Info on Elijah Clayton here. (Fixed the link)
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/gaming-community-honors-two-dead-in-jacksonville-mass-shooting-on-social-media/85-587886707
I’ve been reading about both Clayton and Robertson today, two very nice, very talented young men who were very well-regarded both inside the Madden tournament circuit and in general. Gone too soon because someone else with a mental health issue got a gun instead of therapy. My condolences to their friends and family.
Can we please fix the healthcare crisis in America soon so that people like David Katz can get the help they need long before they sink to the point where they do horrific stuff like this?
Despite popular belief, Medicare does not cover all that for “free”. We simply don’t treat mental illnesses the same way we treat other illnesses, and we also rely on people to self accept treatment so even if it is available, they can simply choose not to access it and remain a danger.
Also, there is no way to know for certain all of these people were mentally ill… chances are they were not.
All true, but hopefully with healthcare reform comes easier and more comprehensive access to mental health services alongside physical health services. Trying to navigate the mental health services labyrinth under the current system of providers and insurance coverage/denials is a nightmare many people simply can’t or won’t deal with. There is also a stigma to seeking such services that is made worse by the difficulty and number of people you have to go through to actually receive help. If we could reach people a lot sooner, by making mental health services more easily and cheaply available while de-stigmatizing them, we could save a lot of heartache.
Most media reports are saying Katz left recent messages on social media that indicated he was severely depressed. I’m willing to bet his behavior around people who knew him well had changed significantly recently as well. While we will never know his exact mental state at the time he made the decision to do this terrible thing, I think it’s safe to say something more than just losing a Madden tournament factored into it.
Also, surprising, most people with mental illness don’t go around killing people. This link between mental illness and mass shootings just stigmatizes people who seek help, and demotives people from seeking help.
The solution is simple. Australia already showed us how to do it. We have to curb gun ownership. I don’t care how it’s done, but it has to be.
At the very least, let’s tax the shit out of guns and gun ownership. Let’s make it expansive to be careless with guns.
Sure, but how far are you willing to extend that, is every person who mass kills mentally ill. Do you really think that had better access to mental care all of our school shootings would just not happen? I don’t think that’s realistic. Mental illness is not simply a an explanation for odd behavior and murderers.
There’s got to be a critical mass of the people deciding we’ve had enough of this shit. I’ve mentioned this before, but after Sandy Hook failed to move the needle on gun control in any meaningful way, I have no confidence that this will ever happen. We as a country have decided that the occasional massacre of children is a price we’re willing to pay in order to maintain free access to guns.
AP reporting that the shooter has a history of being hospitalized for mental illness.
It’s a long road, but the solution is to elect liberals (which means vote for Democrats), so they can appoint justices and have them approved, so that the justices ultimately find that Heller was wrongly decided. Then get the guns.
I don’t really have this thought out, but I don’t know that the appropriate action here is to elect people who will take things away from us. I think we would have to follow Australia’s lead here, the citizens of this country would need to agree that hey, maybe guns should be harder to obtain. I know that’s not an easy ask, might not even be possible. But I think it’s the only sure way to effect change.
This article has some interesting bits:
Evidently he was quite an involved competitor in Madden.
I think there is a consistent majority for making guns harder to get. The problem is that 1) it doesn’t translate into a legislative majority because of gerrymandering of the House and the Senate’s built-in gerrymander, and 2) the courts will likely strike down any meaningful gun control law because of Heller, so that majority is rendered moot anyway. Even if you solve the first problem, you still have to deal with the courts. It’s a long march.
At the time of the 2014 court filing, the shooter’s father worked for NASA, and his mother, who has a PhD in toxicology, worked for the US Food and Drug Administration.
Sounds like he had plenty of chances to have access to care then.
The core problem is culture. To be precise, the culture that glorifies violence as a sign of masculinity and as the clearest, most desirable way to “solve” problems, coupled with the culture that glorifies guns as symbols of masculinity and independence, coupled with the culture that views everybody else–government, neighbors, immigrants, you name it–as threats and “not like me.” Put all of that together and you get what we have now.
I truly think it’s impossible to remove firearms from the population in any meaningful way. Hell, we have more guns than people, and the psychology of gun ownership is deeply, deeply ingrained in many, many people. So even if we do make attempts to limit the availability of guns, or other similar things, we won’t really get very far unless we make serious efforts to destroy the culture that both pushes people to violence when their desires or expectations are thwarted or challenged, and which makes using a gun to do so a sort of acceptable response to adversity.
I would very much like to see these shooters remain nameless. Take away the notoriety element and I think we’d see far fewer shootings. But, freedom of the press, give the people what they want, $$$, eyeballs, clicks, ad revenue, capitalism wins out over the greater good as it slowly destroys everything.
Who wants pie?!
That’s why I believe it has to be driven from the bottom up, the people have to want this change and push for it. Right now, people want guns so that’s what we get. At any price.
While I generally agree with this sentiment, I don’t get a sense this guy did it for the fame, but rather because he was angry and wanted revenge.
This is where I’ve ended up on this. Toxic masculinity is my favorite cudgel these days on a range of topics, but thats only because it’s a tool that seems to fit so well in so many places.
The problem is that solving culture is slow, hard work, when it’s possible at all. As insurmountable as gun control legislation or mental health care reform may seem, at least there’s a clear method by which to get there. Making American culture less violent is even harder than that, and is probably, at minimum, a multi generational change.
Great, then let them pay a substantial price. Let’s tax gun ownship and guys buying. Let’s require deeds and lawyers.
Let’s make buying a gun more complicated than buying a house or a car.
So poor people can’t get guns, houses or cars. Is there something about this particular case that makes you think this guy didn’t have money? it seems like a fair amount of these types of mass shootings have come from middle class / middle of the road families.