Fringers

There was another tragic story of a savage attack on a small political gathering in Tucson the other day.  Here we go again. Another fringer turned violent. You know, the ones who seem just a little bit off but sometimes function okay. We walk with them every day, in stores and parks, at family gatherings.

It just stirs the pot on topics of gun control, civil liberties, public safety, and the care and treatment of our fringe population. We make adjustments for them. That's admirable and the Christian thing to do. But civil liberties hinge on a complicated series of endless preventive measures to ensure safety  ~ the FDA, UL, government laws, seat belts, and the AMA just to name a few ~ and yet operating almost entirely without preventive mental health safeguards.  So it's hands-off to make up for the abhorrant mental health practices of the twentieth century?

That's nuts. The world is hard enough to sift through when you are a sound and reasonable thinker. For someone with processing challenges, it must be a nightmare.  They are easy prey to be changed and empowered by it, and act on what seems to them to be right reasoning. And frankly, hiding behind the First Amendment to say anything no matter how outrageous it is, is really starting to piss me off.

So, to questions. Would true and reasonable gun control have prevented the tragedy here? Would civilized political rhetoric have not keyed in on this particular politician? Would a mental health evaluation have been able to intervene with this tragedy?   

Yes, the access and availability to guns is involved somehow and needs to be addressed. An unpopular stance, but an honest one. The loss of civil rights of the victims can't be dismissed.
Yes, the ugly and vicious political climate of the last election clearly contributed to the events in Tucson, and there is a shared national shame for all politicians engaging in wartime adversarial attacks, including Sarah Palin. Lesson: doing the right thing never goes out of style. Don't let the heat of petty differences make you into someone you're not. You never know who is listening.
Yes, better access to mental health is all we've got when someone is delusional, with disjointed outbursts and ramblings, or threatening to do violence. We need to be able to get the right kind of help, and now. We have reason to weep: there were people in this man's life who already recognized how unstable he was.

Since the mass murder fringe is mostly American, what are we going to do about it? If we were told to make personal sacrifices in order to save our children, who among us would object? To face the thing head on is to talk about the topics we avoid, like our unwillingness to recognize or understand moral and developmental gaps in our friends and children; how and when to make appropriate interventions out of compassion as much as safety; and the personal stake we all have in stopping America from being a national breeding ground for violence. 

Our country seems so lost. We say we love our children but expose them to violence, anger, ugliness, and harm. We put up their smiling school pictures but don't take an interest in them.  We ignore the signs of crisis because it reflects badly on us. We stash a gun in the closet and a clip in the drawer and turn the other way.