You’d never suspect it by looking at me or even following me around in my daily routine, but I had to deal with asthma many times in my life. I take medication for it. I’ve been to the hospital several times because of it. And yet, if you were looking for a team mate on your triathlon team, you might pick me. In fact, a few years ago, out of hundreds of teams, my team took third place and I was competing in a younger age group. (I was in my 40’s but my team mates were in their 30’s so we competed in the 30-39 group) Even so, my time on the bike was better than most other guys in their 30’s. In 1996, when I was 42 and recovering from knee surgery, I won fastest time overall in the ten mile time trial. That was against guys in their late 20’s and 30’s. According to my health file, I am listed as “Asthmatic”. If you were ever looking for an asthmatic, you’d look for some stereotyped image and look right past me.
You’d never suspect it by looking at me or even following me around in my daily routine, but I had to deal with depression a few times over the years. I took medication for it. I’ve was hospitalized once because of it. But even in the hospital, few knew I was dealing with deep depression. In fact, one day a doctor held the door open for me to leave the hospital. He thought I was a visitor. I pointed to my sneakers without laces and pants with no belt and said “No doc, I’m an in-y, not an out-y” I was in sales for most of my working career and did rather well at that. I always had a smile and a funny story. I’ve done stand-up comedy. According to my medical file, I had a history of mental illness. If you were ever looking for someone who was ever afflicted with any mental illness, you’d look for some stereotyped image and look right past me.
In the minds of some, and according to the NRA, the reason we are plagued with so many mass shootings in the USA is because of people affected by mental illness, not guns. The NRA will tell you if we can only keep guns away from people like me, people who have or have dealt with mental illness, the mass shootings will stop.
I used to be quiet about my bouts with mental illness. The stigma attached to it is powerful and this recent propaganda pushed by the NRA and even some well-meaning Democrats is just adding to that stigma. I was ashamed about my history of mental illness because of this stigma. Then I began to change. I would tell one person, then another, all in confidence. Every time I did, that person would either tell me that they, or a close or relative had a similar experience. Soon I began to realize that mental illness is much more prevalent than we might think. A whole lot of people deal with it, some chronically, some for just a time, and they are not locked up in institutions. They walk among us and they are not the dangerous threat that the NRA would want you to believe. It’s not us, it’s the guns.
As the President pointed out yesterday (when he must have been thinking, “I am getting SO sick and tired of giving this speech.”) other countries have mentally ill people. They do not have easy access to guns. Do the math.
There are absolutely people with mental health issues who shouldn’t have guns. I imagine very few severely mentally ill patients own guns today.
But it’s critical to understand that people with mental health issues, as a group, are far more likely to be victimized than to be the victimizers.
They are more often the at-risk group and less often the ‘risky’ group. Even among those who are ‘risky,’ they’re generally risky not just because of their mental health issue, but because they have a drinking problem or a drug problem on top of it.
The danger is less the mental health issue and more the drugs or alcohol… like it is in the general population. There’s a reason why “angry drunk” is a term we’ve all heard.
Furthermore, most people who fit into the “umbrella” of mentally ill may have had something like clinical depression. So long as they have safe access to treatment, most will be able to overcome those issues and be perfectly safe to own a gun. Like John T May.
We need to be very, very, very careful how we legislate against “mentally ill” people. Disastrous and discriminatory things have happened to mentally ill people in the past (or people who were perfectly normal, but treated as if they were mentally ill) because they were over-legislated against, making for some seriously dark times. I recommend reading The State Boys Rebellion for a local history on just how bad and discriminatory those times were in MA.
People who were almost perfectly normal got locked up for their entire lives because they had conditions that weren’t even conditions, like growing up poor and having low IQs, and many others were locked up for years or forever because they had what could have been a treatable depression or were bipolar.
Beyond the discriminatory aspects of this, we shouldn’t pass any kind of laws that could make people feel like they should avoid treatment.
If going to therapy because you’re clinically depressed put someone on some automatic list that banned them from guns (or other things), perhaps forever, they may very well decide not to get treatment.
Think about all the cops or people in the military — their very lives and careers depend on being able to carry guns. They’re also humans who can become clinically depressed, get PTSD or have other mental health issues or disorders.
They should feel comfortable getting treatment when they need it, not feel forced into hiding their health issues because it could cost them their job. Ensuring safe access to treatment keeps life safer for them and everyone else, compared to forcing them to hide their problems and let those problems mount. Ditto with the rest of society.
We absolutely need to do a better job to prevent people who shouldn’t have guns from getting them, but we need to be very, very careful in how we do it — and that means recognizing that not all mental health issues are the same, that substance abuse problems are more predictive of violent behavior than mental health issues without substance abuse, and that people who have mental health issues in most cases can, in fact, get better.
I am currently dealing with a friend who is mentally ill and has an extensive criminal history. The categories into which she has been dumped make it almost impossible to get any help for her. She does not belong in jail. She needs a secure home and a person who will hug her at night. But she is not a woman who will abuse a gun.
Mental illness should not be a crime.
Does anyone take that seriously? Is anyone willing to pick a President based solely on who has the best position on gun control? Is the President himself willing to make an endorsement now on that basis? Is anyone?
Until that happens nothing will change.
Hillary Clinton’s record on gun issues, while not perfect, is far, far better than that of Bernie Sanders, whose record is weak even for a mainstream Democrat, to say nothing of a supposed standard-bearer for the left. So, are any Bernie enthusiasts out there thinking about switching because of this issue?
I expect Bernie Sanders to evolve on this issue, just as Hillary Clinton has evolved on many others.
Like Howard Dean his previous stances were informed by being from VT. He has said appropriate things after this and other instances that lead me to believe he gets it.
I think he’ll respond to pushing on this. He disappoints me on this and some Middle East issues, but they aren’t disqualifying given everything else.
I know you are trying to slam Hillary in order to defined Bernie, which doesn’t exactly bode will for Sanders if that’s the best defense. Plus, don’t lump me in with a Clinton supporter, I’m not. Bernie’s position here sucks, are you kidding me defending the Brady Bill. With his speech in Boston, he’s offered nothing that hasn’t already been said and hasn’t worked. For the first time with Bernie I saw a Pol, that’s what is he just another Pol. We’ll see how it goes going forward.
A lot of people who could be voting for democrats but aren’t are fans of their guns, many of them rural populists.
Most of these people are for sensible gun reform, but have been hoodwinked by the NRA into thinking that Democrats want to take their guns away.
Insofar as Bernie’s not going to be able to be painted that way, and has been able to appeal to exactly these kinds of rural voters, that makes him not only a highly electable candidate…. but a credible reformer, in a only-Nixon-could-go-to-China kind of way.
There’s some low-hanging fruit reforms the vast majority of society supports, and that a majority of gun owners support, that Bernie very much favors.
He speaks about these issues frequently, on TV, at his rallies and beyond.
Among them:
-Closing the gun show loopholes.
-Passing strengthened, universal background checks.
-Banning military-grade weapons, many of which have been used in mass shootings.
I lost a cousin to gun violence. It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. I’d very much favor a policy where we banned everything except true hunting weapons, a la the UK or Australia.
Our country isn’t there, though. Trying to force it there just plays into the hands of the NRA.
That’s why I favor candidates who are pushing for getting at the low-hanging fruit items first, the kind of things super majorities support that could save thousands of lives a year — things like universal background checks.
Once we pass the low-hanging fruit items, we can move on up to some of the more difficult items to pass. But that’s going to be a long-term effort that will take decades, not years.
The low-hanging fruit stuff is the stuff I want to see done now, and a President Bernie is the perfect guy to do it.
And it gets made often by the NRA. Some or most–not all– advocates of gun control legislation are interested in just that: control. Background checks, licensing, registration, insurance, etc. But there are certainly those who see regulation as an incremental step toward an outright prohibition, which makes it easy for the NRA to divert the political discourse (such as it is) in a favorable (to the NRA) direction.
I think it is similar to the phenomenon of the political discourse (such as it is) of immigration. Opposition to illegal immigration is often a cover for purely racist opposition to immigration, period. That makes it difficult for the political discussion to move beyond the realm of slogans and epithets, and seems to just cement the status quo into place.
Honestly? I can’t imagine making gun control the single issue on which I chose a candidate for any office. Is it important? Of course it is. Is it more important than climate change, military policy, financial-industry oversight and reform, police militarization, reproductive rights, wealth and income inequality, structural racism, a bunch of others? No, it is not.
Mind you, this specific instance is relatively simple for me and probably for most potential Sanders supporters, because I don’t find his positions on gun control nearly as dire as they’re painted. But even in other potential situations — well, say you’ve got a candidate who gets an A+ on gun control, but who also advocates abolishing the federal estate tax, or wants to amend the constitution to explicitly ban same-sex marriage and abortion under all circumstances. Sure, she’s also calling for a repeal of the Second Amendment, but she’s not getting my vote. Nor, I imagine, the votes of most of the rest of us here.
One of our allegedly major political parties is threatening to shut down the federal government because we insist on continuing to fund the single largest provider of women’s health care services in the nation, while simultaneously blocking EVERY attempt to stop or even slow this needless murder of thousands of people every year. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m far more repulsed by each victim in preventable episodes like this than I am by the lurid video fantasies of Carly Fiorina and her ilk.
I don’t know about “single issue voting”. I do know that what we are doing is insane, and we are doing because the GOP demands that we continue doing it.
If this issue is enough to push voters away from the utterly insane policies of the GOP, then I’m happy that Barack Obama solicits those votes.
Once and for all it is not who the PRESIDENT is. As a matter fact this president would be delighted to sign a comprehensive gun control bill. It is who the Speaker and the House more broadly are. Can we not even keep our civics straight on a political site? The President quite simply does not have the power to change our gun laws. Period. The House of Representatives and the Senate do with the president’s signature or with a 2/3’s override of the President’s veto. Are we really becoming a country where people don’t know this?
when he talks about single issue voting on this issue. I was already leaning toward Clinton, so it’s not any sacrifice for me. But if the best we can do after each massacre is to reaffirm our resolve never to vote for Mike Huckabee, not much will change.
As much as I am appalled by the government’s inaction on gun violence, I have an issue that is even more important to me — war. I so far have escaped any personal effects of the gun madness. None of my friends or family have been shot in the U.S. I have not escaped the effects of war. My youth was abruptly ended by my being forced to participate in a stupid and useless war that killed and maimed many thousands of my generation and many more thousands of innocent people trying to live out their lives in their home. To me, none of the many wars we have waged since my childhood have been worth their enormous human cost.
On my Big Issue, Clinton is one of those whose record puts her on the wrong side. Sanders voted against both Gulf wars. Clinton, when she was in the Senate, voted for the stupid authorization for Bush’s stupid invasion of Iraq. When Sanders opposed the 1991 Gulf War, he said this in a speech: “we are laying the groundwork for more and more wars in that region in the years to come.” If the nation had listened to him, how different would our world and nation be today? How many young and innocent lives would not have been cut short? As Sanders said this year about Clinton’s Iraq War vote, “I’m not here to criticize the vote she cast years ago, but what does that mean in terms of your judgment in assessing information?” What it means to me is that Clinton assisted in inflicting the horrors of war on millions of innocent people.
If our primary system allows me to, I will vote for the candidate who has consistently voted to save us from those horrors.
Abraham Lincoln said “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you really want to test a mans character give him power.” Assuming (and, IIRC, you mentioned it prior) you’re describing your experiences in Viet Nam, I think we can say that both LBJ and Nixon failed that test of character. I think, with respect to Iraq, George W Bush failed that test also… but I’m not willing to ascribe that failure to then-Senator Clinton. (I come to this by way of my admiration for and support of John Kerry, and not HRC, but I can’t help but think the situations similar).
We have the biggest Air Force in the world… The second largest Air Force in the world? The US Navy. In fact, you’d have to stack up (last I checked) and combine the next 13 (thirteen!) militaries to equal out the fight. But the majority of those militaries are our allies anyways…. so, if you think about it, anybody willing to take us on must be thoroughly insane. The authorization of the use of force is, itself, a big stick and any such authorization doesn’t particularly have to yield actual use of force.
The thing forgotten about the authorization of the use of force voted for in October of 2003 was that there was supposed to be another bite at the UN apple that Geo W and Dick Cheney deliberately eschewed. The only way that the authorization passed was for Bush (and Powell) to make promises some thought were ironclad. The Senate, however, went Republican in November of 2003 and at that time then-Majority Leader Trent Lott didn’t press the issue of George Bush’s soon to be obvious perfidy and betrayal. (think the absolute worst you can abut Bush and Cheney and I guarantee you the truth is harsher) Any true republican would have placed the integrity of the Senate above the aims of a true war-monger like Bush (and Cheney) and made a lot of hay over exactly this issue but Lott, nor any other Republican, did not. John Kerry actually did try to push back and make note of it, but all he got was pilloried for being a whiner in the 2004 election, which is, also, a distinctly unfair assessment. I think the recent negotiations with Iran had, as a backdrop, the military clash that would surely ensue if the talks failed… No, there was not a deliberate and clear vote to authorize force, but the threat was there and ever-present. I don’t think Iran would have agreed to the terms they did if they did not believe a war was set to occur in the absence of an agreement.
I’m very sympathetic to the argument that war should not be entered into lightly. But I’m not sure this is the same as the argument that says we should never vote for the use of force ever, at any time. That’s just a way of saying we’ll pay for this military and never use it, ever. I’m also very sympathetic to the argument that the military should be very much smaller than it is now, but (again) I’m unconvinced that this means that the authorization of the use of force is never justified. I don’t like making this argument because people tend to think I’m making a backdoor justification for Bush… but I’m not. I’m making a justification for an honest and earnest President to do what might need to be done, not for a feckless thug like Bush to do what he may have always wanted to do. But that Bush was a feckless thug doesn’t abrogate the responsibility for honest and earnest Presidents and Senators to make hard decisions.
So,I don’t know, I might change your mind from “HRC is a war-monger” to “HRC is easily manipulated,” and I suppose that’s a fair cop… but I can’t square your desire not to go to war unless absolutely necessary with HRC’s vote to authorize force as a vote for war. I just can not do it.
to try to suggest that voting authorization of force in Iraq 03 wasn’t the same thing as voting for the war — as if Bush was still on the fence or something.
Bush was salivating for an invasion of Iraq since he was elected President. The vote for authorization wasn’t a “stick” to use to get Iraq to comply with things it was already complying with… it was permission to invade.
I like Hillary Clinton. I voted for her in 07. I’ll happily vote for her and support her campaign in other ways if she wins the general. But she’s absolutely accountable for that vote, a vote that shouldn’t’ be looked at in any other way than giving permission to GWB to invade. She knew he was going to invade just like everyone else did.
It is the biggest blemish of her career, and given all the blood lost and dollar spent over it, there’s really no forgetting it… not when she could have been the kind of leader and voice in the Senate to create legitimate opposition to the war when it would have mattered.
I was in Iraq in 2008 on a State Department contract in a place so safe you might have thought you we’re sleeping with lambs. But I was there to deal with our country”s war victims. Does anybody else remember the common phrase at the time “if you break it, then you own it.
I lived the war Hillary helped give us, but I will vote for her if she is the least war-mongering candidate on the ballot in 2016. She has blood on her hands and needs to be held accountable, but I will still vote for her, lacking an alternative.
I do not “forgive” her vote in the Senate. It is hard for a non-Christian like me to express the thought of what might be called absolution. My language skills fail me today but I will nevertheless vote for her in 2016 if she is the least war-mogering candidate on the ballot (not that it matters since I live in Massachusetts – giggle)
I was not a martyr. I was overpaid for my lowly and safe work in Iraq. I have only on rare occasions had a gun pointed at me so I do not deserve any special credit. I am one of the lucky ones. Hillary was not so kind to others.
Yes their decisions to pander to the warheads were similar. Kerry’s was the more hypocritical, given that his entire political career was founded on his opposition to the Vietnam War. When he voted for the “use of force” — nothing but a euphemism for war — I told him that he would never again get my vote, for anything, and he didn’t. Clinton’s cynical decision to sacrifice American soldiers and innocent Iraqis to further her Presidential aspirations is indefensible.
And yes, our military is the most powerful in the world. Small wonder — last time I looked, our defense spending was equal to what the entire rest of the world spends on their militaries. We are the global equivalent of the guy who hoards guns and ammunition, and like too many of those guys, we occasionally take them out and kill people with them. That’s why the rest of the world — even our allies — considers us the biggest threat to peace today. It’s not just that we have the most and biggest guns, but that we keep using them.
.. If you think either Kerry or Clinton are the second coming of Gandhi. They are not. I suppose we can all wear hairshirts and lament that they are not, and that might make us feel good about our own angst… but it won’t change a thing. Both Kerry and Clinton were born during or after WWII which was a war many felt needed to be fought and could not be avoided. They grew up with soldiers as moral and righteous actors.
You and I grew up with a different ethic of force and of soldiery: the unnecessary and unclean soldier… I saw it. Perhaps you were it. I don’t know. But my great uncle, Matthew, an infantryman in 1943 and 44, and his sister, nurse and ambulance driver 1944, were respected where my uncle John, US Navy 1965-1969 was not.
I don’t know which view is right. Maybe there is a little bit of puffery and edge to both. I do know that I’m not privileged to know… so I have to give both you and Kerry the benefit of a doubt.
When we passed the authorization to use force, the Iraqis –in particular, Saddam Hussein– capitulated and allowed inspectors. Don’t ask me, ask Hans Blix … That was the way it was supposed to work. That was the way to do it without the use of force and it was working That was the way Kerry and Clinton, among others, believed that it would work. That was the way it worked every time prior and every time since… It worked exactly and precisely that way until George Bush, given an inch, took a mile… and invaded. The authorization for the use of force was exactly a threat that worked. George W. Bush refused, at that point, to take yes for an answer. Why is that the fault of either Kerry or Clinton? I’ll save you some arduous gymnastics: it is not the fault of either Kerry or Clinton; they gave Bush the inch and he took a mile… You would fault them for not seeing the perfidy of a desperately, viciously, evil person. The sheer monstrosity of the act precludes the fore-knowledge on the part of a truly good person… that might be what makes them good in the first place. That you wish they could have forsees evil sorta works against your argument: if they could have they wouldn’t have been worthy of you vote, and your trust, in the first place. That they didn’t doesn’t make them hypocrites… quite the opposite, in fact.
No, I never thought either Kerry Or Clinton bore any resemblance to Ghandi, and I have no idea how you came up with that. I think they are both reprehensible, craven jerks for their votes on Bush’s War. Perhaps you’re one too. I don’t know. How does that feel, petr? What are you going to do next, the old “kirth hasn’t denied being an unclean soldier” trick? Screw you.
… I meant no such thing. I apologize for writing that. I do not think you are or were an unclean soldier. I realize my inarticulation and withdraw it: I do not think that and I do not mean to say that. I meant to write “perhaps you were in it,’ and I was trying to get at the difference between your willingness to go, what you may have expected and the reality… which is the same space that Kerry and Clinton occupied in 2002. That’s all I attempted to do, but I failed at it. I am sorry.
I don’t know the exact circumstances of your involvement as soldier, I only know that you went. Perhaps you regret going. Perhaps you felt betrayed. Perhaps you were betrayed. But you went. Nobody considers you a hypocrite because you now oppose war. I don’t. You went and whatever sense of duty or obligation drove you to go, I consider that it was and is good. That the results may not have been good… that the trust you placed in feckless thugs was not rewarded is not an indictment of your trust… That’s on them. Not you. This, I think, is little different from Kerry and Clinton: “reprehensible craven jerks” ain’t in it. They took their roles as Senators seriously and made a seriously difficult decision and gave Bush limited and conditional permission to use force. He abused that permission. That’s on him.
The Senators made a different decision from the one you would have made — and from me, for I would not have voted for the war either, for far different reasons than any stated here, however — but that difference doesn’t make their efforts any less earnest. I may not like the outcome, and it may be an outcome I might have tried to avoid myself, but that doesn’t invalidate the process or the character of the decision makers. If it did then there really would be no difference at all between Republicans and Democrats and that I cannot believe
But, once again, I apologize for the innuendo and the insult. I do not think that of you.
Perhaps I was drafted. My support for the young John Kerry, and that of just about everyone else, was based on his antiwar message. It’s why I got arrested on Memorial day 1971, along with Kerry and several hundred others, and why I worked on his Congressional campaign later. It’s the one issue that separated him from most politicians, and he coasted on it for decades. Then he threw it away with his calculated vote for war. Oh, and that business about the authorization being a tool to leverage Saddam, not a green light to invade? Bullshit. Anyone who remembers the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, as I do and Kerry and Clinton certainly do, knows it’s bullshit. What they were earnest about was their desire for higher office, and that decided them to go along with the Jingoist tide. As Tom said, they have blood on their hands.
If you ever need help you can call on me. I truly am here if you need a place (yeah it is on the Cape but there are worse places to b)e
Perhaps we might take a different approach to all this.
Perhaps we might require a CURRENT full emotional health evaluation for EACH initial gun purchase, and for each ANNUAL renewal, for EVERYBODY.
Some states already do this for marriage licenses — the applicants must submit recent blood tests. The evaluation I’m suggesting has nothing to do with prior health or history. Instead, it is a statement by a licensed practitioner that the applicant is CURRENTLY “healthy” (whatever that means). I’m proposing the emotional health equivalent of the physical exam required to obtain nearly all life insurance policies. I suggest that the cost of that exam be borne by the applicatant.
I mean EVERYBODY, by the way. Specifically, each armed law enforcement agent must be re-certified each year by an independent professional, and those certifications shall be a matter of public record.
Forklift operators have to be re-certified every three years, as a matter of their safety and the safety of those around them. Why treat a gun any differently when guns are more dangerous?