quote:While we waited for the doctor to evaluate him, my father did what mental health professionals refer to as double-bookkeeping. He remembered most of what transpired earlier in the day but still believed he was in the hospital to have his pacemaker checked. Even as we laughed together, I knew what would come: the psychiatrist would ask him about his behavior, and my father would deny all the paranoia, delusions and violence. He would curse and yell and try to walk out of the room. When the police officer stopped him, he would become enraged. And when I confirmed for the doctor that he had indeed done these things, and that we, his family, were asking that he be hospitalized, he would stop calling me String Bean. He would stop speaking to me at all.
quote:According to Fuller’s group, there was one public psychiatric bed for every 300 Americans in 1955; by 2012, that number was one for every 7,000. That’s less than a third of what is needed, the organization asserts. The recession has made matters worse: since late 2008, more than $1.5 billion has been cut from state mental health budgets across the country. In the past two years alone, 12 state hospitals with a total of nearly 4,000 beds have either closed or are in danger of closing.
Already patients in crisis can spend several days in an emergency room waiting for a psychiatric bed to become available. In New Jersey, it can take as long as five days; in Vermont — where, as Bloomberg News recently reported, there are virtually no state psychiatric beds left — severely mentally ill patients have been handcuffed to emergency-room beds. For lack of other options, many patients who clearly meet the imminent-danger standard are released. “The lack of resources has triggered a devolution of the standard,” says Robert Davison, executive director of the Mental Health Association of Essex County, a nonprofit group that connects patients to services in northern New Jersey. “Twenty years ago, ‘imminent danger’ meant what most people think it means. But now there’s this systemic push to divert people away from inpatient care, no matter how sick they are, because we know there’s no place to send them.”
When I asked Davison for specific examples, he rattled several off the top of his head. A man who was convinced that aliens were on the roof and that bugs were coming out of the walls and who would not sit on furniture but only lie on the floor was not committable. Neither was the man who refused medication and mutilated his own testicles. Nor the woman who wouldn’t eat because she believed the C.I.A. was trying to poison her.
quote:In the week that followed his release, my father wandered. He hopped a bus to North Carolina to visit his brother. He came back to New Jersey and spent a few nights at a hotel near my parents’ apartment. Eventually he made his way back to the emergency room complaining of chest pains. His heart was fine, but a doctor noticed that he was “scattered” and “delusional” and referred him to PESS. Before they could transfer him to the locked unit, he fled the building with an IV sticking out of his arm. When the police found him and brought him back, he threatened to “blow up the hospital like the World Trade Center.” This unlikely threat landed him back in the same psychiatric facility that released him just seven days earlier.
The absurdity of the situation wore on us. How was anyone with a diagnosed mental illness supposed to recover through a revolving door of emergency rooms, short-term psych wards and jail?
In reporting this article, I found scores of families trapped in the same fractured system, crawling through whatever loopholes they could find in an effort to prevent what seemed like certain tragedy. They described programs that were underfinanced and overcrowded, not to mention involuntary commitment laws that were only haphazardly enforced. Most of them seemed as lost as we were.
quote:The sounds of chaos bounce off the dim yellow walls. Everywhere there are prisoners wearing orange, red and khaki jumpsuits. An officer barks out orders as a thin woman tries to sleep on a hard bench in a holding cell. This is a harsh scene of daily life inside what has become the state’s largest de facto mental institution: the Cook County Jail.
quote:“A lot of people view calling the police as the only way to get loved ones any kind of treatment, because when the police come they have to do something,” said Laura Usher, the national Crisis Intervention Team coordinator for the National Alliance on Mental Illness. “But unfortunately that doesn’t necessarily always lead to appropriate treatment.”
“States across the country are cutting their mental health budgets, and people who are serviced by state mental health programs are the poorest, and they’re unable to get services any other way,” she added. “The community mental health system is broken.”
In Illinois, where mental health services were cut by $35 million this year — a $90 million cut was proposed — the state’s police departments are “essentially a 24-hour free service,” said Chief Robert T. Finney of the Champaign Police Department.
“We’re the people who get taxed with dealing with these people,” said Chief Finney, who is also vice president of the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police. “Even if you arrest them and they’re released from your jail within hours, they’re back on your street doing the same thing.”
In Oklahoma, calls to the police involving mental illness have increased by 50 percent in the past year, said Stacey Puckett, executive director of the Oklahoma Association of Chiefs of Police. The state has cut about $17 million in mental health financing this year.
Ms. Puckett said officers were “traveling from one end of the state to the other and are out of their departments for 6, 8, 10 hours at a time.”
“It’s the bed shortage,” she said. “We just do not have enough beds for the numbers.”
The short of it is the De-institutionalization Crisis Part II, and the process by which we make a system worse and ultimately more expensive for everyone overall by starving a vital system to death to 'save money.'
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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But, see, Samp, Mitt Romney is a *job creator.* which is why he pays 14% in taxes. Because he *creates jobs*.
Now, you might say that what actually happens is that his wealth generates greater wealth, and for every additional dollar he earns at an ever diminishing tax rate, and an ever increasing rate of return on his investment, he costs the system an ever increasing amount that cannot be recouped from his income, so that due to the decreasing government revenues, efficient institutions with higher cash-outlay have to be cut in favor of more expensive and less effective alternatives that are nevertheless preserved due to their actual, concrete necessity, despite their complete inadequacy at doing jobs they weren't designed to do, costing the infrastructure in cash, as well as in wasted work, lost knowledge, and crumbled infrastructure, and further weakening the public confidence in public institutions that were weakened by this effect.
But the thing is, see, he's a *job creator*. He creates *jobs*. And we all know that an economy where everyone has a job is a good economy. Just think of the early 19th century. There were so many jobs available, that children could get them too. A lot of them died, sure, but they died *working*.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote: The absurdity of the situation wore on us. How was anyone with a diagnosed mental illness supposed to recover through a revolving door of emergency rooms, short-term psych wards and jail?
Being a Security guard in a hospital, and spending 90% of my time either in the emergency room or on the psych ward, I can say that I agree completely with the above statement.
This whole issue that samp has brought up is an incredibly frustrating and indelibly real issue that is getting measurably worse by the day.
On many days, the number of psychiatric patients in the emergency department rivals or exceeds the number of medical patients.
It has gotten so bad that the hospital I work at has begun construction on the ER to add a locked psychiatric patient area specifically to try to accommodate the overwhelming number of patients with chief complaints of psych illness.
Posts: 2532 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Originally posted by odouls268: I'm really not trying to be inflammatory here, but where did Mitt Romney come into this?
(I only read samp's post, not the links provided. Do the links lead to articles referencing Romney?)
nareally. I could also say that this issue is also as incumbent on the negligence of state governments (florida, texas, and new mexico have descended into outright, inexcusable neglect of the mentally ill, among others) but I guess you could fit romney et al into it, or for that matter anyone — anyone at ALL — who you can associate with Norquist's tax pledge.
But that's the more directly political part of it. I am sure there are plenty who want to jump straight out of the woodwork and say things like "you're just finger pointing!" or "something something your side does it too!" or whatever.
I am mainly wanting to look at it at a system analysis level — neglecting this system has immediate consequences. Cutting money from systems to care for the mentally ill and their families results in more cost to the system, alongside the humanitarian and security concerns of outright neglect of an extremely vulnerable population of people who can be helped by a working system, but are not, because, among other things, it's a frequent target for "cost saving," especially on the state level. An easy target that seems disposable, especially due to its lack of any politically sacrosanct or expedient status, like defense budgets or agricultural subsidies or stadiums or god knows what other things I could name here to make us look really, really bad.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by odouls268: I'm really not trying to be inflammatory here, but where did Mitt Romney come into this?
(I only read samp's post, not the links provided. Do the links lead to articles referencing Romney?)
Just riffing. Romney is a republican, republicans favor supply side economics, and the attendant dissolution of professional, efficient government in favor of incompetent, innefficient government. Thus.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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I would like to bring this back to the fore and reignite commentary on the appalling state of mental health care in the U.S.
Why?
Because somebody just shot up a theater I was about to go to last night and I am going to bet, pretty sincerely, that by the end of the week we're going to know that he's similar to the guy who shot Sen. Giffords — a person descending into mental illness and eventually becoming a severe threat to the public, who in any other modern nation would have most likely at some point been kept from reaching this point, one way or the other, because there would have been a mental health system to intervene.
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Go all the way back to elementary school. Why are we spending money to integrate students with extremely low IQs and mental impairments into the general education curriculum and college prep tracks? These are the kids that are going to grow up in emergency rooms, psych wards, and jails without picking up skills they could actually use to participate in society.
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I don't understand what IQ has to do with it. Mental illness is an issue which impacts people on both sides of the IQ average.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Stephan: Go all the way back to elementary school. Why are we spending money to integrate students with extremely low IQs and mental impairments into the general education curriculum and college prep tracks? These are the kids that are going to grow up in emergency rooms, psych wards, and jails without picking up skills they could actually use to participate in society.
What? I mean. . . What? I don't even know how to begin to respond to this.
Posts: 6026 | Registered: Dec 2004
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You could start with "students with extremely low IQ's and mental impairments are not on college prep tracks, not in the general education curriculum anywhere, and don't typically grow up in emergency rooms, psych wards, and jails, so none of what you said makes sense and I don't see how it's at all related to a discussion about mental illness"
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I suppose that depends on how low of an IQ he's talking, but there are certainly some flaws with his premise.
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Mental illnesses are (at least sometimes and with some success) treatable. Low IQ and "mental impairment" (which I'm assuming means retardation) are not.
People with treated mental illnesses don't usually go around shooting up theaters. People with untreated ones sadly do, sometimes.
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One of the biggest flaws is that the warning signs of things like mass glory-seeking murderers of what I suspect is this sort, many of them may very well have what Stephan describes in common. I don't know.
What I *do* know is that warning signs which manifest months and years before such people 'snap' that don't *also* include enormous populations of people are numerous. Meaning it's not helpful to say, "Well mass insane murderers are a problem, so we need to deal with our problems integrating ex-ed kids back in grade school." It is, no pun intended, a nutty thing to suggest.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I'm on track to graduate with a Masters of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling in 2014.
I've taken three classes so far: a theories class, a techniques class (that mostly involved practicing various communication methods on classmates), and a statistics class. On the first day in two of those classes, the professor sat us down and told us (each class of about 15 students, most different from class to class) that if we're going into this expecting to help people, really and truly help people, not to get our hopes too high. The system WILL be working against us. Insurance companies don't want to pay for sessions for people who need it the most, and thus we'll be limited to extremely restricted time frames- usually 10 sessions a YEAR or less. Simply put, that just plain isn't enough time for most people who are dealing with serious issues.
I was fortunate growing up. I dealt with mental illness all throughout high school and undergrad, but as my father was retired military, Tricare was willing to pay for my treatments, no matter how long they went on. They left it up to the discretion of the care provider to determine when things like therapy and medications could be ceased safely. If they hadn't, if I'd been forced to a ten-week treatment program (or less, in some cases), I would not be a functioning adult currently.
Posts: 1591 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Stephan: Go all the way back to elementary school. Why are we spending money to integrate students with extremely low IQs and mental impairments into the general education curriculum and college prep tracks? These are the kids that are going to grow up in emergency rooms, psych wards, and jails without picking up skills they could actually use to participate in society.
What, exactly, do you suggest we do with these children?
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quote:Originally posted by Tinros: The system WILL be working against us. Insurance companies don't want to pay for sessions for people who need it the most, and thus we'll be limited to extremely restricted time frames- usually 10 sessions a YEAR or less. Simply put, that just plain isn't enough time for most people who are dealing with serious issues.
I'm majoring in Psychology right now myself, and this has been stressed to my classes to a degree as well.
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As the individual whose shooting spree prompted this thread was pursuing his PHD in neuroscience, I'm not sure that talking about those with abnormally low IQ is relevant to the discussion.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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The thread came well before the shooting, and indeed the guy might turn out to not really be an example of neglected mental illness. Even still, though, the conflation between mental illness and 'extremely low IQ' and what we should or should not do with the severely mentally impaired is unhelpful.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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People with lower IQ or mild learning disabilities in the classroom are one thing, kids with severe mental illnesses are another.
I have taught in a classroom with a kid who was taking so many anti-psychotic drugs he was barely conscious. He had multiple diagnoses and had been hospitalized multiple times. He was considered a danger to himself, and potentially to others. Yet, because of inclusion policies, he was not in a small group setting with a lower teacher-student ratio where he could receive some attention and have a more flexible schedule. No, he was in a large class where over 50% of the kids had some sort of disability and many also had behavior problems. Even though I had an inclusion teacher, the two of us could not give each child the attention he/she needed. Had this student been in a small, isolated class for emotionally disturbed kids and taught by a behavior specialist then he would have gotten much more of what he needed. But that was not considred the "least restrictive environment."
So, I can agree that it does start in elementary school (or at least in middle and high school). We are not recognizing that mentally ill teens and children do need special treatment and would be better served in a smaller setting with specialists who can attend to their unique needs. I am not equipped or trained to teach a kid with a diagnosis of bipolar, depression, and schizophrenia. I am not medically trained to deal with an extraordinarily medicated child taking anti-psychotics. I am not able to teach a class of 32 while also keeping a close enough eye on a kid to ensure he is not sneaking razor blades into the room to cut himself.
We should be less afraid of offending some sensibility that all kids should be included, and more afraid that this policy is causing some kids to be in situations that are not suitable for them, and is in fact dangerous to them or others.
Not saying inclusion special education caused the Colorado incident or any other, just pointing out that lack of services for mentally ill citizens also extends to the school system.
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quote: I am not able to teach a class of 32 while also keeping a close enough eye on a kid to ensure he is not sneaking razor blades into the room to cut himself.
quote:Originally posted by Belle: People with lower IQ or mild learning disabilities in the classroom are one thing, kids with severe mental illnesses are another.
I have taught in a classroom with a kid who was taking so many anti-psychotic drugs he was barely conscious. He had multiple diagnoses and had been hospitalized multiple times. He was considered a danger to himself, and potentially to others. Yet, because of inclusion policies, he was not in a small group setting with a lower teacher-student ratio where he could receive some attention and have a more flexible schedule. No, he was in a large class where over 50% of the kids had some sort of disability and many also had behavior problems. Even though I had an inclusion teacher, the two of us could not give each child the attention he/she needed. Had this student been in a small, isolated class for emotionally disturbed kids and taught by a behavior specialist then he would have gotten much more of what he needed. But that was not considred the "least restrictive environment."
So, I can agree that it does start in elementary school (or at least in middle and high school). We are not recognizing that mentally ill teens and children do need special treatment and would be better served in a smaller setting with specialists who can attend to their unique needs. I am not equipped or trained to teach a kid with a diagnosis of bipolar, depression, and schizophrenia. I am not medically trained to deal with an extraordinarily medicated child taking anti-psychotics. I am not able to teach a class of 32 while also keeping a close enough eye on a kid to ensure he is not sneaking razor blades into the room to cut himself.
We should be less afraid of offending some sensibility that all kids should be included, and more afraid that this policy is causing some kids to be in situations that are not suitable for them, and is in fact dangerous to them or others.
Not saying inclusion special education caused the Colorado incident or any other, just pointing out that lack of services for mentally ill citizens also extends to the school system.
The problem is the false positives, or the kids who are borderline, but once put into the non-mainstream classes, can't get out.
Not saying there is any easy answer, but there were some good reasons mainstreaming became popular at one point.
Posts: 7021 | Registered: Nov 1999
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quote:MOVIE MASSACRE suspect James Holmes remained unapologetic and irrational Saturday in a Colorado jail where his life was at risk from inmates bent on revenge. Holmes, held under suicide watch in solitary confinement, remained in his murderous “Joker” persona after arriving at the Arapahoe Detention Center, a jailhouse worker told the Daily News. “Let’s just say he hasn’t shown any remorse,” the employee said. “He thinks he’s acting in a movie.” The man accused in the midnight theater massacre was still acting bizarrely a day after his rampage at a screening of “The Dark Night Rises” — the last film in the Batman trilogy. “He was spitting at the door and spitting at the guards,” one released inmate told The News outside the jail. “He’s spitting at everything. Dude was acting crazy.”
The only remaining question is if there were warning signs that could have been acted upon.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:MOVIE MASSACRE suspect James Holmes remained unapologetic and irrational Saturday in a Colorado jail where his life was at risk from inmates bent on revenge. Holmes, held under suicide watch in solitary confinement, remained in his murderous “Joker” persona after arriving at the Arapahoe Detention Center, a jailhouse worker told the Daily News. “Let’s just say he hasn’t shown any remorse,” the employee said. “He thinks he’s acting in a movie.” The man accused in the midnight theater massacre was still acting bizarrely a day after his rampage at a screening of “The Dark Night Rises” — the last film in the Batman trilogy. “He was spitting at the door and spitting at the guards,” one released inmate told The News outside the jail. “He’s spitting at everything. Dude was acting crazy.”
The only remaining question is if there were warning signs that could have been acted upon.
I'm sure the school will argue there was no way they could have known.
His roommates/dormmates will probably say they called about his behavior several times, but nobody took them seriously.
At least, that seems to be the usual pattern in these things.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I agree. I think it would be almost impossible to miss such an imbalance in a person that they would fixate on a fictional character to the point that they adopt its homicidal tendencies. Especially because he had roommates living in close quarters with him.
Posts: 87 | Registered: Dec 2011
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I would be more surprised if he really did give off no warning signs than I was when I first heard about the shooting itself.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by ZachC: I agree. I think it would be almost impossible to miss such an imbalance in a person that they would fixate on a fictional character to the point that they adopt its homicidal tendencies. Especially because he had roommates living in close quarters with him.
It's looks like he lived in a complex but by himself, as evidenced by the extensive booby traps setup in the apartment.
There's already comments from students who were in class with him. It doesn't seem like the exact things you'd expect. He was quiet, and didn't volunteer much information without prodding, but it doesn't look like he was bad at being in social circumstances, or that he has a history of mental imbalance.
Will just have to keep waiting for information to come in.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Colorado shooting suspect James Holmes was a patient of a University of Colorado psychiatrist before last week's attack at a movie theater that killed 12 people and wounded scores, according to a court document filed Friday by his public-defense lawyers.
The disclosure was in a request by Holmes for authorities to immediately hand over a package he sent to Dr. Lynne Fenton at the university's Anschutz Medical Campus.
According to Holmes' request, the package seized by authorities under a July 23 search warrant was a protected communication.
"The materials contained in that package include communications from Mr. Holmes to Dr. Fenton that Mr. Holmes asserts are privileged," said the document filed by public defenders representing Holmes. "Mr. Holmes was a psychiatric patient of Dr. Fenton, and his communications with her are protected."
No details yet on the extent of his interaction with the psychiatrist, or whether he'd be diagnosed with anything or not. I'm curious: is it correct to assume that the material would not be protected under doctor/patient privilege if he'd just picked her name from the school directory?
Posts: 3617 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:he psychiatrist treating accused Aurora theater gunman James Holmes was so concerned about his behavior that she notified other members of the University of Colorado Behavioral Evaluation and Threat Assessment, or BETA, team that he could potentially be a danger to others, sources with knowledge of the investigation told CALL7 Investigators.
Those concerns surfaced in early June -- almost six weeks before the shooting, sources told CALL7 Investigator John Ferrugia.
Sources say Dr. Lynne Fenton, who treated Holmes this spring, contacted several members of the BETA team in separate conversations. According to the university website, the BETA team consists of "key" staff members from various CU departments who have specific expertise in dealing with assessing potential threats on campus. And, sources say, officials at the University of Colorado never contacted Aurora police with Fenton’s concerns before the July 20 killings.
ABC News learned Fenton was a key member in setting up BETA in 2010, and she is currently one of the contacts for anyone who has concerns about an on-campus threat. A University of Colorado spokeswoman acknowledged that Fenton is one of several trained CU contacts who can convene the team in consultation with the chairman.
“Fenton made initial phone calls about engaging the BETA team” in “the first 10 days” of June but it “never came together” because in the period Fenton was having conversations with team members, James Holmes began the process of dropping out of school, a source said.
In a news conference last week, CU Anschutz Medical Campus Graduate School Dean Barry Shur said Holmes dropped out of the CU Ph.D Neuroscience program on June 10th. "My understanding he has not been back on campus where the program is since that time," he said last week.
Holmes lost his access to secure areas of the school June 12, according to the CU spokeswoman.
Sources said when Holmes withdrew, the BETA team “had no control over him."
common story, see signs, can't do anything about them institutionally, etc.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by James Tiberius Kirk: the university's Anschutz Medical Campus. : is it correct to assume that the material would not be protected under doctor/patient privilege if he'd just picked her name from the school directory?
Likely correct, yes. The privilege is limited to communications in the context of treatment. That, afaik, requires the consent and knowledge of both parties. So, for instance, you can't mail incriminating documents to a lawyer you picked out of the phone book and have that be privileged, as they haven't consented to represent you, and are thus not bound by any duty to maintain your privacy.
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Samp: That's very unfortunate timing. I'm not sure the school could do anything once he left.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Samp: That's very unfortunate timing. I'm not sure the school could do anything once he left.
Even as a mandatory reporter her hands were likely institutionally tied and it could have taken months before detainment and psychological assessment could have been requested.
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posted
So now some white guy just shot up a sikh temple and killed at least six people. Are we gonna go three for three?
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: So now some white guy just shot up a sikh temple and killed at least six people. Are we gonna go three for three?
Who said he was white and who said there was just one shooter? The first claims of multiple shooters was erroneous but we didn't know that at first. Are you just speculating again?
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Statistically speaking? Likely it was a white male. *shrug* And I think Samprimary was just joking around about 'us' white folks going three for three.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti: Who said he was white and who said there was just one shooter? The first claims of multiple shooters was erroneous but we didn't know that at first. Are you just speculating again?
Of all the times you've said something "are you just speculating again?" how many of those instances has it been a decent assumption by you? I think I'm running a no-hitter on you. Check the news. Backdate it if you want.
quote:And I think Samprimary was just joking around about 'us' white folks going three for three.
I am not talking about race. I'm talking about the issue of mental illness in these killing sprees. I'm asking if we are going to go three for three on the shooter being someone that would not have engaged in a mass shooting were we to have had a functioning system.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: So now some white guy just shot up a sikh temple and killed at least six people. Are we gonna go three for three?
Who said he was white and who said there was just one shooter? The first claims of multiple shooters was erroneous but we didn't know that at first. Are you just speculating again?
The police described the shooter as "a Caucasian man in his late 30s or early 40s who lived in this area of Wisconsin." They also said they believe there was only one shooter, who they killed.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Samprimary: So now some white guy just shot up a sikh temple and killed at least six people. Are we gonna go three for three?
Who said he was white and who said there was just one shooter? The first claims of multiple shooters was erroneous but we didn't know that at first. Are you just speculating again?
The police described the shooter as "a Caucasian man in his late 30s or early 40s who lived in this area of Wisconsin." They also said they believe there was only one shooter, who they killed.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
More info, not just white, but white supremacist:
quote:The suspected gunman who killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin before he was shot to death by police was identified Monday as a 40-year-old Army veteran and former leader of a white supremacist metal band.
quote:Mr. Page was a “frustrated neo-Nazi” who led a racist white supremacist band, the Southern Poverty Law Center said Monday. Mr. Page told a white supremacist website in an interview in 2010 that he had been part of the white-power music scene since 2000 when he left his native Colorado and started the band, End Apathy, in 2005, the non-profit civil rights organization said.
quote:Oak Creek Police Chief John Edwards said the FBI was leading the investigation because the shootings are being treated as domestic terrorism, or an attack that originated inside the U.S.
quote:On August 6th, a mosque in Joplin, Missouri, was burned to the ground. On August 11th, shots were fired at a mosque in Chicago and on the same day in Ontario, CA, pig legs were thrown in the driveway of a home where Muslims gather to worship until a mosque is built there. On August 12th, vandals shot paintballs at an Oklahoma City mosque. And just on August 13th, an Islamic school was hit an acid-filled bottle in Lombard, Illinois. It is possible that there are more incidents of vandalism and violence conducted against people of Islamic or Sikh belief but this is what I know so far.
Not sure what the "normal" rate of violence/harassment against minority religions in the US is (isn't that a disturbing thought), but it does seem excessive at first glance.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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Not sure what the "normal" rate of violence/harassment against minority religions in the US is (isn't that a disturbing thought), but it does seem excessive at first glance.
I wonder if we're still a Christian nation when this happens?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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So much in common with these other shootings, of course. A multitude of weapons, victims, fatalities...wait a second...
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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It has a lack of gun control in common with these other shootings. I think that's what capaxinfiniti is pointing at.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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I'm sure you're right. That must surely have been what he was getting at.
There's also of course the surprise factor, since when one thinks of violence involving LGBT issues, it's not often the folks at FRC that get shot or dragged from a truck or lychned or denied marriage rights or adoption or...well, maybe he wasn't getting at that with the cheap partisan attempt to draw an equivalence where none exists.
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