I have no idea what the solution is. Nobody does but it always comes down to debates over mental health vs. guns.

RE: Mental health. We have come light years with mental health, but if you are at a breaking point, I'm not sure most understand how challenging it is to get care. I was at a conference in Columbus, OH back in September and this one speaker had a resonating story. This guy was speaking to a room full (500+ people) of local officials, many of which are affiliated with hospitals. He asked the audience how long it takes a new patient to get in to see a mental health professional and a lady responded "up to 45 days." Anyways, he was talking about struggles with his own serious mental health problems and categorized the population as being about 10% being totally with it and having no issues, about 80% of us as what we think of as "normal" with our general ups and downs that could use some work from time-to-time but also with the ability to snap, and about 10% us really struggling and in need of consistent care. He falls in that last category of 10%. So, the woman who raised this guy (grandmother) recently passed and he said he lost it. Was down in it, considering harming himself and going back to drugs. Now imagine the response he gets if you call someone and they say, "we would love to help you, see you in 45 days."

RE: Guns. I am not anti-gun. Fully get hunting, self-defense, and to a lesser degree the sport of just shooting . But I do not understand gun fascination culture that often mixes with a desire to accumulate guns to guard against some kind of tyrannical boogeyman and prepping for a doomsday scenario. But hey, you do you, cool by me. Where it gets tricky is that this does create an environment of more gun accessibility because this issue is more important to a large segment of society than literally anything else. Correcting the accessibility problem does not eliminate evil or the mental health dilemma noted above. I have a chocolate/sweets addiction. If it is in the house, then game over. If it is not in the house I can still go and get it, but I have to hop in my car, drive to the market, etc. There are more hoops to jump through than just having it easily accessible in the cupboard.

I saw someone else say, "If guns actually made us more safe, then America would be the safest place on earth." 

That obviously isn't the case Re: gun violence, it's quite the opposite actually. 

Completely separating the two issues.... Mental health needs more attention. Period. Bugs' example is just one of thousands that vividly illustrate that. It's absurd ANY health care isn't more accessible than that. 

But...

America isn't the only place with mental health issues. Using that as the #1 reason is nothing more than deflection. 

By what little we know, the shooter had typical American upbringing. Ran track and played basketball in high school, went to college in Alabama then came home a got a job across the river in Louisville...kid was living the dream. 

One thing that stood out in the little bit of background info to come out, he had so many concussions in high school that he had to wear a helmet when he played basketball. Any chance this is CTE related?

3 hours ago, spindoc said:

Unless there has been a change in reporting, everything I have read says he has no history.  How do you prevent that?  If day of is how swiftly we have to react, good luck with that.

I thought one of the things I saw said he may have said some things on social media the last few days but I guess we will have to wait for the official report on that.  To your question, we have free will, there is no way to 100% prevent crimes like this, not even if you take away all the legal guns. 

4 hours ago, rjs4470 said:

I agree mental health care needs to be expanded, improved, easier to access etc. But that doesn’t mean the people who do these acts would take advantage it. And while this always is offered as a suggestion, it never comes with what it would look like, or how we get those people into care. Blaming this on mental illness is easy, but it also places those who are suffering from mental illness in a harsh, evil light. The vast majority of mentally ill people are not capable of and not likely to do something like this.

Mental illness is probably the one consistent factor in these shootings so if mental illness can't be addressed in a meaningful way these shootings will never stop.

1 hour ago, TheDeuce said:

I saw someone else say, "If guns actually made us more safe, then America would be the safest place on earth." 

That obviously isn't the case Re: gun violence, it's quite the opposite actually. 

You said this above and I agree: "The only thing we can do is put things into place that reduce the risk as much as possible, for every scenario."  You also said yesterday that you are not allowed to carry a gun at your workplace.  In short, I think any business/public place that doesn't allow someone to carry a gun should have to provide armed security.  When you don't have that matrix (either I can carry a gun everywhere or you have someone with a gun protecting me) making a comparison between guns and safety is distorted.  What we have in America is many places where only the criminals have guns. 

17 minutes ago, Jumper_Dad said:

By what little we know, the shooter had typical American upbringing. Ran track and played basketball in high school, went to college in Alabama then came home a got a job across the river in Louisville...kid was living the dream. 

One thing that stood out in the little bit of background info to come out, he had so many concussions in high school that he had to wear a helmet when he played basketball. Any chance this is CTE related?

I would think all those hits in the head exacerbated any mental health issues the shooter had so to answer your question I would speculate that is one of the factors. 

The gunman bought the weapon one week ago today…

32 minutes ago, Jumper_Dad said:

By what little we know, the shooter had typical American upbringing. Ran track and played basketball in high school, went to college in Alabama then came home a got a job across the river in Louisville...kid was living the dream. 

One thing that stood out in the little bit of background info to come out, he had so many concussions in high school that he had to wear a helmet when he played basketball. Any chance this is CTE related?

There are plenty of people with dozens of concussions that don’t murder people. IMO, that’s just one way people will try to alter the narrative in this particular case. 

4 hours ago, spindoc said:

Unless there has been a change in reporting, everything I have read says he has no history.  How do you prevent that?  If day of is how swiftly we have to react, good luck with that.

Agreed.  That would take some minority report type of intervention, which doesn't seem likely right now.  

6 minutes ago, TheDeuce said:

The gunman bought the weapon one week ago today…

Probably thought about it/planned it for awhile, made the decision to do it, purchased the gun, and then almost immediately acted.

5 minutes ago, sportsfan41 said:

Agreed.  That would take some minority report type of intervention, which doesn't seem likely right now.  

I think that is where we are headed in several states only some states that have "minority report/red flag laws" fail too.  If we do go that direction I predict there will be a lot of abuse.

7 minutes ago, TheDeuce said:

There are plenty of people with dozens of concussions that don’t murder people. IMO, that’s just one way people will try to alter the narrative in this particular case. 

It is probably a factor.  I think in many cases people don't want to consider anything outside of their own gun narratives. 

9 minutes ago, TheDeuce said:

There are plenty of people with dozens of concussions that don’t murder people. IMO, that’s just one way people will try to alter the narrative in this particular case. 

There are, but there are a lot of people with CTE who also will choose to take their own life and leave everyone else alone.  Point being, those folks don't make national headlines.