Furious Seasons

May 01, 2006

Happy May Day. Now For The Same Old Shit

OK, maybe not shit--but bullshit. Yesterday I awoke to a Seattle Times editorial pleading for rational gun control laws. As queasy as the words "control" and "laws" make me, my stomach really gurgled when I read:

"Start by enforcing existing laws, especially those that would reduce access to guns by criminals and crazy people."

Typically, that line would close "criminals and the mentally-ill," so it's hard to understand what the Times was getting out there except to understand that someone on the editorial board got very lazy. And I have my hunches as to who it was. But "crazy people" is a term that strikes me as being as dubious as "faggot" or "cunt" and I hope I am not the only one out there who understands it that way. As for the Times edit board, these are the same tools who endorsed Bush in 2000.

And that little dollop of nonsense reminds me of this which I ran across last week in the Duluth News-Tribune:

"In February, several patients at an unlicensed mental health facility in Columbus, Ga., told the local Ledger-Enquirer newspaper that they had recently worked security at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta during football games of the University of Georgia and the Atlanta Falcons. The facility, the Greater Grace Community Center, has recently been shut down, but the newspaper was able to verify much of the patients' story. Among the facility's patients are those diagnosed with anti-social personalities or bipolar disorder or homicidal tendencies." (Emphasis mine.)

This was posted in some silly column in the paper called "Questionable Judgments." Whoever wrote it doesn't know much about bipolar disorder--we are just about the least anti-social people I know of and, near as I can tell, aren't especially dangerous compared to the average American.

But myths die hard in America, don't they?

Posted by Philip Dawdy at May 1, 2006 12:01 AM

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Comments

I was told (by a MHP) when my daughter was ITA (when her lifetime cap of insurance ran out for inpatient stays, and the doc said to ITA for care)the only backlash was that she couldn't purchase a firearm. Good news? discrimination? she never used a weapon towards anyone. I'm not a gun toting individual myself, but if she didn't use a weapon and all that happened to her was her own mental health demise, shouldn't she be allowed to pack a pistol for so called safety or what if she wanted to join a rifle range club for fun?Doesn't she have the same Rights we all do? The very basic assumption, that because she has been involuntarily committed into a mental hospital stops her from anything upon her return to society, has given her limits, and is disgusting to me.It labeled her fast, as a possible danger if she could pack a pistol.It is an assumption, that because she had a breakdown, that she would come back and hurt people. Well she can hurt people with her hands and feet, gonna take those too? She will now return with that X on her record, and of course then try navigating into adulthood with future employers knowing she was at Western, if she dares tell them. Try telling her, when she is better, that she has limits in society now. Do I want her to have a gun? I live with her, what if she could buy a gun? would I allow it? would I be afraid she would kill me? There are some thought provoking questions. Actually,Ive been told that anything in your hand that remotely resembles a weapon, to a police officer can give them cause to shoot you with what....their gun. Try being deemed a danger to traffic by a Judge who committed you to psychiatric days in a mental hospital, because out of your mind, you ran down a road. Does this mean she can't cross streets now?

Posted by: Stephany at May 1, 2006 09:39 AM

When I was small, my favorite thing to do was to leave flowers on my neighbors doorknobs. I would make paper cones with loop handles, and ring and run. I forgot it was May Day. That kind of May Day is my favorite.

Posted by: Stephany at May 1, 2006 06:33 PM