Guns, Mental Illness and Crime

In most people's minds these three things are related. For civilized and educated people you might be able to separate out Guns from mental illness and crime. But, for people who commit crimes while using guns, mental illness is usually associated with this action as well.

It does not really matter whether the mental illness is biological or trauma caused or both or whether the action is a form of temporary insanity due to grief and loss or from the illicit use or even prescription drugs where the person is having some kind of fatal to themselves or others reaction from this drug experience.

The important thing to think about here I think is that when Guns, mental illness (inherent or drug related or grief related or whatever) and criminal actions take place society and individuals are going to have various kinds of problems that we see everyday on the news.

Since this is the anniversary of the Sandy Hook Massacre of the 20 students and 6 teachers I thought it might be a good day to write about this.

I think because of the more chaotic and less logical way society operates in the U.S. in general more school and company slayings are inevitable. And the shooting yesterday caused by a very intelligent member of the Arapahoe High School who was kicked off the debating team illustrates the problem that I am trying to get at here. Here is an obvious very intelligent person who felt their economic future was negatively affected (possibly interferring with them becoming a successful lawyer) by being kicked off the debating team at the high school. So, he brought a shotgun to school to shoot the teacher who kicked him off the debating team. Why did he do this? This is difficult to say. However, something that happened made this teenager feel that it was serious enough for him to take others lives as well as his own life in the process. And logically, if you are an adult over 30 (and have therefore also survived being a teenager yourselves) you might understand that this individual had feelings he could not cope with and stay alive. You might say to me that this student was also having suicidal issues already to get to this place. And being a high schooler this might also be true. But, any way you look at it he is dead, the teacher is not and the girl he shot is in serious condition and may live or not.

I don't think there is any way to know (yet or ever) when anyone is going to snap (of any age) and do something like this. It is sort of the luck of the draw. I too, had a lot of anger in my teens which I dealt with mostly by playing music. I often would come home from school angry about one thing or another, I would sit down at the piano and play piano for 1/2 hour to an hour and I could usually forget whatever (seemingly serious thing I had had to deal with that day). But, taking what happens in school too seriously often winds up in people dying. So, just remember kids you have to find a way to deal with your feelings if you want yourself and others to stay alive.

My personal definition of what it is to be a teenager is that it is a time when all of us are temporarily insane because of just the sensory overwhelm of hormones and new experiences that we either survive or we don't.

A useful figure here I believe is that 147 children were killed through gun violence or gun accidents this last year.

However, maybe   the fact that there are about 11.5 suicides per day of people under 25 years old in the U.S. might be more helpful. So, if there are 11.5 suicides per day that is times 365
equals 4,197.5 approximate suides per year of people under 25 right now.

So, maybe even more important than gun violence in Schools (147 children under 12 killed by guns this last year) maybe the suicides of people under 25 might be an even more important place to start to deal with unneeded deaths of people under 25 in the U.S.