The 2nd Amendment & the Elephant

• Posted by Charles Hugh Winstead December 20, 2012 - #mental illness  #Sandy Hook  #2nd Amendment  - 610 views

  Uh, there's an elephant in the room.  Sure, there were firearms involved, as there are in every other mass murder.  But guns are not the only common denominator, they just become the focus because there are folks on one side who want to preserve a constitutional right, and those whose standing agenda is to reshape the content and character of a constitutional democratic republic, into some as yet to be revealed form of government where public policy rests in the opinions and actions of a single person.  But let's deal with the elephant (and no, I'm not referring to the mascot of the US Republican political party).  The elephant to which I refer is Mental Illness.  Although the assassins commit heinous crimes, these are not terrorists or outlaws in the normal sense of those terms.  These are folks like each of us, who, for whatever reason, have crossed a dark dessert only to arrive, souls parched, at an oasis drained of refreshment, and covered over with a crazy house of distorted mirrors, all of which reflect nothing close to resembling a human image.  Seeing themselves as distorted monsters, who can say what strange and twisted plans they form, when in fact, I would stake my life that they all share a common goal--a path out of the insanity.  We all live in a world capable of driving each of us off the deep end.  It's a miracle we don't all just up and do each other in.  And how do we "deal" with the crazy making world we find ourselves trapped within?  Ah, Direct to Consumer (DTC) marketing of psycho-pharmacological management drugs!  No, no, no.  We mustn't  spend our R&D $$$ on discovering "cures" for all those trendy stigmas listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V coming soon from the same folks who brought you DSM-IV TR).  We'd "cure" ourselves right into the poor house.  Management.  That's the way to go.  Get the nutters hooked, and maintain a nice steady ca$h flow.  And so what if the government requires all those scary warnings on our products.  We can hire someone who can read aloud at 300 words per minute, or run a ticker across the bottom of the HDTV screen real fast in an illegibly small font.  Even if they read all the warnings, how many of them do you think are actually going to call their prescribing physician if they experience abnormal moods.  What's normal anyway?  And so the psychiatrists no longer inquire, "How have you been doing?" at the start of the patient's 10 to 15 minute med management visit.  Now the opening question is, "How are your meds doing?"
  
  THIS is the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about.  But I'll tell you something very important in the whole debate.  Mentally healthy people do not pick up guns and massacre anyone--not men, not women, certainly not children.
  
  THIS should be THE substance of any discussion addressing the wanton slaughter of innocents.
  
  End of rant.  Happy Solstice, you all.  --Charles