther]

Heartwrenching.
I think the discussion is an important one as society needs to come to terms with how to deal with people with agressive mental disorders as well as the level of access to weapons with a high damage potential.

When I first started working as a paramedic, I remember being suprised by the actual frequency of cases where a family was struggelig with a loved one that regularely had to be picked up by us accompanied by the police, for either trying to end themselves or other family members. Luckily the tool at hand in most such cases was a knife or something similar, and not automatic weapons.

Being a father of 4 children, I can imagine some of the pain people experience in such experiences, either as victims or family of the perpetrator. Only 1,5 years ago I participated in rescuing/stabilizing/transporting children victims from a huge massacre in my country and it refreshes my memories when I read about similar cases.

I have a hard time understanding the logic behind the liberal gun laws in the US, although I understand its cultural/historical/weapon industry setting . It appears that people don't understand the amount of people that during their lifetime either have a breakdown including agressive behavior, or have mental disorders that allow for agressive action. In a certain state of mind, a sapien will use the tools at hand.

[_3sheets2thewind]

The main logic behind US firearms laws is that an armed citizenry is the last check against tyrannical government.

As you said sapiens will find the tool to fulfill their means.

[_ldsfaqs]

Teenager kills 9, wounds 4 in China knife attack

http://www.ktsf.com/en/teenager-kills-9 ... fe-attack/

Knife attack at Chinese school wounds 22 children

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/world/asi ... index.html

Weapons don't kill people, PEOPLE DO...!

A person's Moral Compass can be determined by how he referrences free men the right to defend themselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCHtw6WbbnM

[_Chap]

...

Weapons don't kill people, PEOPLE DO...!

...

But for some reason that I can't figure out, if

1. people don't have military style assault weapons that make it possible to wound or kill a large group of people in a few seconds without having to get up close with them one by one,

then,

2. people find it much more difficult to use military style assault weapons to wound or kill a large group of people in a few seconds without having to get up close with them one by one.

Why would that be, I wonder?

But I suppose that is irrelevant to the present discussion.

[_Chap]

Most of the attitudes I express on this board to the doctrines, institutional structures and practices of the CoJCoLDS are critical or questioning. But sometimes my experience here has the positive effect of increasing my range of human sympathy since I understand where people of a Mormon background are coming from.

I recently experienced an example of this. I heard the father of a child killed at Sandy Hook being interviewed by a radio reporter. The poor man was trying to say something to make sense of what had happened, and he spoke words like these:

"Well, this happened because that was the way that man chose to exercise his free agency. God gives us all free agency, and it's something that can never be taken away from us, and that's how he chose to use it."

He was not introduced as anything else but a grieving parent, but the discourse was distinctive and instantly recognizable. And, because I understood the framework he was trying to use to put something between himself and overwhelming grief and loss, I felt, if possible, sorrier for him than if he had not used the terms he did.

My understanding does no good at all to the poor man, and it does nothing to make me more admirable. I merely offer the observation as an example of the positive effects of knowing people better, no matter in what context the knowledge is gained.

[_Uther]

Teenager kills 9, wounds 4 in China knife attack

http://www.ktsf.com/en/teenager-kills-9 ... fe-attack/

Knife attack at Chinese school wounds 22 children

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/14/world/asi ... index.html

Weapons don't kill people, PEOPLE DO...!

A person's Moral Compass can be determined by how he referrences free men the right to defend themselves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCHtw6WbbnM

So to sum it up you don't see any difference in giving a mentally unstable person access to an automatic rifle, vs a kitchen knife?

[_Uther]

Most of the attitudes I express on this board to the doctrines, institutional structures and practices of the CoJCoLDS are critical or questioning. But sometimes my experience here has the positive effect of increasing my range of human sympathy since I understand where people of a Mormon background are coming from.

I recently experienced an example of this. I heard the father of a child killed at Sandy Hook being interviewed by a radio reporter. The poor man was trying to say something to make sense of what had happened, and he spoke words like these:

"Well, this happened because that was the way that man chose to exercise his free agency. God gives us all free agency, and it's something that can never be taken away from us, and that's how he chose to use it."

He was not introduced as anything else but a grieving parent, but the discourse was distinctive and instantly recognizable. And, because I understood the framework he was trying to use to put something between himself and overwhelming grief and loss, I felt, if possible, sorrier for him than if he had not used the terms he did.

My understanding does no good at all to the poor man, and it does nothing to make me more admirable. I merely offer the observation as an example of the positive effects of knowing people better, no matter in what context the knowledge is gained.

I think the part where media serves tearfilled grievers to the watching crowd is a very difficult ethical situation. I don't think someone in an early shock and grief situation is the right person in front of the camera, unless one wants to document chaos.

[_Chap]

I think the part where media serves tearfilled grievers to the watching crowd is a very difficult ethical situation. I don't think someone in an early shock and grief situation is the right person in front of the camera, unless one wants to document chaos.

But in this case the bereaved parent's response was dignified and rational. I suspect that the ethico-religious framework he used helped him to do that. He felt he had an answer to the 'why' question, I suppose. No sign of chaos there at all.