[Grizzly]

The topic of mental health gets brought up a lot after these mass shootings. John Oliver did a piece on it, which is a cool piece!

[z64555]

Sounds like some pretty strong points all around, also interesting to see the low percentage of mentally ill as being perpetrators of mass shootings and higher percentage as being victims of crime, so that pretty much blows a hole through the psych screening idea.

[headdie]

Sounds like some pretty strong points all around, also interesting to see the low percentage of mentally ill as being perpetrators of mass shootings and higher percentage as being victims of crime, so that pretty much blows a hole through the psych screening idea.

Just because it dosnt happen often dosnt mean it dosnt happen.  Also cant watch the video due to region locking but is there any mention of instances where suspected mental health issues with no formal diagnosis?

[karajorma]

Yeah, but if the mentally ill are more often victims of crime than perps, they need to be able to have guns to defend themselves, right? Or is that where the pro-gun lobby would finally draw the line?

[swashmebuckle]

Duh, if we didn't arm the mentally ill, then only the bad lunatics would have guns.

[jr2]

Yeah, that's the most cherry-picked nonsense I've ever read in my life. Japan has no guns and the 5th lowest murder rate in the world. It's completely contradictory to our claim that more guns = less murders but we're going to explain that by saying Japanese-Americans (Many of whom are by now 3rd or later generation Americans) don't commit a lot of murders and therefore it's not in their culture to murder people back in Japan.



N.B I'd also love to point out how despite the entire tone of the thread was on the reasons why this never gets solved, one side has gone entirely back to shouting their rhetoric again. Why am I not ****ing surprised.

Cherry picking and skimming, eh?       

Let's try again:

Then there’s an even more striking example. Japan, which has strict gun control, “technically” has the world’s fifth-lowest homicide rate (critics point out that, due to the application of different criteria, that nation’s actual rate is twice the reported one). Yet Japanese-descent Americans living in the United States — under our relatively lenient gun-control laws — have a murder rate half that of Japanese living in Japan.

The whole point was that just "having guns" doesn't increase murder rates: otherwise, Japanese living in the US would have a higher murder rate than those living in Japan.

I'm not certain, but I think a lot of what you're getting from that article is confirmation bias from what 'most' pro-run rights arguments are.  Or maybe I'm just too tired to sort this right now.  Anyways.

[z64555]

@jr2:
Race shouldn't have anything to do with the discussion. Other ethnic groups might, but not race.

@headdie:
I don't remember if John Oliver included the statistics of crime by persons who were suspected of mental illnesses, I'll try going through video again with some notepaper or something later on.

@karajorma, swashmebuckle:
I honestly see "mentally ill" as a blanket term, some illnesses can have a person rational enough to defend themselves, but others require assisted living. If they are able to safely handle and care for firearms, then there's no reason to restrict their access to them.

[Edit] I wasn't aware before that "ethnicity" does not equate with "race," its rather a super class of the term.

[karajorma]

@jr2 Don't you think it somewhat racist to assume that anyone of Japanese descent can be compared to Japanese people living in Japan regardless of how many generations may have passed since they left?

It's worth remembering that in terms of demographics, Japanese-Americans are pretty well off. Surely that has more to do with the low level of violence than some psuedo-racist bull****?

[Goober5000]

So, jr2 cites statistics and you call it racist.  And yet you accuse your opponents of shouting rhetoric?

[karajorma]

jr2 quoted statistics that say that 3rd, 4th and 5th Generation Japanese-Americans and native born Japanese people are the same thing. Statistics that basically say that culture is determined by skin colour or genetics not where or how you grew up. How the **** is that NOT racist?

[Goober5000]

And who made you the arbiter of who is and who isn't Japanese?

You live and work in China.  Does that make you Chinese?

[karajorma]

What the **** are you on about Goober?

 I'm not deciding who is and isn't Japanese, that is what the quote from jr2 is doing. I'm actually pointing out how racist it is to decide who is and isn't Japanese. Because jr2's quote implicitly claims that it doesn't matter what generation immigrant someone is, if they are of Japanese ethnicity, they are culturally Japanese.

Look much more closely at it. The report claims that the difference between the crime rate in Japan and Japanese-Americans is due to availability of handguns. There is no attempt to claim that there might be any other possible cause for it. So the report is basically claiming is that Japanese-Americans and native born Japanese have the exact same culture. Can you really not see that not only is that an incredibly stupid claim (there is no way that people growing up in completely different countries could possibly have the same culture) but also a racist one ("All Japanese have the same culture, regardless of where they were born")?

[zookeeper]

jr2 quoted statistics that say that 3rd, 4th and 5th Generation Japanese-Americans and native born Japanese people are the same thing. Statistics that basically say that culture is determined by skin colour or genetics not where or how you grew up. How the **** is that NOT racist?

Obviously the reason why a 5th generation Japanese-American would lean more than average towards japanese culture would be things like their own awareness of their ancestry and familial connections, not genetics.

[Phantom Hoover]

It's a completely absurd statistic that you'd only use if every other statistic was pointing the other way. That's my problem with it.

[karajorma]

Obviously the reason why a 5th generation Japanese-American would lean more than average towards japanese culture would be things like their own awareness of their ancestry and familial connections, not genetics.

Seriously? That's where you're going with this? You're actually trying to defend this bull****?

My point was that the article was saying that Japanese-Americans can not change their culture! That because they are Japanese-Americans they must be exactly the same as Japanese culture for all eternity. And you're going to argue for a familial rather than genetic reason rather than realising it's complete and utter nonsense? Did you honestly think I was making the argument that culture is transmitted genetically?

Seriously?

I was arguing that the article basically claims that if you are genetically Japanese you will have Japanese culture. Not that the culture itself is transmitted genetically.

If Phantom Hoover hadn't posted I'd right now be wondering if I was having a stroke or something and words have different meanings for me.



Let me give you an idea how stupid this is. If you took the crime statistics for Black Americans and then compared it with say the statistics for Kinshasa do you not think that would be racist? Can you not see how stupid and racist it would be to say "Well they're both black so the only difference between the two has to be availability of guns. Once African, always African"? Why is anybody having difficulty grasping this?

Is it really so hard to understand that just the fact that it wasn't a representative sample of Japanese people who moved to America means that any conclusions you draw are already bollocks even before we consider the effect of decades or even centuries living in another country?

[The E]

Obviously the reason why a 5th generation Japanese-American would lean more than average towards japanese culture would be things like their own awareness of their ancestry and familial connections, not genetics.

If that were the case, then 2nd, 3rd or 4th generation Japanese-Americans would be featured more prominently in the relevant crime statistics, yes?

[Phantom Hoover]

Like, you can just see the desperate denialism behind that statistic. "****, every other developed nation has fewer guns and fewer murders! Right, let me just break each of them down into ethnic groups so I get five times as many statistics to cherrypick..."

[zookeeper]

My point was that the article was saying that Japanese-Americans can not change their culture! That because they are Japanese-Americans they must be exactly the same as Japanese culture for all eternity. And you're going to argue for a familial rather than genetic reason rather than realising it's complete and utter nonsense? Did you honestly think I was making the argument that culture is transmitted genetically?

No, I thought you were making the argument that claiming a correlation between ethnicity and culture in people born and raised elsewhere (for example between Japanese-Americans and japanese culture) is racist because the only explanation would be genetics, and I rolled my eyes at that assumption.

Of course, your argument actually seems to be that the statistic does not first establish such a strong correlation before making the comparison, but simply assumes there is one, and that's what you find racist. Something which I completely agree with!

[Phantom Hoover]

What are gun ownership rates among Japanese Americans, I wonder?

[666maslo666]

My point was that the article was saying that Japanese-Americans can not change their culture! That because they are Japanese-Americans they must be exactly the same as Japanese culture for all eternity.

I dont think the article is making such a strong claim. At most it just says that Japanese-Americans are more likely to be like Japanese compared to the general population in the US. This is a statistical claim, one that applies only when we are talking about populations, not individuals (when it comes to individuals, it can only be interpreted in terms of probabilities, not certainties). And of course culture changes, but it does not change instantly.