California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

"Spare me the bullshit about mental illness"

by John Lawrence

In sane countries abortions are legal and assault rifles are illegal just the opposite of the US. Italian women are eligible to request an abortion for health, economic or social reasons, including the circumstances under which conception occurred. Abortions are performed free of charge in public hospitals or in private structures authorized by the regional health authorities. Assault weapons are not legal in Italy, nor are any fully automatic rifles or handguns. Noise suppressors, or silencers, are also illegal, along with any kind of military or police-grade weapons. Abortion in the United Kingdom is de facto available through the Abortion Act 1967 in Great Britain, and the Abortion (Northern Ireland) (No. 2) Regulations 2020.The following are generally prohibited: Fully automatic or burst-fire weapons, which may include some air guns. Semi-automatic or pump-action rifles that fire centre-fire ammunition (e.g. Ruger Mini-14, L1A1). The Swedish Abortion Act came into force in 1974, giving women the right to decide for themselves whether they wanted to end a pregnancy in the first eighteen weeks. Since then, abortion procedures have become more effective, safe, accepted and accessible. Current Norwegian legislation and public health policy provides for abortion on request in the first 12 weeks of gestation, by application up to the 18th week, and thereafter only under special circumstances until the fetus is viable, which is usually presumed at 21 weeks and 6 days. In Norway there is a total ban on automatic firearms for civilians, unless they fall into the collector category. Modification of semi-automatic guns into fully automatic without the consent of the police is a felony crime. The EU already bans all automatic weapons, plus some semi-automatic guns widely available in the United States.

Apart from the very few European nations that retain highly restrictive laws on abortion — Andorra, Lichtenstein, Malta, Monaco and Poland — no other European country “bans” abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Instead, almost all European countries allow abortion throughout pregnancy on a range of grounds, including where there are risks to a patient’s physical or mental health, and in situations involving severe or fatal fetal impairment. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, 95% of European women of reproductive age live in a country where abortion services are available on demand.

NBC reported:

[Connecticut Senator] Murphy said the shooting deaths of 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday was a uniquely American problem.

"This only happens in this country and nowhere else. Nowhere else do little kids go to school thinking that they might be shot that day. Nowhere else do parents have to talk to their kids as I have had to do about why they got locked into a bathroom and told to be quiet for five minutes just in case a bad man entered that building. Nowhere else does that happen except here in the United States of America. And it is a choice. It is our choice to let it continue," Murphy said.

In comments to reporters afterward, Murphy took aim at the Republican talking point that mass shootings are a problem of mental illness, not easy access to guns.

"Spare me the bullshit about mental illness. We don’t have any more mental illness than any other country in the world. You cannot explain this through a prism of mental illness, because we don’t — we’re not an outlier on mental illness. We’re an outlier when it comes to access to firearms and the ability of criminals and very sick people to get their hands on firearms. That’s what makes America different,” he said.

There are only three countries that have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms: Mexico, Guatemala, and the United States. The US quibbles while the earth burns and floods due to global warming. Nations are immersed in conflict while they need to be cooperating if the human species, despite all its vaunted high technology, is to survive. Earth itself will survive. The survival of the human species is doubtful unless every nation goes all out to prevent global warming which is not happening. What is happening is that nations are trying to prevent the release of greenhouse gasses on the margins without interfering with economic growth. It's a recipe for disaster.

Off the Top of My Head

Mass Murderers Get Much More Than Their 15 Minutes of Fame

by John Lawrence

The perpetrator of the recent mass murder in the Q night club wants to be addressed as "they" and "them" because he is "non-binary." How about if we address him as "you sonofabitch." Barely, have we gotten done with one mass murder in the news cycle than another one comes along to take precedence. The news these days consists mainly of covering one mass murder after another. Mass murderers are lining up. Next? Better make sure the news cycle is clear so that your atrocity takes over the headlines. Then we hear all about the perpetrator's messed up childhood, and, if there is a court trial, the news media dutifully covers it giving the murderer another 15 minutes of fame at least. Recently, families of the victims were upset when a mass murderer was given a sentence of free room and board for life with no possibility of ever having to make a living for himself rather than the death penalty. The news media and a coterie of lawyers, not to mention gun manufacturers and merchandisers are making a small fortune off of the mass murder business. Here's an idea; mass murderers caught in the act should immediately be taken out and shot thus avoiding the news cycle, numerous lawyers, pundits pontificating, authors hawking books and displays of grieving and mourning. It's all become a predictable big business. Yes, the GDP would decrease slightly, but who cares. We have become a mass culture of mass murder spectacles.

So the Second Amendment says: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." What is well-regulated, much less militia-like about individuals going out and buying an AK-47 and committing mass murder over some real or perceived grievance? By the way, the news media informs us that "the police have not yet discovered a motive." They never do. What possible motive could there be for mass murder that would justify it? The motive is the fact that the mass murderer is fucked up. Saying that he - and it always is a "he" - is mentally ill, is a means of evoking sympathy for someone who deserves none. But if individual mass murderers are fucked up, so is the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court decided in the Heller case that the Second Amendment gave individuals the right to own (and use) guns. What about the "well regulated militia" bullshit? The Supreme Court basically backed the rights of mass murderers. Now according to recent reports: Six million Americans carried guns daily in 2019, twice as many as in 2015. And this: "The trend is expected to continue, after the supreme court ruling earlier this year overturning strict limits on public gun-carrying." Whose side is the Supreme Court on? 

Pogo said: "We have met the enemy and he is us." True. The enemy is not "out there." It is the very wonderful American people themselves and the very vaunted Supreme Court which is so concerned about preserving life in the womb and so unconcerned about preserving life once it's outside the womb. After spending a trillion dollars a year on our military and military-industrial complex, it seems we as a nation are powerless to stop Americans from self immolating. So Americans have to come to expect one mass killing after another in assembly line like fashion. Next? They are already getting in line. Fame and fortune and a free meal ticket for life awaits. Meanwhile, the rest of us are reminded of John Milton's poem: "we also serve who only stand and wait." The rest of us go to our boring jobs, take care of our traumatized families and hope for a better life for us and our children if the world doesn't burn up due to global warming. Please, President Biden, do something about assault rifles.

Off the Top of My Head

The Elevation of Personal Beliefs Above Objective Truth

by John Lawrence

I saw an amazing interview involving a health care worker who refused to get vaccinated even though it means she will lose her job. Talk about obstinacy. She admitted to being Catholic and even the authority of the Catholic church, whose Pope himself got vaccinated and recommended that others follow his example, was not enough to sway her towards getting the shot. So she's denying the authority of the whole medical science system and the Pope of the Catholic church, elevating her own personal beliefs above those authorities, while at the same time being willing to lose her livelihood. Is this a gigantic child's tantrum or what? Did this person stomp her feet and refuse to eat her pablum? Has she been totally captivated by Fox news and social media? She must be basing her refusal on something. The knowledge that statistically very few vaccinated people have died with COVID while the vast majority of the current deaths are among the unvaccinated evidently means nothing to her.

We've seen this phenomenon before. Strong leaders can even lead willing participants to their deaths. Rolling Stone reported:

"Until the September 11th attacks, the tragedy in Jonestown on November 18th, 1978 represented the largest number of American civilian casualties in a single non-natural event. It is unfathomable now, as it was then, that more than 900 Americans – members of a San Francisco-based religious group called the Peoples Temple – died after drinking poison at the urging of their leader, the Reverend Jim Jones, in a secluded South American jungle settlement. Photographs taken after the carnage forever document the sheer enormity of the event: the bodies of hundreds of people, including children, lying face down in the grass."

We have to ask "how could the Jonestown massacre been prevented?" So could Jim Jones' rights of free speech been curtailed? Could the Peoples Temple have been dissolved by authorities as detrimental to human welfare? Of course to do any of these things would have violated our Constitution and people's rights of free speech and religion. It comes to mind that China wouldn't have any problem doing both if the authorities there felt it was in the people's and/or the country's interest to do so. So is our Constitution flawed when it comes to letting massive deceptions of the American public go on or is it people's right to allow themselves to be deceived which results in their losing their livelihood or even their life?

Where I come down on this is to disallow snake oil salesmen from doing their jobs. Basically, I would censor social media especially as it pertains to the proliferation of lies and untruths. I would censor the purveying of misinformation. This lady that denied the authority of both the Pope and the consensus of medical science probably got her mentality altered by social media which is known to proliferate misinformation. Obviously, Facebook, Instagram and others are not doing enough to police themselves for obvious reasons. Their profit model depends on the proliferation of lies and mistruths. If they weeded out every lie being purveyed on Facebook, it would drastically cut their profits. Misinformation and lies especially if conveyed in a flambuoyant fashion get way more hits than does the bland truth and valid information. Sensationalism sells and makes big profits for social media as well as tabloid newspapers such as the National Enquirer.

Wikipedia explains sensationalism as follows:

"In journalism (and more specifically, the mass media), sensationalism is a type of editorial tactic. Events and topics in news stories are selected and worded to excite the greatest number of readers and viewers. This style of news reporting encourages biased or emotionally loaded impressions of events rather than neutrality, and may cause a manipulation to the truth of a story. Sensationalism may rely on reports about generally insignificant matters and portray them as a major influence on society, or biased presentations of newsworthy topics, in a trivial, or tabloid manner, contrary to general assumptions of professional journalistic standards."

"Some tactics include being deliberately obtuse, appealing to emotions, being controversial, intentionally omitting facts and information, being loud and self-centered, and acting to obtain attention. Trivial information and events are sometimes misrepresented and exaggerated as important or significant, and often include stories about the actions of individuals and small groups of people, the content of which is often insignificant and irrelevant to the macro-level day-to-day events occurring globally."

Some people are more easily manipulated than others. The example of the lady in the interview that denied the authority of both medical science and the Catholic church doesn't bode well for unlimited freedom of speech and religion. You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater, but freedom of speech should have a much greater threshold than that. Lies and misinformation in social media at least need to be fact checked by an authority whether governmental or quasi-governmental or otherwise so that every time the misinformation pops up, the fact check also pops up. This in and of itself is not censorship, but it is an intrusion into private business, a regulatory effort to prevent the general public from being hoodwinked. China would have no problem with this and no problem with outright censorship. If the US is to maintain itself as a cohesive society with everyone moving in more or less of a positive direction, some sort of restraint on lies and misinformation needs to be put in place.

Off the Top of My Head

Instead of Sanctioning Foreign Actors Sanction Domestic Terrorists

by John Lawrence, January 12, 2021

The best development so far post insurrection is taking away Trump's twitter account permanently. The FBI, CIA and other law enforcement are rounding up the insurrectionists and they should get lengthy jail sentences and sanctions. The biggest threat to American democracy is not out there; it's in here. Their gathering places on social media such as Parler have been taken down or will be taken down soon. If the terrorists can't meet to spout their vitriol as well as plan future insurrections, we'll be making progress. Rush Limbaugh and other domestic terrorists should be sanctioned. Anyone egging on, benefiting from, taking advantage of the poor mental health or encouraging hatred and violence of the American people needs to be sanctioned. The fact that these terrorists could overwhelm the Capitol Police was a huge security failure. The fact that it took the Pentagon three hours to supply troops shows the fact that we are wasting huge amounts of money on a worthless military establishment that does not confront the real threats to this country. Perhaps these domestic terrorists need to be reeducated. We don't have the moral authority to mock China any more for doing this with its domestic terrorists.

Right now security forces in the US are on high alert. The National Guard is out in force. There are more forces on the streets of Washington, DC now than there are in Afghanistan. They should stay on high alert for the time being. I think the situation will get under control. Massive arrests and the total deplatforming and isolation of Donald Trump and domestic terrorist social media sites needs to be carried out. If they don't have gathering places on social media, they won't be able to organize. That's important. There needs to be a recognition that the militarization of the mindsets of young Americans which happens in the military and the glorification and seeming ubiquity of war as the only way to deal with other nations is a cause of the recent problems. Instead of funneling all non-college bound youth into the military, there needs to be an upsurge in funding and encouragement for young people to go into the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps. We need to demilitarize the mindsets of the American people.

Terrorist and threatening phone calls need to be traced and the perpetrators brought to justice. No public official should have to live in fear for their lives and their family's lives because of death threats on phone calls or on social media. Social media is a big problem. They have gotten rich off the fact that their algorithms have encouraged, aided and abetted the domestic terrorists. Their business model showed that there was a lot of profit in encouraging conspiracy theories and other activities detached from reality. It's good that it has become evident by reporting on legitimate news outlets that social media is not subject to the First Amendment because that only applies to government hindrance of free speech. Social media platforms are private entities and they do not have to honor so-called free speech. Private entities also don't have to honor the Second Amendment so that there is space to restrict guns on private property which is probably 99% of the property in the US.

The next administration has its work cut out for them. Good leaders and good people will prevail. Deplatforming all right wing media and groups that espouse conspiracy theories and outright lies will be an important step. Sober analysis and critical thinking must replace narcissistic fantasy and entertainment values. This starts with children in school. They need to taught how to distinguish truth from lies. They need to be taught the value of peace and harmony not only in their daily lives but in the pursuit of that status among and between nations. They should be taught that the US has not always been but should aspire to moral and ethical behavior with regard to other nations and within its own country.

Money must be drained from the military establishment which is oriented towards either non-existant or phony threats and reoriented towards the real threats and funded at appropriate levels rather than be treated to carte blanche amounts of superfluous cash. Budgets both military and domestic need to be appropriate to their realistic needs. Right now the greatest need is in overcoming the pandemic and responding to the economic needs of the lower half of the population. Also eliminating energy production from fossil fuels needs to proceed post haste. It's obvious that the private economy can not do this at the rate necessary to save the planet from the ravages of global warming. Only big government programs in conjunction with the programs of other countries can possibly achieve the reality of zero carbon emissions by 2030.

The last word is that Trump must be denied any post Presidential influence or following by any and all legal means. This is the greatest thing that can be done to heal and deradicalize the country. America also will pay a heavy price if it doesn't get its promotion of gun culture under control.

Off the Top of My Head

Defund the Police ... Defund the Military

by John Lawrence, June 11, 2020

Police have been given jobs social workers should be doing. They've criminalized everything from homelessness to mental illness to drug addiction. That's what defunding the police is all about. They should hire more social workers and less police. The police are asked to do a lot more than what police work should be all about. So has the military. Every problem overseas, many of which could be solved by teachers, social workers and doctors has been looked at as a problem for the military to solve. Many of these problems derive from the fact that people are in dire poverty. They need help building schools, houses, sanitation systems. Instead we send the military in to bomb them just as we send the police in at home to take them to jail by any means necessary.

We glorify police work with all kinds of TV shows just as we glorify the military. No one ever glorifies the Peace Corps though, and, if they were sent in more often, there would be more positive results. Instead of helping people, the first thought of American leaders is to send in the police or the military. The Washington Post reported:

To fix policing, we must first recognize how much we have come to over-rely on law enforcement. We turn to the police in situations where years of experience and common sense tell us that their involvement is unnecessary, and can make things worse. We ask police to take accident reports, respond to people who have overdosed and arrest, rather than cite, people who might have intentionally or not passed a counterfeit $20 bill. We call police to roust homeless people from corners and doorsteps, resolve verbal squabbles between family members and strangers alike, and arrest children for behavior that once would have been handled as a school disciplinary issue.

Police themselves often complain about having to “do too much,” including handling social problems for which they are ill-equipped. Some have been vocal about the need to decriminalize social problems and take police out of the equation. It is clear that we must reimagine the role they play in public safety.

Everything that could be said about the police could be said about the military. Instead of helping people overseas to escape from the poverty they experience, we police them instead. What a novel idea to spend less on the military and more on the Peace Corps. Let's reimagine the role they play in public safety. Policing has been the primary vehicle for using violence to perpetuate the unjustified white control over the bodies and lives of black people that has been with us since slavery. The military has been the primary vehicle to perpetuate American control over black and brown bodies in other parts of the world.

The Peace Corps budget is $410.5 million. The military budget is $934 billion. The military budget covers the DoD, overseas contingency operations, the VA, Homeland Security, the State Department, and many others that involve national security. By contrast in 2003, the military budget was less than half that - $437.4 billion. The US spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. If the Soviet Union collapsed because of overspending on the Cold War, the US is in danger of collapse from overspending on its military when it is not even engaged in a major war. Overspending on the military is just a jobs program that Congress will not curtail. Trump for all his bluster about wanting our NATO allies to spend more on defense, nevertheless, authorized a $34 billion increase in military spending for 2020. Meanwhile, China, the world's second largest spender on its military is spending $178.2 billion in 2020 while Russia spends a mere $70 billion.

The U.S. spends some $100 billion annually on policing — most of it coming from local budgets — and an additional $80 billion on incarceration, according to a detailed 2017 report by the Center for Popular Democracy. In cities across the country, policing alone can take up anything between a third and 60 percent of the entire annual budget. Many major cities spend as much as 40 percent of their municipal budgets on policing, leaving a dwindling pool of resources for poverty prevention, infrastructure and everything else. The coronavirus pandemic exacerbated this dynamic: Cities facing steep revenue declines are trying to decide which services to cut to remain solvent, and mayors are often hesitant to cut law and order spending. Welfare spending has been on a long, uneven decline, while law and order spending ballooned almost unabated until about 2010, when it amounted to nearly 2.5 percent of national income. Since then, law and order spending has fallen to a hair under 2 percent, while welfare spending stands at about 0.8 percent of national income less than half what we spend on police.

The US domestic Peace Corps called AmeriCorps has a budget of $560 million. So the US spends a paltry $1 billion on its foreign and domestic Peace Corps while spending $180 billion on police and almost a trillion on its military. Without this spending the economy would surely collapse. Military and police jobs are jobs of last resort for non college educated youth. However, this could be turned around. This money could be spent on other pursuits like housing the homeless (Habitat for Humanity), social workers, teachers, sanitation systems in foreign countries lacking them, building green infrastructure (Green New Deal), eradicating poverty, education (giving "The Talk" as part of public school curriculum), sustainable agriculture, clean water, cleaning the oceans, cleaning the rivers and more.

While the US spends a huge amount of its budgets on police and military work, China is spending its budget building infrastructure all over the world with its Belt and Road initiative (BRI). Whatever you want to say about it, it represents peaceful development of countries outside of China while the US does nothing of the sort, preferring instead to police the world with its 800 military bases in more than 70 countries. So while the US presence outside the US is mainly military in nature, China's presence outside China is basically peaceful development. This development will also lead to economic advantages for China through increased trade.

China’s overall ambition for the BRI is staggering. To date, more than sixty countries—accounting for two-thirds of the world’s population—have signed on to projects or indicated an interest in doing so. Analysts estimate the largest so far to be the $68 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a collection of projects connecting China to Pakistan’s Gwadar Port on the Arabian Sea. In total, China has already spent an estimated $200 billion on such efforts. Morgan Stanley has predicted China’s overall expenses over the life of the BRI could reach $1.2–1.3 trillion by 2027, though estimates on total investments vary.

The US has sought to demonize China's BRI and to create a second Cold War to justify its military expenditures. Throw Russia into the mix as well. The US wants to line up its group of allies in a potential contest versus China and its allies. However, many US purported allies are jumping ship as they read the tea leaves and realize that the US sees its role in the world and at home as mainly police work. Poverty alleviation is something the US doesn't do. This needs to change if we are ever to combat our common enemy, the coronavirus and climate change, and forget about creating a Second Cold War which will only drain US resources while China goes ahead building infrastructure and increasing trade.

 

Off the Top of My Head

Democratic Socialism in America

by John Lawrence, December 2, 2019

The Democratic Socialist period in America took place between the two gilded ages. The first gilded age was in the 1890s when you had incredible fortunes being made by Andrew Carnegie, Jay Gould, John Rockefeller and others. The second one is today when you have incredible fortunes being made by Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and others. In between was the Democratic Socialist era presided over by the Democratic administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But progress breeds poverty, and the first gilded age led to the Great Depression. His administration oversaw the tools that brought America out of the Great Depression. Tools like the Works Progress Administration which built schools and civic buildings all over America including San Diego's County Administration Building and the Wantage school where I attended as a child and where my Dad was fortunate enough to have gotten the principal's and later the superintendent's job.

But progress breeds poverty, and the first gilded age led to the Great Depression. FDR's vice President was Henry Wallace, a committed Democratic Socialist in the Bernie Sanders mold or rather Bernie Sanders is in his mold. He used the term "economic democracy." While vice President in 1942 he gave a speech at Madison Square Garden in New York City in which he said "The new democracy, the democracy of the common man, includes not only the Bill of Rights but also economic democracy, ethnic democracy, education democracy and democracy in the treatment of the sexes." In 1942 President Roosevelt delivered the Four Freedoms speech in which he declared that there should be not only freedom of speech and freedom of worship but freedom from want and freedom from fear. After WW II, these ideas which amounted to economic guarantees by government in addition to the guarantees provided by the Bill of Rights were embedded in the United Nations Declarations of Human Rights.

Article 22 and 23 say;

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

There was an excellent documentary on Nova about violence - "The Violence Paradox" presided over by Steven Pinker who claims that violence has decreased over the millennia. When the data was looked at more closely they found that there were pockets of violence within a larger area that was mostly peaceful. Where were these pockets of violence? In places where there was enormous economic inequality compared to surrounding areas and enormous poverty. Makes sense, doesn't it? Such areas as the south side of Chicago which is mostly comprised of poor African Americans living side by side with the rich areas of Lake Forest and Oak Brook. The same goes for Detroit in which the worst area to live in is Forest Park. In Forest Park 94.42% of the population is Black or African American. On the other hand Grosse Pointe Shores, a Detroit suburb is the wealthiest town in Michigan. The overall crime rate in Forest Park is 275% higher than the national average. So there you go.

The legacy of racism is still extant in the US and manifests itself in gun violence in poor neighborhoods comprised mostly of African Americans. So who is doing something about it? The main idea is could violence be treated in the same way as infectious diseases for which the most important thing is to detect the first case and cut it off there before it spreads. With violence one shooting leads to revenge shootings which lead to more revenge shootings etc so if there could be an intervention after the first shooting, then maybe the others could be prevented. So a new kind of health worker has been invented - a violence interrupter.

Safe Streets Baltimore is doing just that. These guys who know the streets identify the hot spots and intervene to try to resolve problems before they escalate. They deserve a lot of credit. They are putting their own lives at risk. They know that the precipitating factors are lack of economic opportunities, lack of education, lack of all the things they have in the wealthier communities. Cure Violence International is working on the same principles around the world. But the root problem is the same. People take to street crime because they don't have the things other people take for granted - a roof over their head, proper nutrition, education, health care including mental health care, a good job, a community that cares.

Back to my first point. Bernie Sanders and his philosophy of democratic socialism is nothing new, therefore, nothing radical. It has been made to seem that way by radical Republicans and reactionaries who hated FDR, hate the UN, hate anyone or any group that is trying to alleviate poverty and, therefore, violence in the world. But the challenge now is far worse than just the eradication of poverty and violence. If the nations of the world can't cooperate and work together to ameliorate global warming, then the whole earth and its peoples don't have a chance. This calls for putting nation state conflicts aside and massive government collaboration on a global scale. We can't afford to dither while the economic forces of the elite are all about making more billions for themselves. This goes hand in hand with eliminating poverty in the world and making the whole world a better and safer place.

Off the Top of My Head

ERs Are Overwhelmed With Mental Health Patients

by John Lawrence, September 7, 2019

There is a higher and higher prevalence of mental health issues in today's world. From drug addiction to PTSD to the opioid crisis, it seems that a large percentage of the population doesn't know how to be happy or content or satisfied. Mental health is a function of lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle usually leads to mental as well as physical health. Elementary education should be concerned about teaching young people how to have a healthy lifestyle and good mental and physical health. It should be concerned with what activities and habits lead to good mental health. Instead it is mainly concerned with stuffing intellectual facts into childrens' heads. No wonder they grow up to be absolute ignoramuses when it come to how to live well. They are taught that the good life consists on stuffing more and more facts into their heads so they can "graduate" and get a good job, consume more and make more money. Actually, a person who has mastered how to live ^i.e. lifestyle doesn't need a lot of money to be happy. You heed a good set of values and a good, healthy lifestyle neither of which the American educational system is concerned with.

Physical education and health used to be part of the curriculum. It isn't any more in many schools. Neither is art and music. Parents have to pay extra for that. The things that lead to a richer and healthier life are considered extracurricular activities that you have to pay for. So young people pick up unhealthy habits like vaping. Vaping was supposed to be a whole lot healthier than cigarette smoking. Remember when New York doctors recommended smoking Chesterfields or Old Golds? Well, those doctors should get back in the business of recommending cigarette smoking again. Compared to vaping it seems to be a whole  lot healthier. You don't get lung disease for 30 years or so while with vaping you get it in just a couple of years.

But that's the American way - put a product on the market with no testing whatsoever, and as it turns out, that product can cause serious health problems. If your product promises a high, people will literally gobble it up without any thought for the consequences. Without any thought that there might be something in that product that is a serious health risk - in the case of vaping some kind of oil that congeals in the lungs and renders them useless. So much for the supposed healthier effects of vaping compared to smoking.

Lisa Halverstadt reported in the Voice of San Diego:

Patients grappling with mental health crises are flooding local emergency rooms, chaotic environments that can exacerbate their conditions.

A Voice of San Diego analysis of ER data reported to the state reveals a 60 percent spike in visits for mental health disorders over the last decade.

Lisa Halverstadt found that ERs are often the only option for patients in crisis and that many patients can remain stuck in ERs for hours — or even days — while they wait for long-term care and services already filled with other patients in need.

Those waits and the chaotic ER environment can translate into increased anxiety, agitation and depression for already-traumatized patients.

And then you have the angry young men who are gun nuts. Their anger can be vitiated because they are only a hare trigger away from a discharge. One diss, one loss of a job or a girlfriend and these people go nuts spewing their hatred over scores of people leading supposedly normal, happy lives. They have never been taught how to manage or release their anger. That's a function of lifestyle - learning those techniques and activities that contribute to a life in which anger can be contained, controlled and released in ways that don't hurt other people . Again they were never taught those techniques or activities in school. Maybe they weren't motivated in school. A lot of young men end up committing crimes which land them in jail for life. In many cases they came from poor homes, homes in which the parents weren't capable of teaching them anything or setting a good example. So in order to have a healthy society, the educational system must pick up the ball that the parents have dropped.

An Iowa hospital reports:

James Ellis, MD, a physician at Waterloo, Iowa-based Covenant Medical Center said emergency rooms across the state are flooded with patients seeking care for mental health issues, according to KWWL.

The volume of mental health patients in Covenant's ER is overwhelming, Dr. Ellis said.

"We are absolutely overwhelmed. We're overwhelmed as a staff. We're overwhelmed as a department. We're overwhelmed as a hospital. And the entire region is just completely overwhelmed," Dr. Ellis told KWWL.

Dr. Ellis attributes the problem to a lack of community resources addressing mental health, forcing patients into the ER. However, he also notes some patients can be violent, which poses a problem for ER facilities that are not equipped to handle these patients.

There are so many issues relating to mental health in American society that it is hard to get a handle on them all. Many are related to poverty and homelessness. Many are related to ignorance and lack of understanding as to what constitutes a good life. Many are related to drugs and the promise of a pain free and angst free existence which doesn't exist for anyone. Many are related to American values of money grubbing and consumerism. Many are related to the lack of emphasis on healthy lifestyles at all levels of the educational system. Basically it's a society in which some people sink and some swim, and devil take the hindermost. A proto Fascist society in which the very rich can afford rehab and other forms of treatment. What they have in common with the poor is that they are just as fucked up, but they just have the money to spend to try to ameliorate their situations.

Off the Top of My Head

Is It Really Necessary To Discuss Jeffrey Epstein Ad Infinitum?

by John Lawrence, August 20, 2019

The American media is consumed with Jeffrey Epstein. They've talked about him for days. Meanwhile, this pushes all other news of any consequence out of the picture. It is not hard to understand why. The mainstream media news exists so that advertisers can sell products during numerous commercials. In fact there is more time devoted to commercials than so-called news. So the producers of "news" are mostly concerned about what type of news will bring the maximum number of eyeballs to their screens. This type of news, of course, is the news that is most titillating and scandalous. Enter Jeffrey Epstein, the perfect candidate for filling up "news" time for days if not weeks. Then we also had the plane crash of Dale Earnhardt Jr. which occupied the news for a few days also. There were also a few other isolated plane crashes for which, fortunately, there was some video footage.

Meanwhile, news that is of great concern or should be of great concern is hardly mentioned. The news that is actually presented is pablum, news designed so that viewers don't have to actually think, news that is escapist and voyeuristic, news designed to get viewers to buy the sponsors' products. If you want any actual news, you have to tune into one of the foreign media channels although you won't find any news there that is actually critical of the countries that are providing these channels. Most other news though is far more authentic than anything found on American commercial media. American news is not exactly "fake" news. That is a misnomer. It is news that is inconsequential relative to anything that really affects the American people. The fact that Jeffrey Epstein liked to have sex with underage albeit sexually mature girls is of no consequence to whether or not the US will go to war with Iran or whether or not the economy will go into recession or whether or not climate change will inundate major American cities. These are real issues.

Of course mass murders are purveyed relentlessly. This is one reason why they are being perpetuated. It seems that every white nationalist wants to get in on the act and garner his 15 minutes of fame. 15 minutes may be an understatement. They should not show the faces or mention the names of the mass murderers so that they don't get famous. Hate speech at social media sites should be taken down. Should their be censorship of hate speech? You betcha. These websites are where these guys congregate and egg each other on. So what does the mass media convey after one of these increasingly common attacks? Any discussion of gun control? Nah, that's too wonky, too intellectual, too political. What we get instead is the fact that there are so many good people in the world who are leaving lots of teddy bears and other remembrances at the murder site. We get interviews with bystanders and onlookers who state that "they couldn't believe that something like this could happen here." We get pablum. I know that there are good people in the world. I don't have to be told that. There is no discussion of mental illness or how the IRA puts profits above people or how the politicians know that after the furor dies down they won't have to pass any gun control legislation nor do they intend to do so.

It may be cynical, but it's true that the only thing that might shift the gun control debate is the fact that Michael Bloomberg has the assets to lobby Congress that rival the NRA's. The Guardian reports:

Guns are big(ish) business. Gun and ammunition manufacturers will have revenues of $13.3bn and profits of $1bn in 2017, according to IBISWorld. Gun and ammunition stores this year will have revenues of $85.bn and profits of $256m....

There are, however, problems on the horizon for the NRA. For one, the gun control lobby is growing. Billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety is threatening to spend more than $25m in 2018 races. Americans for Responsible Solutions, a gun control political action committee set up by Gabrielle Giffords, a former Democratic congresswoman whose career was ended when she was shot along with 18 others in an Arizona suburb, spent $13.4m in 2016

So, of couse it's all about lobbying and profits. If the gun control groups can put more money in politicians' pockets than can the NRA, then maybe gun control legislation will be passed. It's pretty cynical, but then that's the way Congress operates. Profits and lobbying determine outcomes in the American political system. It is not predicated on doing the right thing for the American people, but only on what increases profits. I know, there are many Americans who are "good people". It's just that profits over people is how the system operates.

Off the Top of My Head

San Diego's Emergency Room Crisis

by John Lawrence, July 11, 2019

There were 42,268 mental health visits to San Diego County emergency room hospitals in 2028 up 60% from 2008. These visits in and of themselves caused further trauma to the mentally ill. First, as anyone knows who have visited an emergency room lately, you have to wait for hours - some times for days -  in the emergency room before you're given a hospital bed in a regular room. Sometimes patients have to wait for hours on a gurney just to get a bed in the emergency room. Such was the case when I hurt my back when my car was rear ended, and I was transported to the hospital by ambulance.

Lisa Halverstadt reported in Voice of San Diego in an article, "Mental Health Patients Are Pouring Into Local Emergency Rooms":

Three large local hospital systems reported to VOSD that their patients wait an average of about 20 hours to move onto more specialized inpatient beds while a separate hospital association analysis released last year suggested patients can often wait up to 36 hours for those beds.

Those waits and the frenzied environment of an ER only escalate patients’ suffering while taxing the emergency departments of hospitals dealing with an array of urgent care needs. Patients who spoke to VOSD described increased anxiety, agitation and depression as they laid in gurneys – some waiting as long as two days for an inpatient bed – and going for hours without water or food.

But this situation isn't unique to mental illness patients. People that go to emergency rooms with stroke symptoms, for example, often wait long hours to be admitted to a hospital bed without food or water. That's where a patient advocate comes in. When my late wife went to the emergency room several times with stroke symptoms, I always went with her. I was her "go to" person for everything she needed. If she was hungry or thirsty, I would track down a nurse to bring her food or water. Without me there she would never get an extra blanket if she was cold or anything else she needed. I would track down the nurse and demand it. You could buzz them on the intercom all you wanted, and they would never come. Such is the situation in hospitals. For people with mental illness, it is only more frustrating and agonizing.

Halverstadt continues:

Vincent Dimeo recalls feeling relieved as he left his friend Ann Ruhlman at Sharp Grossmont Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation in December 2017.

On their way to the hospital, Dimeo said his friend was behaving erratically and he twice had to slap her hand away she tried to scratch her right eye. Now she was safe and checked into the emergency room. Dimeo could head to work.

“They said she’d be in good hands,” Dimeo said.

About nine hours later, Ruhlman gouged out her right eye in Grossmont’s ER.

So Dimeo's mistake was not staying with her in the ER. Everyone going to the hospital in the ER or in a regular room needs someone with them, a loved one or friend, to be their advocate. Without them, you are at the mercy of the hospital staff who responds only when they please. With all due respect they are very busy, even overworked, in this glorious of all non-socialistic health care systems. My wife could wait for hours to have her bed changed since she couldn't control her bowel movements if I were not there demanding that a CNA come, clean her up and change the bed. It got to be a fight between me and the nurses.

Halverstadt continues:

Three large local hospital systems reported to VOSD that their patients wait an average of about 20 hours to move onto more specialized inpatient beds while a separate hospital association analysis released last year suggested patients can often wait up to 36 hours for those beds.

Those waits and the frenzied environment of an ER only escalate patients’ suffering while taxing the emergency departments of hospitals dealing with an array of urgent care needs. Patients who spoke to VOSD described increased anxiety, agitation and depression as they laid in gurneys – some waiting as long as two days for an inpatient bed – and going for hours without water or food.

Ruhlman’s case is especially tragic.

Hospital and legal records obtained by VOSD reveal ER staff declared Ruhlman a threat to herself after her arrival at Grossmont. After she checked in, hospital workers restrained her for about an hour after she dug her fingers into her eyes and tried to stand on the hospital gurney. ER workers ordered tests that showed Ruhlman, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and anxiety, had methamphetamine in her system. It was unclear whether doctors had initially decided Ruhlman needed an inpatient bed, an outcome that Ruhlman said followed other ER visits.
A few hours into her ER stay, medical workers saw Ruhlman scratching her right eye again shortly after she was released from restraints and ordered a CT scan. The scan and a separate exam documented swelling around the lower lid and an abrasion on the eye she later tore out.
Dimeo felt sick when he learned days later what had happened.

“I shouldn’t have left,” he said.

Of course he shouldn't have. Patients are left alone for hours in their ER beds. No food, no water. My wife was at the same hospital that Ruhlman was. They don't even have plans for food service in the ER. If you complain loudly enough, the nurse will sneak you a sandwich or something, but there is no provision to feed you there.

Halverstadt continues:

In a statement, Sharp Healthcare wrote that patient safety is a high priority and described Ruhlman’s case as “most unfortunate.”

“Sharp Grossmont Hospital provides high quality care and complies with all regulatory requirements specific to the use of physical and chemical restraints,” Sharp wrote in the statement. “Due to patient privacy concerns, we are unable to provide any specific details regarding care provided to patients, however it is the hospital’s policy to provide care to its patients based on clinical presentation. The acuity level of a patient determines the level of care and observation needed.”

Other patients and advocates who spoke to VOSD also described harrowing experiences in local ERs.

“I’ve had people go through the emergency room process and say, ‘I’m never doing that again. That was more traumatic than the thing that brought me to this point to begin with,’” said Michelle Routhieaux, who leads San Diego’s Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance and has accompanied patients on dozens of ER trips over the last 15 years.

Medical experts, county health officials, patients, advocates and law enforcement leaders agree that ERs can further traumatize patients who are already suffering.

Yet ERs have long been the front line of a broken mental-health system with insufficient resources for both patients in crisis and those seeking to avoid one. And in more recent years, bolstered by an explosion in Medi-Cal enrollment tied to the Affordable Care Act, patients in crisis have rushed in.

Just remember this, folks. If a loved one has to go to the ER for mental health or any other reason, stay there with them as their advocate. Otherwise, the staff will let your loved one lay there without food or water for hours, and that goes for after you're admitted to a hospital bed as well. However, there you will get regular meals. You could still lie in your own filth for hours before a CNA comes to change you if you don't have an advocate by your side. That's just the way it is in this expensive, capitalist society where money talks and shit walks. But whatever you do, don't go socialist. Seriously, Bernie Sanders has a better idea: Medicare for All and take the profit motive out of medicine.

Off the Top of My Head

What are the Requirements for a Psychopath?

by John Lawrence

National Geographical had a recent article about empathy and how the presence or lack of it can determine whether a person is capable of altruistic acts or downright evil acts such as mass murder. If a person can put themselves in the other person's shoes and identify with that person's feelings, then the person will not perform a horrible act on the other person. This was the argument. On the other hand one who has no feelings of empathy for another is capable of horrific acts against them.

National Geographic reported:

Extreme altruists and psychopaths exemplify our best and worst instincts. On one end of the moral spectrum, sacrifice, generosity, and other ennobling traits that we recognize as good; on the other end, selfishness, violence, and destructive impulses that we see as evil. At the root of both types of behaviors, researchers say, is our evolutionary past. They hypothesize that humans—and many other species, to a lesser degree—evolved the desire to help one another because cooperation within large social groups was essential to survival. But because groups had to compete for resources, the willingness to maim and possibly kill opponents was also crucial. “We are the most social species on Earth, and we are also the most violent species on Earth,” says Jean Decety, a social neurologist at the University of Chicago. “We have two faces because these two faces were important to survival.”

For centuries the question of how good and evil originate and manifest in us was a matter of philosophical or religious debate. But in recent decades researchers have made significant advances toward understanding the science of what drives good and evil. Both seem to be linked to a key emotional trait: empathy, which is an intrinsic ability of the brain to experience how another person is feeling. Researchers have found that empathy is the kindling that fires compassion in our hearts, impelling us to help others in distress. Studies also have traced violent, psychopathic, and antisocial behaviors to a lack of empathy, which appears to stem from impaired neural circuits. These new insights are laying the foundation for training regimens and treatment programs that aim to enhance the brain’s empathic response.

The article goes on to say that those who have no empathy can fake it to get what they want. While empathy is important, what the article doesn't mention is that some code of conduct or standard of behavior is also important. Even in the absence of empathy, people may still do the right thing because they know the difference between right and wrong whether or not they are actually feeling empathy towards another at the time. In other words there is an intellectual component as well as a feeling component to behavior.

The other thing that enters into it in any given situation is selfishness. It's easy to do the right thing if a person has no selfish interest in the outcome. But acting out of selfishness determines in many cases whether the act will be a good or evil one. Selfishness can override empathy and it can override any moral code. But what about evil acts for which there is no obvious selfish component such as the raining of bullets on a crowd attending a concert as happened in Las Vegas or a thrill killing? These people obviously lack empathy or adherence to any moral or ethical code. They have descended into an abyss of anger and hatred. They were sick puppies.

Mental health or lack thereof can determine whether a person has empathy for another or can even treat them with some sort of compassion. At least as a minimum if one can take a "first do no harm" approach to others, they are exhibiting the vestiges of a moral code. People who actively help others obviously feel empathy towards them. People who are extremely selfish may harm others in the process of getting what they want, but it's not for lack of empathy. People who are extremely selfish and lack empathy can do bad things, but not as bad as those whose mental health has deteriorated to the point that they don't care about themselves or others.

 

Guns

by John Lawrence from the San Diego Free Press

We live in a sick society where little kids play violent video games, you can't flip through the channels on a TV without seeing drawn handguns, and hunters use automatic weapons to kill innocent animals. It's a culture of violence in movies and TV, a culture of violence in video games and a culture of violence in terms of unending wars and people blown to smithereens every night on the nightly news.

It was disheartening to me to see a few days after the horrific mass murder at Umpqua Community College, pro gun demonstrators protesting the American President as he landed there to give comfort to the families who had lost loved ones. Where were the anti gun protesters? Where were the ones who protested the taking of innocent lives by sick minds who are bolstered every day of their lives by a sick culture, a culture which glorifies and celebrates gun violence. It's ubiquitous. It's celebrated and it's done in order to make money from "entertainment."

That's right. We're entertained by people killing each other with guns. Is there an action movie in which there are no guns? I don't think so. How many video games don't involve the player or shooter not pulling a trigger. We train them up young with hand/eye coordination. Then we send them to schools in which there is no recess so that their energy and anger builds to the point that they feel justified in blowing people away for no justifiable reason.

Let's face it folks. We're more in danger from Americans with sick minds blowing children away than we are from terrorists. Yet we spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year defending ourselves from terrorists and hardly anything defending ourselves from ourselves . As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and the enemy is us."

Why wasn't the FBI monitoring websites for the "involuntarily celibate"? These are the websites that Elliot Roger and Christopher Harper-Mercer telegraphed their intentions on. Why wasn't the FBI tracking them? And why are violent young men, who willingly state online their murderous intentions, allowed to purchase guns regardless of the fact that they've never before been convicted of a crime?

In a recent post on Love-shy.com, a forum for the dateless and sexless, a man wrote, “I am seriously thinking about just getting a gun and shooting everything up. I fantasize about it everyday … that’s how fucked up my mind is.” The truly “fucked up” thing is that this isn’t another newly discovered online posting from Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old who went on a shooting rampage in Isla Vista, killing six people. These are just the words of yet another angry man on the internet expressing rage at society — especially women — over his own celibacy.

President Obama should have had a hundred anti gun demonstrators waiting for him when he got off that helicopter in Roseburg. Instead he was met by a bunch of yahoos who all they can think about is their freakin guns. These people are a bunch of angry a-holes who have nothing better to do than to be worried about their guns right after 10 people from their own community, Roseburg, have just been rubbed out, their young lives lost forever, in a hail of bullets. Their answer is to arm everyone? Preachers in pulpits are now carrying guns. Principals in schools are now carrying guns. Anger and guns. They now characterize American society. Oregon is one of seven states with provisions, either from state legislation or court rulings, that allow the carrying of concealed weapons on public post-secondary campuses. How friggin convenient for Harper-Mercer!

Do I have to detail all the tragedies perpetrated by sick individuals who not only had possession of but were even encouraged by their parents to possess guns? There was Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook who fatally shot 20 children and 6 adult staff members. Surely he was affected by a culture of violence which makes it seem "routine" to off people. President Obama has said that mass killing of Americans by Americans has become routine. "Somehow this has become routine. The reporting is routine. My response here at this podium ends up being routine, the conversation in the aftermath of it ... We have become numb to this," he complained. During his presidency, President Barack Obama has had to deliver statements on gun violence 15 times.

No longer can we "wonder at the gunman's motives" or think this is a"rare occurence." It's routine, folks; it's happening every day. Get ready for the next one. Your children could be next. In fact it already happened just 8 days after the shootings in Roseburg. Gunmen opened fire on campuses in Texas and Arizona. Copycats? Perhaps. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold got the ball rolling at Columbine. They paved the way for the others. That's their legacy. They were first.

The others: Dylan Roof who killed 9 people at a black church in Charleston, SC, Elliot Rodger who killed 6 people in Isla Vista, CA, Aaron Alexis, a Navy contractor and former Navy enlisted man, who killed 12 people in Washington, DC, John Zawahri who killed 5 people in Santa Monica, CA, Radcliffe Haughton, a 45-year-old former Marine, who killed 3 people in Brookfield, WI,

Wade Michael Page, an Army veteran, who killed 6 people at a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, WI, James Holmes who killed 12 people and injured 58 others in Aurora, CO, One L. Goh who killed 7 in Oakland, CA, Scott Dekraai who killed 8 in Seal Beach, CA, Jared Lee Loughner who killed 6 in Tucson, AZ including the attempted killing of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Omar S. Thornton who killed 8 in Manchester, CT,

Amy Bishop, a neurobiologist and assistant professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who killed 3, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, who killed 13 and injured 32 at Fort Hood, TX, Jiverly Voong who killed 13 in Binghamton, NY, Steven Kazmierczak who killed 5 in a geology class at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, IL,

Robert Hawkins who killed 8 at a shopping center in Omaha, NE, Seung-hui Cho who killed 32 on the Virginia Tech campus, Sulejman Talovic who killed 5 at a Salt Lake City shopping mall .... And the list goes on.

A rather long sentence, isn't it, the preceding. Many of the perpetrators were students, many were former Marines or Army vets. They all had grudges; they all had violent uncontrollable anger. They all had access to guns. They all purchased their guns legally. They all had Intermittent Explosive Disorder. According to Wikipedia: "Intermittent explosive disorder (sometimes abbreviated as IED [what an apt acronym!]) is a behavioral disorder characterized by explosive outbursts of anger, often to the point of rage, that are disproportionate to the situation at hand..." There is no need to probe these people's minds any further, to ask ad nauseum "what was the gunman's motive." They were all sick and they all had legally purchased arsenals at their disposal. They all planned their killing sprees. Most of them telegraphed their intentions on social media. Some were even cheered on.

Can we learn nothing from other countries which have strict gun control and far fewer gun deaths than the US? Why is there even a debate as to whether more guns or less guns is the solution?

Does the FBI even read the Washington Post which had a really informative article: "Incels, 4chan and the Beta Uprising: making sense of one of the Internet’s most-reviled subcultures"? Incels are INvoluntarily CELibateS by the way. Maybe society should just get them all girlfriends or sex workers. It might just solve a lot of problems.

The following is from the website, dailymail.com in the UK:

Chris Harper-Mercer wrote the anonymous message on bulletin board 4chan: 'Don't go to school tomorrow if you are in the northwest' 9 hours before the killing began. It was written at 1.19 AM yesterday morning and the first shots were fired at Umpqua Community College at 10.38 AM.

Under the disturbing message, many users encouraged the person to go ahead with their threat and even advised the poster on the best ways to kill people. One user wrote: 'I suggest you enter a classroom and tell people that you will take them as hostages. Make everyone get in one corner and then open fire.

'Make sure that there is no way that someone can disarm you as it is possible. I suggest you carry a knife on your belt as last resort if someone is holding your gun.' While another user wrote: 'You might want to target a girls school which is safer because there are no beta males throwing themselves for their rescue. 'Do not use a shotgun. I would suggest a powerful assault rifle and a pistol or 2x pistols. Possibly the type of pistols who have 15+ ammo.' 'If you are suicidal and hate people, then do it. If not then stay away from what will ruin your life,' another user wrote.

A user wrote: 'In this very clearly hypothetical situation you actually shoot people in your high school or college, try to aim for s***** people at least. Spare the kind fools, humdrum druggies, and churchies and go for he whom really terrorises the populous: Chads and Stacies who have scorned many and yourself. The post continued: 'You'll do the world a favour by purging part of the population that only exists to consume resources and act for themselves.'  In 2013, 18-year-old student Neil Allan Macinnis shot dead two women at a Virginia college - before the killing he posted on 4chan asking users to 'wish him luck.' 

Some of the posters on the site even tried to contact the FBI tip line. Evidently, they were asleep at the switch. I guess they're only interested in foreign terrorists not domestic ones. They better wake up that this is a phenomenon that is not going away. Prevention is the only alternative at this point in a nation that is locked and loaded and ready to pull the trigger over the slightest grievance especially at schools and on campuses.

How many remember San Diego's own mass shooting on campus in 1996? Next year will be the twentieth anniversary of the killing that took the lives of three San Diego State professors.

Wikipedia sums it up nicely:

The San Diego State University shooting was a school shooting that occurred at the San Diego State University (SDSU) engineering building on August 15, 1996 in San Diego, CA. Three professors were killed by master's degree student Frederick Martin Davidson. Three months later, a copycat threat flier was sent, with threats against professors and racial insults.

Davidson, the three faculty members, and three other engineering students assembled in the classroom shortly before 2:00 p.m. The three students were there to support Davidson, and to witness a Master's thesis defense. Liang stood, formally introduced Davidson, stated the purpose of the meeting, and sat back down. Davidson then handed Liang a printout of an e-mail, from a prospective employer who was interested in hiring Davidson, that stated that his future employment with the company hinged on a successful Master's thesis defense.

Without time for comment from Liang, and without saying anything himself, Davidson turned to the first aid box on the wall, removed a 9 mm handgun, and immediately started firing. He hit Liang first, killing him while he was still seated at the faculty table. Lowrey and Lyrintzis were also hit. However, Lowrey tried to escape out the only main access door to the room. There were other doors in the room, but only one door led out to the hallway, and other parts of the third floor of the Engineering building.

Davidson was between the main door and the faculty table, and shot Lowrey several times; he died on the floor in the main doorway. Lyrintzis fled from the main door and Davidson, into an adjoining classroom, and hid under a table. After killing Lowrey, Davidson reloaded another magazine into the handgun, and pursued Lyrintzis into the other room. There, he shot and killed Lyrintzis while the latter was still under the desk. Overall, Davidson fired 23 rounds, with 16 rounds hitting the professors.

The three students attending the thesis defense were not shot, and escaped without injury. One of the students made it out through the main doorway, and notified the third-floor students and faculty to evacuate. Davidson later commented that he was not angry at the students, and had no intention of killing them.

After the shooting, Davidson himself called 911. Police arrived to find Davidson in the third-floor hallway still holding the handgun. He was reportedly sobbing and begging for police to kill him. He soon surrendered to police without further incident. Davidson had intended to kill himself after the shootings, but could not due to "pure cowardice". Davidson had left a murder-suicide note in the hallway for the police to find, detailing the location of evidence and computer files in his house.

Guns and angry people. To say they have no impulse control would be an erroneous statement. They had to purchase guns in the first place, laying the groundwork for future misdeeds. They had to work up a head of steam about some real or perceived mistreatment or grievance, and, finally, they had to load up the guns and take them to the killing field. At any point in time along the way, they could have turned back. They not only had a preconceived plan; they probably fantasized about it for months.

Many Americans are so obsessed with the Second Amendment that they can't even imagine that other societies might be doing things differently with much better outcomes. See A Cultural Comparison: Gun Violence in the US and Europe in 3 parts by Frank Thomas and myself for alternatives to the violence and gun ridden society of Amerika and for some alternatives that actually work, that is if we can give up our love affair with guns.

Has the NRA Finally Met Its Match in Richard Martinez, Father of Isla Vista Shooting Victim?

from Salon             /               By Katie McDonough                 
                    

       1183 COMMENTS

 

NRA's trick is to silence critics by saying politics disdains victims. But Martinez won't be silenced.

 

May 30, 2014  |                                                                  

Photo Credit: via youtube

Richard Martinez’s son Christopher was among the six college students murdered last weekend in Isla Vista, California. It’s impossible to fathom the grief that Martinez must be experiencing right now, and the simple fact that he is upright and mobile is an act of tremendous courage. Which is precisely what makes everything else that he has done in the days since he lost his son all the more astounding.

From his first public statement — a blistering and emotional indictment of “craven” politicians who refuse to act on even moderate gun reform — to the tribute to Christopher he delivered Tuesday before a crowd of thousands, Martinez has been willing to show his raw and devastating grief to the world. He has made himself the gnarled and anguished face of our broken system — the lives that it takes and the lives that it ruins. His vulnerability and righteous, focused anger is unlike anything we’ve seen in response to a mass shooting.

And it should scare the shit out of the National Rifle Association, the gun lobby and the cowardly politicians who use these deadly weapons as literal and figurative political props.

It isn’t just the force of Martinez’s emotions or political conviction that make him powerful. He is currently shouldering the unimaginable grief of being yet another parent who has lost yet another child in yet another mass shooting. He has seen this happen before, he knows the political script that’s already playing out. He has listened as gun apologists — time and again — urge the nation not to “politicize” a national tragedy out of respect for the families, and then watched them turn on these same families in order to protect our deadly — and immensely profitable — culture of guns. And he’s using it. All of it.

Days after 26 people were murdered in Newtown, Connecticut, Wayne LaPierredenounced gun reform advocates for “exploit[ing] the tragedy for political gain.” Months later, Sarah Palin echoed the sentiment. ”Leaders are in it for themselves, not for the American people,” she told a crowd that summer, before effectively declaring how proud she was that her son Trig would grow up in a country where men like Elliot Rodger and Adam Lanza can buy guns and hoard ammunition without authorities batting an eyelash.

Martinez may be the single most powerful force we have against this kind of slithering political cowardice. He’s already familiar with the political dirty tricks and knows where the conversation will eventually turn — that the pro-gun crowd is going to come out hard against him, just as they have turned on other parents and survivors. “Right now, there hasn’t been much blowback from the other side,” Martinez noted during a Tuesday interview with MSNBC. “But I anticipate that once my grieving period is over, the gloves will come off. I don’t think it’s going to be easy. They are going to try to do to me the same thing that they’ve done to all of these people. But I have a message for them: My son is dead. There is nothing you could do to me that is worse than that.”

I can’t imagine a more direct rebuttal to the LaPierres and the Palins in this country. To the ridiculous rifle-holding Mitch McConnells and every other ludicrous coward currently walking the halls of Congress and state legislatures across the country. These are the people who — as Martinez has made explicit — are responsible for these terribly predictable and preventable tragedies. Because they have the power to implement sensible reform, but instead stand by and do nothing while more people die every single day.

Martinez also knows that while it’s the public’s job to hold our leadership’s feet to the fire, he’s not the one responsible for having all the answers. “Where’s the leadership on this? We elect these people and we give them power, and it’s just outrageous,” he said during the same interview. “My son just died a few days ago, and you expect me to have the answers to these questions? There are people out there who have the answers. Why isn’t our leadership rounding these people up?”

But Martinez’s grasp of the issue puts most of our elected officials to shame. “When you asked me about solutions, here’s what I’ve learned,” he explained. “This is a complicated issue, but there’s a certain commonality between these events. Typically, all of these incidents involved [...] mental health issues, gun violence and violence against women. These three problems are almost always combined.”

Like other parents whose lives have been upturned by gun violence —  women like Lucia McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, and Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin — Martinez recognizes and is naming the pattern of violence in the most public way imaginable. But while Congress has so far been wildly successful at shutting down gun reform efforts, parents like Martinez, McBath and Fulton — who are electrifying the national conversation and building solidarity among other families forever changed by rampant access to deadly weapons — may be impossible for them to ignore. They are the most powerful messengers we could ask for.

Martinez is brave, destroyed, weeping, loud, furious and unpredictable in his grief. He is channeling all of that with a singular focus: Change. Or as he said that first day, introducing himself to the world as the grieving but determined father of Christopher Michaels-Martinez: “Not one more.”

“For me to live with this and honor his memory, I will continue to go anywhere and talk to anybody for as long as they want and are willing to listen to me about this problem. I’m not going to shut up,” he said Tuesday. He really seems to mean it.

 

Katie McDonough is an assistant editor for Salon, focusing on lifestyle. Follow her on Twitter @kmcdonovgh or email her at [email protected].