5 shootings here last night, do we need law enforcement or gun control?

true

Get the criminals off the streets, get the psychopaths off the streets.

6 weeks before Holmes shot up the Aurora theater, his psychiatrist asked the police to check into him because of his mental illness. They didn't.

It would help, with all the budget problems and loons most cities have they couldn't afford to check everyone, seems like the shrink could have had him held for evaluation if he was concerned.

The psychiatrist is a she.
A psychiatrist cannot lock up anybody. The law requires that the psychiatrist notify law enforcement if a patient is likely to be a danger to others or the the patient him/her self. Something must happen because if it doesn't happen, there will be a body count.

Looks like the CO. law enforcement she notified should have done their jobs.

I guess my machine jumped and I replied to myself.

They drop the ball quite frequently and it is the locals, not the feds. Both Loughner and the Virginia Tech shooters were examples of law enforcement failures.

It does that, true they do not seem to be functioning as intended. Many don't seem to know what their job is. Feds have their moments too..

The feds do have their moments, but supposedly, local govt which includes law enforcement, is believed to me more concerned about the individual.

Should be so.....there are so many criminals now they couldn't really deal with all of them as they should be.

No, so the honest people live behind the bars on their homes and the criminals run the streets.

Some areas it is that way. Definitely needs to change.

Yep, I hope we last long enough to see those changes.

So do I friend.

Exactly, same as with Lougher and that guy that shot up Virginia Tech a few years ago. Law enforcement screwed those up as well.

True, pretty much that way here. Thanks

People will find a way to get guns no matter what, sorry -.-

True, even if they have to make one. Thanks

both

Not so much gun control, it benefits the criminals. Thanks

Parental involvement. We need to tackle the cause, not the symptom.

One of the issues involved, thanks

The only thng cops can do is arrest somebody, it is up to the judicial system to keep them off the streets. Plea bargains need to end and sentences need to be carried out to their full extent. If the cost of the prison is the problem, lower the expenses, it is prison not a guarded resort.

true thanks

Hubby & I were talking about this this am and my comment was .. " When are they gonna start locking these loonies away.... for a long, long time?" It has been found that almost all of these incidents have involved and been carried out by disturbed people who were either under the care of pschyiatrists or were being medicated and on some mind/mood altering substance. When are we going to take the medical profession to task and demand some answers for their malfeasance?

Years ago, there were institutions where people who were judged to be a threat to society were locked away with no apologies. Kids could safely play in their yards, women could peacefully shop and, I don't recall any mass shootings back then, do you? Rather than call for control of inanimate objects (guns), howabout controlling these people who are like powderkegs in our society, just waiting to blow?

Would make more sense, some aren't treatable and get turned loose with some quack claiming he was a great success, some just get turned loose due to overcrowding or time served basically. Total mindset change and direction psychiatry is moving would be needed, they don't seem to care about the people anymore.

I remember back in the seventies and eighties when states, looking for ways to save money, started shutting asylums down and furloughing these people to half-way houses, etc.. Well, we are reaping the fruits of those decisions, aren't we? So... psychiatry turned away from the tried and true of years past and the grand experiment is a bust !!!

Those patients, especially the ones needing more help than obtainable in a halfway house setting, the families and casualties of the shootings and society at large are the real victims. All the gun control laws in the world won't do a thing to cure this problem.

true, the governments cutting funding for mental care didn't help a thing except violent crime. thanks.

A Supreme Court ruling in the 1980s released most of the mentally disturbed from these institutions and put them out on the streets. Some how the Court decided that giving these people the care they needed violated their Constitutional rights.

I lived near the town that housed the State Insane Asylum and the uproar that followed when the mentally ill were put out on the streets. Most of the former patients are harmless and became easy victims for the Criminals, a few would terrorize society.

True, didn't help a thing. Now they just stick them in prison indefinitely if they catch them doing something or leave them to their own devices. Thanks friend

My friend you are most welcome.

We don't need stricter gun laws. We need stricter penalty's for violating the laws.

Instead of making jail time like a hotel stay, bring back the chain gangs.

Good idea and true. thanks

You need both. There are too many loopholes that allow people to buy guns without proper background checks AND there are too many cuts in law enforcement, which gives people who would illegally use guns a sense of safety and gives people who wouldn't illegally use them the impression that they're unsafe, and therefore have to buy them (even though stats show that having a gun makes you more likely to be shot, since you're escalating the violence, but people don't think reasonably when it comes to protecting themselves). Plus, our laws are all messed up--people can hold you at gun point and get less time than someone growing weed, where's the deterrent in that?

Some good points, but control works in favor of the criminals since they don't obey the laws. thanks

It's the same here in the UK,even withour draconian gun laws the thickos in power just cannot seem to grasp the fact,that scumbags are most unlikely to acquire a licence!

True everywhere, thanks friend

We need better protections against the big banks. These killing were because of a bank foreclosure. Maybe by a tax-payer bailed out bank