Another mass shooting, this one in Las Vegas at a country music festival. As usual, liberals want to discuss gun control and conservatives say this is no time to talk about it. But half the equation is the mental state of the shooter. If you can’t ban guns because of the Constitution, how about banning mental illness? That could be hard too.
Can’t Do Gun Control. How About Crazy Control?
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Wait … what? Regulate CRAZYness?
I’m melting, melting. Ohhhhh, what a world, what a world. Look! A squirrel! Why is a raven like a writing desk, anyway?
“Insanity — a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.” R.D. Laing. Or not.
If to be insane is to deviate from the social norm, then:
Where the social norm is psychopathy, being sane is abnormal, and so, an overt demonstration of sanity while living among the insane becomes evidence of insanity itself.
“From now on I’m thinking only of me.
“Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way?
“Then, said Yossarian, I’d certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn’t I?”
―Joseph Heller
ah yes, that is the catch. 😉
“The majority is always sane”
– Larry Niven
“Animals can be driven crazy by placing too many in too small a pen. Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.”
– Robt. Heinlein
I’m schizoid enough to believe both of them simultaneously and before breakfast (along with six impossible things.)
The mass murders are a distraction from issues where improvements are feasible, among them the annual 10,000 homicides and 20,000 suicides by firearms in the US, and which never get the media coverage that these mass murder extravaganzas get.
People fear flying in commercial airlines while they are among the safest means of travel, although when they fail, they fail as spectacularly as a mass murder, but are actually far safer than automobiles.
In comparison to firearm violence, coverage of the annual 30,000 traffic deaths—which is comparable in number to total firearm deaths—is boring.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/21/gun-control-debate-mass-shootings-gun-violence
As evidenced by the previous comments, it is undeniable that only Ted and I maintain a grip on reality and thus, sanity.
… and we’re none too sure about Ted. 😀
Updating Descartes’s cogito here:
I think, therefore I am [insane*].
*Where an overt demonstration of sanity while living among the insane becomes evidence of insanity itself.
I will not trust any government until it holds a credible and public Truth and Reconciliation hearing.
We have passed through the times of the “End of History” (Fukuyama) and the economic “Long Moderation” and the previously unthinkable continues to inflict itself on the present.
So is trust and surrender to an inevitable and self-proclaimed final order really smart?
I enter the Trump presidency into evidence.