Free Republic

Is there common ground for supporters of gun rights and gun control to stop random, senseless shootings in this country? Perhaps. Hours after the awful shooting at Seattle Pacific University, Mayor Ed Murray appeared on campus and said, “Once again the epidemic of gun violence has come to Seattle — the epidemic of gun violence that is haunting this nation.” Other politicians, activists and liberal clergy echoed his words. It will surprise the mayor and many other people to learn that gun violence isn’t rising in America, it’s falling. In fact, it’s plummeting. Gun deaths are down nearly 40 percent...

Justina Pelletier finally went home today. Justina is the 16-year-old Connecticut girl who has been held against her will by child welfare officials in Massachusetts for the past 16 months. Her story has resulted in a firestorm of controversy about the treatment of children with rare diseases and parental rights to make medical decisions for their children. The best coverage of the story has probably been provided by The Boston Globe, which did a series of stories a few months ago that can be found here: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/15/justina/vnwzbbNdiodSD7WDTh6xZI/story.html A story about the girl's homecoming can be found here: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/06/17/judge-orders-custody-justina-pelletier-returned-parents/mDWtuGURNawSuObO0pDX4J/story.html As the...

Los Angeles County jails have “deplorable” conditions that have contributed to a dramatic increase in suicides and the system isn’t doing enough to help mentally ill inmates, according to a federal report released Friday. Fifteen inmates have killed themselves in less than 2½ years, with the number increasing from four in 2012 to 10 the next year, and “dimly lit, vermin-infested, noisy, unsanitary, cramped and crowded” conditions contributed to the suicides, according to the U.S. Justice Department’s assessment of jail mental health care. …

I was on a UC Santa Cruz public forum panel last week, where we were discussing gun control (myself, Adam Winkler from UCLA Law, some out-gunned chap from the Brady Campaign, and a co-founder of the Liberal Gun Club (yes, they do exist). While running through the various sources of gun deaths (62% of which are suicides and thus clearly a mental health issue) it occurred to me that your garden variety street gang member isn't mentally stable ... at very least a sociopath, and in many instances an utter psychopath. So this link is to my opening investigations into...

Guns: The Santa Barbara shooter had legally purchased and registered firearms, and passed prior questioning by the police who saw no danger to himself or others. More gun laws won't stop the next such shooter, either. It is eerie how the mental health of the shooter consistently seems to emerge as a key factor in mass shootings such as the rampage by Elliot Rodger, who killed six and wounded 13 on Friday. The shooter had been in therapy since age 8 and police had been warned by his parents to check him out. Yet few liberals cry for tougher mental...

A furious Richard Martinez delivered a four-letter stomping to do-nothing politicians who have called him to cry crocodile tears over his son’s brutal killing. “I don’t give a s--- that you feel sorry for me,” a weeping Martinez said about the congressional condolence calls... “Get to work and do something . . . Getting a call from a politician doesn’t impress me,” he told the Washington Post...

"This time the shooter is 22-year-old Elliot Rodger. Like clockwork, the cry goes up blaming the National Rifle Association and calling for tougher gun laws. But this time there’s a problem for believers in gun control. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gave an “A-” to California's gun control laws, passed as they were by one of the most liberal state governments in the country."

We don’t have a gun problem in this country. We have a brain problem. And it is going to get worse. After reading just some of this killer’s autobiography, only up to age 12, I am starting to believe that we need to STOP MAINSTREAMING kids with asperger’s or highly functioning autism. And I have a son with it, same age as this guy. His childhood parallels my son’s except: I DIDNT FORCE HIM INTO SCHOOL. By 4th grade he was homeschooled all the way through. You will not see my son in the news for killing people. First, the...

WASHINGTON — New mental health screening that supporters say could help stem the high rate of military suicides or even stop shooting rampages passed the House on Thursday as part of the massive 2015 defense budget. The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., orders the National Institutes of Health to create a universal mental health evaluation for potential recruits that would catch past suicide attempts and psychiatric disorders. The data could be used by the services to weed out candidates with potentially dangerous mental health issues. Already, potential recruits are asked about past suicide attempts or mental disorders,...

<p>Karl Rove stunned a conference when he suggested Hillary Clinton might have brain damage.</p> <p>Onstage with Robert Gibbs and CBS correspondent and “Spies Against Armageddon” co-author Dan Raviv, Rove said Republicans should keep the Benghazi issue alive.</p> <p>He said if Clinton runs for president, voters must be told what happened when she suffered a fall in December 2012.</p>

While Americans of all ages in Colorado happily celebrate the legalization of marijuana in various forms on April 20, 2014 as a “smoking holiday” the mental health and safety risks are being ignored by the media.

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) — An Iraq War veteran being treated for mental illness was the gunman who opened fire at Fort Hood, killing three people and wounding 16 others before committing suicide, in an attack on the same Texas military base where more than a dozen people were slain in 2009, authorities said. Within hours of the Wednesday attack, investigators started looking into whether the man’s combat experience had caused lingering psychological trauma. Fort Hood’s senior officer, Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, said the gunman had sought help for depression, anxiety and other problems.

HARTFORD — Mary Jo Andrews, Carol Poehnert and several other West Hartford mothers of children with mental-health problems had quietly met for eight years, usually over dinner, to share their experiences and frustrations, and to trade tips and shortcuts learned while navigating the treatment system. Then the Sandy Hook School tragedy happened in December 2012. "And we decided we needed to get out and do some advocating,'' Andrews told 70 parents and health care professionals at a forum at the Institute of Living Wednesday evening. It is the first of a handful of planned sessions — part of an effort...

Sleep loss may be more serious than previously thought, causing a permanent loss of brain cells, research suggests. In mice, prolonged lack of sleep led to 25% of certain brain cells dying, according to a study in The Journal of Neuroscience. If the same is true in humans, it may be futile to try to catch up on missed sleep, say US scientists. They think it may one day be possible to develop a drug to protect the brain from the side-effects of lost sleep. …

Attorney General Eric Holder said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today that President Obama is open to using an executive action to push through gun-control and/or associated mental health measures that haven’t found approval in Congress. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), one of the top proponents of new gun-control measures in Congress, noted that Obama only made a “very brief” reference to gun violence in his State of the Union address. “But I hope, and I hope you will join me in the view that the president remains completely committed to ending gun violence in this country, adopting common sense...

We tend in modern times to link our notions of happiness and inner well-being to circumstances and happenstance. And thus happiness will be found when the things of this world are arranged in the way and quantity we like. If we just get enough money and creature comforts, we will be happy and have a better sense of mental well being.And yet, it remains true that many can endure difficult external circumstances and yet remain inwardly content, happy and optimistic. Further, many who have much are still not content and are beset with great mental anguish, anxiety and unhappiness. Ultimately...

NEW YORK – The underlying assumption that has led to the increasing legitimization of same-sex marriage is now fueling a growing effort in academic circles to mainstream pedophilia. Once considered taboo, psychologists are beginning to walk down the same path LGBT activists established more than 50 years ago, insisting that pedophilia is an inborn “sexual orientation,” not a learned sexual behavior. If people are born with a sexual attraction to minors, the argument goes, their “orientation” should be accepted as normative and not stigmatized. James Cantor, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in the Law and Mental Health Program at the...

From pennlive.com, we find the latest bit of judicial folly: Pennsylvania State Trooper Michael L. Keyes is in an odd situation. When on duty, he can carry a gun. Yet while off duty, he is barred by law from possessing any firearms, because seven years ago he suffered from deep depression, repeatedly tried to kill himself by taking drugs and was involuntarily committed for mental health treatment. This reminds me quite of bit of Dick Heller, of D.C.  v. Heller, who was trusted to carry a gun to guard government buildings in the District of Columbia, but not as...

Wilmington, Del., has a big problem: Large groups of black people are going crazy. And this collective “mental illness” is causing record levels of crime and gun violence in this mostly black town of 70,000. That is the official diagnosis of the city council, which, by unanimous agreement earlier this month, asked the Centers for Disease Control to investigate a wave of psychological mayhem that has turned this historic and once-charming city into an unrecognizable husk of its former self. Chief diagnostician of this crisis in public health is city council member Hanifa G.N. Shabazz: “There is a well known...

The families of Newtown, Conn., have a simple request on the anniversary of the tragic shooting that took 26 lives, 20 of them children, a year ago at Sandy Hook Elementary School: Honor the victims by performing an act of kindness on Saturday. We'll try to honor that request, and we hope others do, too. But, frankly, there's more that needs doing. Twenty-six died on Dec. 14, 2012, in Newtown, and there have been other mass shootings since. But when we honor those victims, let's also honor the many other victims of gun violence in our communities. In Milwaukee alone...