You liberals love to talk, but fail in the action department.

It appears that the mother was a member of a survivalist group...a Doomsday club. That could have been checked out possibly. People who knew of this fact...if it's true... Might have alerted police that she had an arsenal in her home. There is more to be told about this story. She may have had mental issues herself.... And the point of this article is well taken...there are huge holes in our mental health care system and how it relates to both the protection of the I'll and to those who live with or near them.

Yes Brian, excellent strategy, let's lock up all folks who are preppers and have mental illness, the hell with their constitutional rights. Brian you have all of the answers, thank you.

Young C
Where do you see the words "lock up"? You are hallucinating.

What exactly are you plans for the folks who are preppers with mental issues Brian? Let's hear your specific plan to deal and stop further massacres.

BC- The survivalist theory has been debunked.

@Brian Dey -- May we have a link to where the survivalist theory has been debunked? There is still a lot of conflicting information out there on the net.

Randy- Maybe debunked was a bit premature. I should have said conflicting. In an interview on CNN last evening, family members debunked that she was a prepper or doomsdayer. Also in a press conference I saw on MSNBC(I'm assuming the other networks carried it as well) withe the CT. State Police spox, when asked, he stated there was no evidence to suggest that she was a prepper or doomsdayer.

Since then, the networks have not describered as such, but a lot of not so newsworthy sources are still calling her that.

Steve... That ranks with the most ignorant posts of all time... You are talking about a sick individual who committed murder and your brilliant idea is that his mother should have shot him long ago.

And your idiotic solution is to change the second amendment. My solution would have actually worked.

At the end the real world thinkers admit there is sometimes no solutions for the evil among us.

Steve is actually on to something with that one. Simply this, take personal control over situations rather than have the government come up with a failed and over-funded policies.

Instead of "changing" the Second Amendment, why don't stop parsing it and look at it in its entirety? Because the Second Amendment in its entirety speaks of citizens bearing arms because of the need for a militia. Which we now have.

Knowing that, it's definitely time to look at what types of weapons should be available for and within the civilian population, and who should be qualified to have them.

@Bren
The US military is not a militia. Get your facts straight.

So Filicidal murder is a better solution than mental health and gun control efforts?

Am I missing something???

More government is not the solution. Those with mental health issues have rights, the ACLU made sure of this years ago.

Someday we just need to admit bad things will happen on rare occasions. How you prepare yourself is up to you.

You are looking for something larger to blame. The mother could have prevented this long ago, now she and a lot others are dead. Including her son, anyway.

We have gun control, lots of it. All you do is punish the normal citizens with more government costly programs, and take away freedoms.

Steve:

I am going to need you to look into the eyes of the parents to those 20 murdered kids and explain to them "sometimes bad things happen - we can't do anything because of the ACLU..."

There is plenty we can do. The first thing is to grow a spine and seriously question/re evaluate our views on quite a lot of issues.

Allowing your emotion to take over again I see. Luckily the constitution is in my personal favor here.

Wait, I got it!!!!

We need to make murder illegal

/problem

Kelly this thread and those on my blog build your case I would bet.

Kelly- You are right. Many of these medications, like Ridelin, Vvyanse, Wellbutrin and host of other stimulants and anti-depressants are actually miedications that if prescribed, you are not legally able to own a firearm. Heck, our own armed forces won't allow you to serve.

The problem is that doctors, under HIPPA, are under no obligation to report this to the FBI, who conducts the background check, unless the patient as already shown a tendacy to violent behavior.

Young C, calm the heck down dude. Nobody said "lock em up"! I'm a libertarian but I do agree that if someone is on major psycho-altering drugs, maybe they shouldn't have a gun.

@Brian C

A liberal is typically a bitter jealous person, who hates anyone who makes more money, is more successful, or a more useful member of society, than they are.

The world could easily survive without most liberals, as most are takers and not producers. Think of it this way - what percent of welfare recipients vote democrat/liberal, and what percent of welfare recipients vote conservative? 90-10 I am guessing? Look no further than ignorant inner city generational welfare, or even rural poor trash like Honey Boo Boo, too see this.

Conversely, the world would not function without conservatives, who are more likely to be productive and useful in the real world.

A starving artist is basically useless, but it seems it is the most noble venture of a liberal.

So, liberals, in their self hate and shortcomings, vote every chance they get to bring down those better than them.

@c -- Wow, what a blindingly ignorant load of stereotyping.

@Randy
What is a stereotype but a generalization that is usually based on fact? Sure I generalized but there is a lot of truth to what I said.

Does it bother you that much? Are you one of these people who suck off the system and aren't part gears of the social machine that provide for everyone?

Or are you one of the burn out 60's hippies whom suck at life so much that you'd rather turn the machine to rust, rather than apply yourself and be productive and responsible?

If stereotypes are mostly based on facts, you wouldn't like the one about men who are obsessed with guns. If it comforts you to believe that 'liberals' are useless teat-suckers who never made a contribution to society, go right ahead. You couldn't be farther from the truth.

Conservatives are typcially pompous know-it-alls that stick to their phylosophies mindlessly even in the face of undenyable facts to the contrary.

This statement above is so incredibly un-fair. It does describe some Conservatives. It also describes some Liberals. It does not describe all of anyone in a typical sence or not.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/liberalism

There. There is a definition.

And no... aparantly I can't spell: Philosophies

Sorry.

Could a large part of the problem be TV? Mothers place their developing children in front of the TV and it becomes the babysitter. TV is a fantasy land, and filled with degeneracy and filth. It is unnatural. It is anxious. It is non-stop action, flashing and pulsating lights. It shapes the world-view of the child who is then unable to function in the real world.

Throw your TV away.

Jim, it may be first and foremost a mental health issue. But I sense when I read what you wrote, particularly in the last line, that you do not sense a disconnect between how you... or many people let's say, think about deranged shooters and how they regard the broad level of support for our consistent use of violence on a national level. The godfather can't lecture his grandkids about being nice to ech other, helping one bother, discussing, collaborating, etc. The ethical authority isn't there, on the one hand, the violent model is there on the other. My daughter, aged fourteen, when explaining how she felt about the shooting, after talking about her sadness for the children, asked why it is so no one cares about the school children killed in Afghanistan under our attacks. The message is not lost on our youth. This is a culture of violence we live in, not our only feature... But violence is lauded on our battlefields and sporting events, it is mythologized and made to seem exciting, tough and sexy in movie after movie, our dynamic nationally has been that of aggressive empire from the days of manifest dEstiny on....and so it goes. I don't think mental illness is limited to a handful of white male mass murderers. Maybe it's soul illness. I don't know.... But it is rampant this country, an essentially medieval mindset, and, to varying extents, it is in all of us.

Bob- I totally agree. I don't believe it is one set issue, but multiple issues. In a simpler sense, how many children today are actually held accountable for their actions. Heck, our society doesn't even hold adults accountable for their actions. Just look at all the blame going around surrounding this murderer, and none pointed at him.

Are we sending the wrong message? I think so. When are we going to start holding people accountable for what they do. It is not society's fault, not the gun's fault, nor the parent's fault, but it is this young man's fault. That is a tough pill to swallow for many in this feel good generation. I had a troubled child that acted much the way the child did in the letter above. I had him through the system; incarceration, group homes, you name it. He had various medications from numerous psychologists and psychiatrists.

As a parent, I never gave up and always guided him that there are answers for him if he seeks them out and no one can do it for you. Thankfully, at age 26, he decided that he needed to return to therapy and seems to be much better today.

Was I lucky? Could his life have ended up like the man that shoot those children? I don't know. But I sure think that at least the effort of maintaining values where right is always right, and wrong is always wrong might have had an affect on his outcome.

@Bob McBride -- You are correct that some troubled individuals are best not exposed to things that most of us would be able to handle. That would include the glorification of violence in video games (and movies and literature) and the sort of paranoia that some gun owners manifest. It's one thing to enjoy target shooting or to have a gun in the house for protection against an intruder. Adam Lanza's mother seems to have been preparing for the zombie apocalypse. That sort of thinking is not a good influence on someone with Asperrger's, if indeed that's all he had.

Now try to imagine the diagnostic tools necessary to figure out who sits with the ticking time bomb. Is the depressive person going to attempt suicide or mass murder-suicide? How depressed is threateningly depressed? How depressed is enough to take your adult rights to decision-making away? What about anxiety? Where does anxiety cross from being normal to being something that becomes out-of-the ordinary? What about those illnesses we still don't clearly understand? Autism, PTSD, head trauma, dementia. All of these can be things that we would have to focus on before taking away a whole lot of rights.

I'm not saying we shouldn't examine this, but I am saying this is a huge thing to examine. And I think it has been left unaddressed because, frankly, no one knows where to begin. This is a real problem and going to continue as a problem.

Plenty of people with 'mental illnesses' are not incompetent. Mental illness ranges from mildly depressed to full-blown psychotic, and that's sidestepping the issue of personality disorders.

Of course, no one who is incompetent (or approaching that stage) thinks they are incompetent. But we can't be taking rights away from people who are mildly depressed and dealing with it. People with bi-polar disorder rarely reach the stage where they require a guardian.

Randy, that is precisely my point. This issue (mental health) is a lot more complex than black and white.

@Rik Kluesendorf -- Thank you. It bothers me especially to see Adam Lanza reported as having Asperger's, as if that accounts for his violent behavior, and to see him equated to the son in the blog above. We simply do not know what his problems entailed and the rationale (in his mind) for the shootings.

Has anyone watched "Making a Killing" on youtube? Very thought provoking video on the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UDlH9sV0lHU

The men you cite may well have been sociopaths (people who lack empathy among other traits) and that is a personality disorder that qualifies as mental illness. Don't you think the world would be a better place if we could figure out how not to create and nurture sociopaths?

You may feel like you're talking to twelve-year-olds, but it's more like you're a pre-schooler trying to insist you know it all to a group of middle-schoolers who have come further along the road to emotional maturity than you have.

YC - I think the answer to your question is yes. Those men did have a mental illness. But I also think that you have some merit to your point - that people, regardless of mental illness - should be accountable for their actions. The counter - that some people are so beyond reality as to escape accountability - is something that is long-recognized in our society (removing such would eliminate an NGI plea to criminal liability, where someone might be so mentally disturbed as to honestly have no clue either (a) what they are doing, (b) how to prevent it, or (c) whether their actions are right or wrong).

The prevailing question, and one that jumps out to the front of this particular situation, is where we draw that line. Where do we look at someone and say that he had no control over his own actions (thereby placing responsibility on those charged with his care), as opposed to someone who had mental illness, but should still be held accountable for his choices. The honest answer is we have no clue until after something happens because we just don't understand the issue.

Except for those individuals who are so detached from reality that they really don't know what they're doing is wrong, mentally ill people who commit crimes are indeed responsible for their actions. Any mentally ill person who commits a crime pays for it by being locked up, if they don' t kill themselves first.

Randy, if that's the case, then the CT situation is entirely on the killer. Somehow, there's more to this, though. There is this grey area we just can't get our fingers on because we don't understand it. This killer was dangerous - proven by his actions in hindsight. So, we want to draw a line that includes him in the group that should be limited in his rights. But drawing that line - at least as we now know how to do it - cuts out hundreds of thousands of people who are likely not dangerous, just to include ten that are. That is where this gets far more complicated than anyone has been capable of addressing.

I guess my focus is on seeing to it that we keep vulnerable individuals from turning violent in the first place. And I know this is easier said than done.

In hindsight, Adam Lanza should not have had access to guns. His mother should have known this but did not. We still don't have all the facts in this case.

Most of those Holocaust's were at the hands of Atheist regimes as well...coincidence I think not.

Actually - Hitler consulted with the Catholic Church, which he based his policies concerning Jews, before the Holocaust.

Thanks for shifting blame from another horror religion has wrought upon our world.