A heavily armed man killed himself rather than carry out an apparent plan to shoot up a mountaintop amusement park in Colorado, authorities said Monday.
No shit. We had plenty of guns when I was a kid (52 now), even AR-15s and the like, and this wasn't a normal thing until after Columbine.
I'd hold off on my manifesto, :), but mental health has taken a nosedive in this country. It's far, far worse than kids can imagine. Fox News, Facebook, the internet, etc. has poisoned our collective brains and discourse.
I'm 38, and yeah it's seriously fucked. I keep saying this and people still want to plug their ears and scream "it's the guns!".
I'm a prime example, I have ADHD and hardcore insomnia, and I got laid off a few months ago, my health insurance just ended. In order to see a psychiatrist it's gonna cost me $300 out of pocket for the visit, and then generic Ambien is like $120 for 60 pills. I got letters that say I could get health insurance via the COBRA Act of 1985, but it's SEVEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY DOLLARS A MONTH. Healthcare.gov keeps playing commercials that say "enroll now and you can get health insurance for as low as $10/month!". I went on there to look and it's only available for 2024 right now and they want to know your income for 2024. I put in 80k and they said I wasn't eligible, I put in 40k and it said it was gonna cost $350/month.
My dad is 73 and he constantly has to fight with insurance and the pharmacy to get his Ambien as well.
The vast majority of mentally ill people are not violent. The idea that mental illness is largely responsible for the prevalence of mass shooters contributes to the stigma already attached to mental illness.
rage-farming as a genre of syndicated media (think: Limbaugh, Hannity, InfoWars)
selling fear becomes huge moneymaker for opinion programmers (Limbaugh, Hannity, Carlson, etc)
politics as a staple on social media comment threads
offshore groups (like troll farms, etc) posing as domestic political actors, targeting particular demographics
Ready access to guns is of course a problem, but it's probably made worse when all those folks with ready access to guns are bathed in fear and loathing 24/7 by millionaires making lots of money telling them things to make them or their families afraid or angry. Just a thought
This is almost uplifting. Like, it's terrible the man was suffering so much, but it's admirable that he chose the better of the two options he was giving himself. That probably makes me sound like a terrible person.
I don't think that sounds terrible at all. We can all agree, I think, that we'd rather this whole situation not happen at all, but of the two cases, one with one dead by their own hands, and another case with who knows how many dead at the same person's hands, there's absolutely nothing wrong with saying you're happy it was the former and not the latter.
Terrible would be saying he deserved it. Or putting someone in that position. Or a variety of other things, but it's not being relieved at a lower death toll.
It's not that he's a good person, it's that he made the right decision at a critical moment. Still not a good decision, but a whole hell of a lot better than what he was prepared to do.
Charles Whitman — Texas Sniper. Killed 14 people in 1966.
Autopsy found a brain tumor pressing the amygdala, which presumably caused uncontrollable "fight or flight" response.
First off, 1966 was a different time worldwide for firearms possession.
But for my real point, a continuous "activation" of fight or flight will always result in fight being the option, because all the running in the world hasn't helped to that point.
While thats valid comment for the main post, for the Whitman case, he was in the military. Even with strict laws he would've still had easy access unless we're talking drastic changes of having military personel not having general firearm access.
In my neurology class Whitman was the only case of the tumor clearly being a major driving factor.
I'm not saying the class was entirely comprehensive, or that the other cases were not medically-driven. The other cases we studied were psychologically driven (mental disorders) rather than physiological (e.g. tumor/cancer/head-trauma). I just wanted to say the tumor case might not be as likely as one might think.
The weapons found on Medina were ghost guns, which do not have serial numbers and therefore cannot be traced. His clothing had patches and emblems that gave the appearance of Medina being associated with law enforcement.
When someone’s mind allows them to believe the options are to either commit a terrorist attack or to off themself, it sounds like cult behavior more than mental health to me
yeah. you ride up via tram and can enjoy a day of fun. roller coaster, swing over a cliff, alpine sleds (on rail) and caves. I also recall a laser tag area, some lame 4d ride (smells, get soaked, etc) and food. Then head down to the geothermal hotsprings for a nice soak in what i think is the worlds largest hotspring pool.
why not just suicide at home? like, why get all dressed up in tac gear, then off yourself in a relatively public space? oh sure, mental illness, but... why not just stay home?
There is no "but" to mental illness; Mental illness is by-defintion doing things that don't make sense, often the person performing the actions doesnt even understand why they are doing what they are doing (when extreme mental illness is involved). Motivations can be anything from visual hallucinations to "I dont know, I felt like a passenger while my body was doing things".
Saying "ok, but like y tho" is misunderstanding how mental illness works.
"In 2021, $68,000 in fines were levied against the park, where a 6-year-old Colorado Springs girl was killed on one of the rides over that Labor Day weekend."