NRA’s LaPierre Wants To Have A Naughty/Nice List Like Santa, Except For Crazy/Not Crazy

shutterstock_12801703Do you guys remember yesterday just one week after the Sandy Hook school shootings when the NRA held a press conference even though not all of the bodies from the mass shooting spree has been buried yet and Wayne LaPierre suggested an armed guard outside every classroom? Well, he also said this, which I thought was sort of interesting, and by interesting I mean very disturbing.

 The truth is, that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters. People that are so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons, that no sane person can every possibly comprehend them. They walk among us every single day, and does anybody really believe that the next Adam Lanza isn’t planning his attack on a school, he’s already identified at this very moment?

How many more copycats are waiting in the wings for their moment of fame from a national media machine that rewards them with wall-to-wall attention and a sense of identity that they crave, while provoking others to try to make their mark.

A dozen more killers, a hundred more? How can we possibly even guess how many, given our nation’s refusal to create an active national database of the mentally ill?

 

I’m not sure how they want to compile this list and who exactly gets on this list. 38 states require or authorize the use of certain mental health records for use in a firearm background check, The Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibits gun sales to individuals who have been committed to a mental institution or ”adjudicated as a mental defective.” I support that. I think individuals who are truly technically “insane” should not have access to firearms. That makes sense. But the idea of making a bigger list concerns me.

It has been suggested that Adam Lanza had Asperger’s syndrome, and I have stated before that majority of individuals afflicted with Asperger’s are not violent. From what we know, Lanza did not have a criminal record. He was described as being a “nerd” and a “loner.” We still have no idea what caused him to murder all of those people. A lot of mass murderers and serial killers don’t have criminal or mental health records. How really can we ever protect ourselves against those people?

From Abc15.com:

Perhaps the biggest challenge will be determining who is violent or has a propensity toward violence. Mental health experts note that violence and mental illness are not one and the same — most people who commit violent acts aren’t mentally ill, and the vast majority of people with a mental illness are no more violent than anyone else.

Tighter gun control restrictions, no matter how well intentioned, might do nothing more than stigmatize people with conditions like schizophrenia or bipolar disorder who already are unfairly stereotyped as violent or frightening, and still miss potential killers who have no record of mental illness, mental health experts say.

 

So basically a list like this will stigmatize already stigmatized individuals and do nothing to protect us against the average citizen who just decides to kill a bunch of innocent people. What about individuals who make statements that threaten the president? Do they end up on the “Crazy List”?

(photo: Alvaro German Vilela /Shutterstock)

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