[rubecube]

Originally Posted by Derek Sutton

I can't belive the flag thing is being used to mis direct the real issues in this case. Perhaps had all this outrage and awareness been focused on mental health, poor parenting and gun culture, to name a few, some real progress could be made. I'm curious what the expected end game is by banning the flag, the are thousands, perhaps millions of rascists in the US who own guns that would never think of doing this.

Because I've seen this brought up a few times...

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/its_...y_white_males/

It’s not about mental illness: The big lie that always follows mass shootings by white males

Blaming "mental illness" is a cop-out -- and one that lets us avoid talking about race, guns, hatred and terrorism

We barely know anything about the suspect in the Charleston, South Carolina, atrocity. We certainly don’t have testimony from a mental health professional responsible for his care that he suffered from any specific mental illness, or that he suffered from a mental illness at all.

We do have statistics showing that the vast majority of people who commit acts of violence do not have a diagnosis of mental illness and, conversely, people who have mental illness are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators.

We know that the stigma of people who suffer from mental illness as scary, dangerous potential murderers hurts people every single day — it costs people relationships and jobs, it scares people away from seeking help who need it, it brings shame and fear down on the heads of people who already have it bad enough.

But the media insists on trotting out “mental illness” and blaring out that phrase nonstop in the wake of any mass killing. I had to grit my teeth every time I personally debated someone defaulting to the mindless mantra of “The real issue is mental illness” over the Isla Vista shootings.

“The real issue is mental illness” is a goddamn cop-out. I almost never hear it from actual mental health professionals, or advocates working in the mental health sphere, or anyone who actually has any kind of informed opinion on mental health or serious policy proposals for how to improve our treatment of the mentally ill in this country.