This shooting does not involve poverty or access to health care

[cthulu2016]

If one wants to hitch their issues to the tragedy de jour it helps if the tragedy has something to do with the issues.

This case has nothing to do with socio-economic factors or access to health care.

This young man is upper middle class, from a conservative suburban district. He is, at 24 and recently a student, quite likely to be on his parent's excellent health plan.

This young man could have gotten all kinds of mental health intervention, had he chosen to go to a psychiatrist. If he chose to not go to a psychiatrist that's the end of the story.

It is just a gun story.

That doesn't mean that it is a story that demands banning guns, but if one wants to make the case for gun rights please do so with some kind of integrity.

Say this:

"I think the right to own guns trumps the public security concerns that arise from it."

You can make that argument. That form of argument underlies all discussion of rights. All rights have a downside.

But pretending that periodic mass shootings are not somehow connected to, and spurred by, the ready availability of the tools necessary for mass shootings is grotesque.

[xchrom]

1. The ready availability of tools of mass destruction

Don't aid in that mass destruction?

[Travis_0004]

2. The AWB was in place during columbine, and it did not stop that shooting.

Now maybe your opinion is that the AWB didn't go far enough, and if that is your opinion you are entitled to it, but you are never going to get a total ban on firearms.

[aikoaiko]

3. I think you underestimate how difficult it is to get mental health care for even with insurance.

Long waits for initial appointments
Improperly trained counselors to detect onset
Parental denial

This may not have been a case where parents and young adult were begging for help only to have their pleas rebuffed, but its still not easy to get the people you love the help they need.

[woo me with science]

4. I think it is very probably related to

the overall sickness of our culture, which is isolated, alienating, unempathetic, and rooted in profit-seeking and materialism. Children grow up with parents who are working all the time, teachers who are overworked and micromanaged, and fragmented communities in which most of their time is likely to be spent in front of a screen.

We are raising not just the poor and health care-deprived, but also the lonely, the depressed, the angry, and the cold and sociopathic.

[Edweird]

5. Really? So how was this guy's career going? How where his prospects?

[Kalidurga]

6. Sometimes shame is the biggest barrier...

And we live in a society that if you do seek out the help of mental health professionals it can hamper your career at the very least. One of my first classes in college was a Psychology class and my teacher though brilliant had his career hampered for having had a brief stint in a psych ward. It was approximately six weeks after a car accident in which he had a head injury. Head injuries it turns out can alter a persons personality around this time. He became a bit delusional and his parents had him admitted. If a person has political aspirations seeking help is often viewed as a weakness. There are jobs that if they know you have mental health issues they will not hire you.

Not to mention the way your family, friends, neighbors, coworkers may have to say about your illness. When people are shamed for having an illness they are much less likely to get treatment. They will pretend that everything is alright for as long as they can. Usually the worst that happens is they become less functional. Many times they commit suicide. On rare occasions they shoot up a school yard or a post office or become serial killers.

But, you are right, he had the means or his parents probably had the means to get help if they could navigate the system. But, it is very unlikely that he or his parents would be comfortable admitting to his illness.