“Elliot Rodger and the NRA Myth: How the Gun Lobby Scapegoats Mental Illness”

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Salon discusses, in light of the most recent mass killing in Santa Barbara, how “rather than emphasize the crisis of guns in America, the media has done just what the National Rifle Association wants: deemphasize the role of weapons in these massacres and focus instead on a different, more convenient scapegoat, mental illness . . . What separates these modern arguments from their Late Baroque roots is that most modern of rhetorical tricks: the relentless and contextless deployment of bogus statistics.”

Elliot Rodger and the NRA myth: How the gun lobby scapegoats mental illness (Salon)

11 COMMENTS

  1. Mental illness or gun laws? Here in New Zealand we have very stringent gun laws, even the police do not carry them and I’m only aware of 2 mass killings like those mentioned here (although n0t in schools) happening in NZ in my lifetime. (I’m 46). As our prevalence of mental illness and treatment modalities are very similar to the USA it is blatantly obvious to me that liberal access to guns will incur more murders using guns

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  3. I don’t even like them but the people need guns, they are a necessary evil .

    Don’t Drug my Child or I’ll Shoot!

    Detroit mother Maryanne Godbaldo is cleared of criminal charges related to her effort to prevent Child Services from physically taking her child.

    http://youtu.be/5uXGS1weywY

    The right to bear arms, It’s the only thing between us and tyranny. Sad but true.

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  4. I think we should keep the gun debate off MIA.

    This connection between psychotropic drugs and mass murder is not coincidental. There is enough evidence that antidepressants cause increased risk of suicide and violence for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and its Canadian counterpart to require that drug companies include a “black box” warning to that effect on their packages. Our first knowledge of this association between psychotropic drugs and violence came from studies completed in the early 1950s, . This was supported by research completed on antidepressants in the mid-1970s, (9). More recent studies have corroborated this association between antidepressants and homicide/suicide, (10, 17). Antidepressants, specifically Paxil, appear to more than double the risk of hostility events in adult and pediatric placebo-controlled trials (11).

    All of the classes of psychiatric drugs can cause violent, irrational, and/or manic behavior. Among other effects, these drugs cause a neurological condition called “akathesia,” which means that persons who take them can’t sit still and feel like they are jumping out of their skin. They behave in an agitated manner which they cannot control and experience unbearable rage, delusions, and disassociation.

    Read more http://www.psychintegrity.org/isepp_statement_on_the_connection_between_psychotropic_drugs_and_mass_murder.php

    Every shooter is a psych med kid, lied to with the standard chemical imbalance fraud and told they have a “broken brain” to get them on drugs changing the course of there lives.

    This ain’t tin foil hat stuff when EVERY shooter has a head full of drugs, no way.

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    • The subject has to be discussed in the context of “mental health,” because we now have the knee-jerk do-gooders who want to re-open mental hospitals and start warehousing persons against their will on the slightest hint of “crazy.” Read the comments attached to the stories on CNN and so on. Apparently, Rodger refused to take Risperdal so now the emphasis is on making the non compliant be good little drug addicts and take their pills, even by force. It’s scary what the public believes, and wants to see done!
      We cannot allow an increase in forced hospitalizations and forced druggings! We do, however, need to address the number of guns out there. It’s the elephant in the room and it’s not going away any time soon.

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  5. Is it me or does anyone else find that last statement a little strange?

    The gun lobby is using “the most modern of rhetorical tricks: the relentless and contextless deployment of bogus statistics”

    Doesn’t that describe psychiatry exactly?

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    • After reading the article i note a couple of points.

      The gun lobby are using the myth of mental illness to defend their “right to bear arms”

      The mental health industry use the myth to expand their powers and deliver more consumers to big pharma.

      I get the feeling that both however are advocates for more oppressive interventions. In which case, neither have my support.

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  6. Our Words Are Our Weapons: The Feminist Battle of the Story in the Wake of the Isla Vista Massacre

    http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/24082-our-words-are-our-weapons-the-feminist-battle-of-the-story-in-the-wake-of-the-isla-vista-massacre

    Of course, few are acknowledging the problem of mostly white male entitlement, misogyny, the rape culture, domestic, work and other violence/bullying and mobbing against women that motivated Rodger while “men explain things to us” per usual. And I realize Rodgers was only half white though he seemed to identify with the white male culture per his rants.

    Rodger wasn’t “mentally ill,” but rather, he was enraged that the women he encountered and tried to prey on failed to meet his sexual, relationship and ego needs per his misogynist entitlement, so they deserved to be degraded, punished or die along with the supposed inferior men these horrible women chose instead of him given how he saw himself as such a great prize to all the ladies. One psychiatrist rightly said Rodgers had what is now called a personality disorder that used to be called a character disorder also called just plain evil, lack of conscience or psychopathy/sociopathy/malignant narcisssim! Since we have what is called a Narcissist Epidemic and Culture of Narcissism, good luck rounding up all the dangerous ones! Sadly, the most dangerous ones aren’t rounded up since they can cover up their evil with charm, smooth talking and conning while those who may have psychosis and/or trauma as victims of the character disordered are scapegoated, blamed and rounded up for “treatment” that may make them dangerous due to the known dangers of psych drugs and psychiatric assault in general.

    Like all of these mass shootings with guns and the mental death profession’s toxic life destroying, rage inducing, ostracizing bogus stigmas and toxic drugs the major causes of the shootings, the NRA and mental death profession and corrupt government hacks will continue to use these shootings they helped create to call for more of the same guns and violence causing pills and stigma to create more violence to sell more guns and pills in a never ending vicious circle as long as America remains A Nation of Sheep and refuses to investigate, learn, acknowledge and fight for the truth and elimination and/or reduction of these evil forces destroying one and all.

    In the meantime, this is an excellent article about how the Rodgers vicious tirade and assault against women makes our woman hating, rights violating, misogynist rape/violence culture against women painfully clear in that Rodgers was/is just a product of this evil culture that continues to put women in fear and terror for their very lives for merely posting on the web, attending college, joining the military or daring to speak up and other male threatening actions. Yes, I realize men suffer violence too, but not anywhere near the extent of women while the right wing continues their backlash against any rights women have gained over the past decades and/or use them against women as when male batterers falsely accuse their female victims of domestic violence and win due to their more powerful positions and money. Obviously, the character disordered have no shame or pride while male bystanders are complicit when they don’t speak up and condone such behavior by others of their sex as with any type of bullying/mobbing/violence.

    Anyway, please read the article since I can’t do it the justice it deserves.

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  7. One news outlet after another is now reporting that Rodger was never formally diagnosed with any mental illness, specifically ASD or Asperger’s as previously reported. I have watched a few of his Youtube videos and obviously something is very wrong. As presented in the videos, “malignant narcissism” seems obvious, but it is a record of him frozen in time at his very worst. Also, a lot of men (with the goal of changing things for the better) are publishing articles admitting, I could have ended up like Elliot Rodger, I thought much like that at his age. It really does make you wonder, is mental illness the problem here, or is the heart of it really this “entitlement rage?”

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