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Kids are like 80x or more likely to kill themselves than to be killed in a school shooting. It's not even close to the top of list of real issues affecting the

Kids are like 80x or more likely to kill themselves than to be killed in a school shooting. It's not even close to the top of list of real issues affecting the country. It's just an easy one to get clicks and political favor that doesn't require us to do any real socio-cultural analysis - just ban guns! I think active shooter training time would be better spent on counseling, therapy, PE, recess, or just literally letting kids fuck off and hang out with their friends for an hour.

electrondood 4y ago
Their point wasn't the risk relative to other causes of death for children. Their point was that the US is the only country in the world where this happens, frequently.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Amazing that you can look at kids being shot in primary schools and then try to analyze it statistically. This doesn't happen anywhere else on the planet outside of war-torn countries. Saying that "actually kids are more likely to kill themselves" is just about peak cope.
- anotherhue 4y ago
  I agree with your sentiment but I wish your claims were true https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_massacres_by_death_toll https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_massacres_by_...
  - spaceman_2020 4y ago
    Man, your own list is filled with a) third world countries, and b) actual terrorist attacks. You're being disingenuous if you're trying to claim that, say, the Beslan School Siege is the same as the Columbine school shooting. One was committed by a terrorist organization with a political goal. The other was just a couple of fellow students.
    - lucideer 4y ago
      Man what is the relevance of this comment? The existence of Beslan on that page has nothing to do with US shootings - the gp was just referring you to US stats that contradict your comment. Nothing to do with Beslan.
- imtringued 4y ago
  Yes the fear isn't that your kid is being shot by a school shooters the fear is that your child must.kive in a society where school shooting and the long chain of developmental problems that caused these issues has been fully normalized. We have enough food and housing for everyone right now, except in some popular places, why exactly have we become so desperate? Why can't we give up some economic growth and use the resources we have on general human well-being?
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  I like how it's an argument that mocks gun regulations with the fact that more kids kill themselves with guns than they do each other. Firearm related injuries are the #2 killer of children after automotive accidents[1]. The rate of firearm related deaths for young people went up nearly 14% between 2019 and 2020 alone. I do agree with the importance of socio-economic solutions, though, even before gun regulations. [1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761
- rjbwork 4y ago
  How else would you analyze the issue? A binary analysis would lead us to conclude that gun regulations are completely bereft of any benefit whatsoever, given that gun violence, even mass shootings/spree killings, happen in countries with quite strict gun control - I mean, the former PM of Japan was killed via firearm just this month! But that is not the case. There is a clear gradient of occurrence and effectiveness of regulation. So, we need to move into the realm of statistics. And the statistics are that over the course of the decade from 2010 to 2019 ~350 kids were killed in school shootings, and ~26000 took their own lives. My assertion is that given these numbers, an inordinate amount of resources, political capital, and conversational bandwidth is being spent on what is actually a rather rare occurrence and that this is largely a waste compared to what we could be spending said resources, political capital, and conversational bandwidth on - namely, solving the problems that affect broad swathes of the populace and that I, and others, believe actually drive people to commit such violence in the first place. Or, we can spend the next century fretting about a statistically vanishingly rare occurrence, keeping the blue and red tribes divided, making little to no progress on the existential problems that we as a country, culture, society, and species face, as the world becomes increasingly uninhabitable.
  - fleetwoodsnack 4y ago
    It’s really quite simple, you didn’t have to spell out your confusion so elaborately: Statistics deals in degrees; violence against children is something that is sufficiently cognized in absolutes.
    - chii 4y ago
      policy decisions and budget allocation should an emotionless utility function that allocates what produces the best outcome with maximal efficiency. To do otherwise is to be biased one way or another.
    - JamesBarney 4y ago
      If we shutdown all schools we would have 0 mass shootings at schools. This is the only moral choice when dealing with absolutes.
- BobbyJo 4y ago
  What else should you do when considering legislation? Should we legislate by blindly trying to stop anything bad? That doesn't seem like a good idea.
- eastbound 4y ago
  - rjbwork 4y ago
    Obvious race baiting is obvious. Say what you mean instead of being a fucking pussy and dancing around it by asking pointed questions that we have to then fill in the blanks on. Do you mean to say "people in Africa and the diaspora thereof have a shit culture and the places they reside end up being war-torn and using child soldiers?" If so, say so. If not, please clarify because I may just not be quite smart enough to grok your meaning if it is otherwise.
    - eastbound 4y ago
      It’s a problem that is taboo. And if the taboo suddenly blew up? I believe I’d actually blame it on culture, not race. We can do amazing things with culture. Let’s try. But we can only tackle it if we can address the taboo problem.
      - rjbwork 4y ago
        Which you continue to dance around and refuse to elucidate. Speak clearly.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  > Amazing that you can look at kids being shot in primary schools and then try to analyze it statistically. You have to. For effective policy you need to distance yourself from the deed no matter how terrible they are. All other venues for grief are better than policies motivated by retribution, which will very likely not lead to constructive outcomes and resulting in repeats. Otherwise you end up invading random countries because someone attacked you.
  - sudosysgen 4y ago
    There is a psychological dimension to your kid having to confront the possibility of being shot in school being mere numbers of deaths.
eriktrautman 4y ago
Firearm deaths just overtook auto deaths as the leading cause of death in children and adolescents in the US: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761 Unclear the portion that is suicides but homicides are the fastest growing segment beyond unintentional poisonings
- brigandish 4y ago
  From the article: > Although the new data are consistent with other evidence that firearm violence has increased during the Covid-19 pandemic,5 the reasons for the increase are unclear, Seems like there is a pretty obvious candidate for that, lockdowns. Still, only time will tell, as they go on to say with the rest of that quote: > and it cannot be assumed that firearm-related mortality will later revert to prepandemic levels.
- sneak 4y ago
  This bundles in firearm suicides with firearm homicides, obscuring the real issue. When most people say "gun violence" they do not mean gun-as-tool-used-in-suicide, they mean nonconsensual use of a firearm against someone. Suicides are way up. Gun murders are up too, but they're still pretty low in the scheme of things. They're "safe to completely ignore" low if you're not in one of a few specific counties in the US where gang violence causes 70-90% of the gun murders. The movie plot/evening news gun violence stuff that you hear about is so rare as to be safely ignored in all parts of the US.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    Making guns harder to access probably reduces suicide rates as well because there are few faster, easier methods of suicide than a gun[1]. I think it's valid to lump gun suicides with other gun violence for this reason. > The consensus among public health experts is that there is strong evidence that reducing firearm suicides in contexts where more-lethal means of attempting suicide are unavailable will result in reductions in the total suicide rate (see, for example, Office of the Surgeon General and National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, 2012; World Health Organization, 2014; for review, see Azrael and Miller, 2016). [1] https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/suicide.html https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/suicide.ht...
dr_dshiv 4y ago
It would also help to have mentally healthy streets and neighborhoods that kids and adults can safely play in. Ideally without worrying about violence of any kind.
- chii 4y ago
  Taking away guns does not solve the reason for which they become used by some people. The cost, such as politically and time & energy to lobby, would be better spent making the social net better, or add more mental health services that target more people, and to prevent people from getting to a state of destitution (and fall into crime).
  - dr_dshiv 4y ago
    I generally agree. However, I’d say “both/and” is reasonable. Yes, let’s avoid a society filled with destitution—the market actually works better when you take care of people. Also, let’s stop the proliferation of murder machines. A conservative court should recognize that there is not an individual right to bear arms except by the convention of the court. The second amendment supports well-regulated militias. The current court is not conservative so much as cynical. “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”
lkois 4y ago
>Kids are like 80x or more likely to kill themselves than to be killed in a school shooting. It's not even close to the top of list of real issues affecting the country. But what's the comparison with the rest of the world here? Are you trying to counter the claim that gun violence is a uniquely American issue? Or are you saying that even higher rates of youth suicide are an even more American issue? Because suicide happens everywhere, but unless the US is doing remarkably well on this, that 80x figure is still far far lower than any other developed country. Where, you know, a non-non-zero chance of shootings means infinite more chance of suicide, most other places in the world. You're dismissing an acute problem with common sense solutions behind issues that are common enough to almost be normal, in order to justify doing nothing. It's like someone's pointed at your bleeding foot and you've said it's fine, because you've also got high cholesterol.
- rjbwork 4y ago
  I elaborated here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32163407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32163407 But TL;DR: I think that the juice is not worth the squeeze and that it is just another issue for the two tribes to fight about while the ruling class continues to destroy the human habitat and loot our country's wealth.
lawgimenez 4y ago
I don’t understand your reasoning. US is the only country in the whole universe that has an active shooter problem in schools. Why in the world shoot kids in the first place?
- rjbwork 4y ago
  >Why in the world shoot kids in the first place? I don't know. I certainly don't think anyone should be shooting kids. >US is the only country in the whole universe that has an active shooter problem in schools. Because we have guns that are relatively available and a handful of wingnuts that want to hurt kids. That said, it is not the only place that has a violence against children problem. Not even the only place with a violence against children in schools problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China
watwut 4y ago
> It's not even close to the top of list of real issues affecting the country. They do have active shooter drills as routine part of education. And schools have cops in them routinely and Americans talk about it as normal. You cant those wish away, those are very really affecting the country.
ZetaZero 4y ago
> Kids are like 80x or more likely to kill themselves than to be killed in a school shooting. Sure, if you limit the numbers to just school shootings. Why not count all kid deaths by firearms? A kid is twice as likely to die by bullet than by suicide. School shootings are just the currently most visible form of kid death by bullet.
ineptech 4y ago
The number of school shooting victims in the US looks small compared to the number of suicide victims, and it also looks small compared to the number of cancer victims, or the number of car crash victims, or the distance to the moon in inches. But all of those seem like ways to distract people from comparing it to the number of school shooting victims in other countries.
Bhilai 4y ago
As a parent of kids in public schools in a state that has open carry laws, school shootings are definitely top of the list of things I hate about America. And yes, I do think banning guns is on the table for me as a solution to this problem. I would wholeheartedly vote for representative who support banning guns. Spare me your lecture on 2A, if you think your rights to carry assault weapons reigns over the life of kids, then there is not much to debate about. Its astounding that gun proponents refuse to accept that Kids exists in all other countries across the world and kids are kids with their video games, all of their insecurities and mental health problems but America is the only country where school shootings are rampant.
jamie_ca 4y ago
They can both be problems? US Teen suicide looks like around 8-11 per 100k, age 15-19, depending on year (source: https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/health-of-women-and-children/measure/teen_suicide/state/ALL https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/health-of-wom...), with 9 states over 20. Compare to Germany, 184 between age 15-20 (https://www.aerzteblatt.de/int/archive/article/213427 https://www.aerzteblatt.de/int/archive/article/213427) from a population of 5.41 million (https://www.statista.com/statistics/454349/population-by-age-group-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/454349/population-by-age...), or 3.4 per 100k.
tcmart14 4y ago
Agree and disagree. I dont think it is as simple as an issue that just gets clicks. It is a real issue because it is insane. Where I agree is, no one wants to do any real analysis to figure out how we got here because, its not a simple a problem. It is a problem with a lot of sources, and being able to tackle this, will probably help in other areas (like suicide rates). Good way to word it. Suicides alone are an NP hard problem. Homelessness is an NP Hard problem, etc. Mass shooting could be a sort of NP Complete problem. If you can come up with solutions that prevent mass shootings, those same solutions will probably greatly reduce the others. Just to name, a probably short, list of sources. - We have a poor gun culture. Guns used to be viewed as tools, now they are some cool gadget that is apart of someone's identity. - We often ignore and stigmatized mental health issues. If you want mental health, you are seen as weak or pathetic. When in reality, we probably all could use some sort of neutral third party counseling at the very least to talk about issues we individually face out loud. - Insurance coverage is pretty shitty for mental health. My last employer had good benefits, good medical benefits, but it only covered 3 or 4 mental health appointments. Other than that, it was a decent plan. - We probably should honestly evaluate the process of purchasing a firearm. You can be placed on a no-fly list for suspected involvement in terrorist activities, but can still purchase a gun? Doesn't seem to make sense to me at all.

electrondood 4y ago

Their point wasn't the risk relative to other causes of death for children. Their point was that the US is the only country in the world where this happens, frequently.

spaceman_2020 4y ago

Amazing that you can look at kids being shot in primary schools and then try to analyze it statistically. This doesn't happen anywhere else on the planet outside of war-torn countries. Saying that "actually kids are more likely to kill themselves" is just about peak cope.

anotherhue 4y ago
I agree with your sentiment but I wish your claims were true https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_massacres_by_death_toll https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_massacres_by_...
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Man, your own list is filled with a) third world countries, and b) actual terrorist attacks. You're being disingenuous if you're trying to claim that, say, the Beslan School Siege is the same as the Columbine school shooting. One was committed by a terrorist organization with a political goal. The other was just a couple of fellow students.
  - lucideer 4y ago
    Man what is the relevance of this comment? The existence of Beslan on that page has nothing to do with US shootings - the gp was just referring you to US stats that contradict your comment. Nothing to do with Beslan.
imtringued 4y ago
Yes the fear isn't that your kid is being shot by a school shooters the fear is that your child must.kive in a society where school shooting and the long chain of developmental problems that caused these issues has been fully normalized. We have enough food and housing for everyone right now, except in some popular places, why exactly have we become so desperate? Why can't we give up some economic growth and use the resources we have on general human well-being?
heavyset_go 4y ago
I like how it's an argument that mocks gun regulations with the fact that more kids kill themselves with guns than they do each other. Firearm related injuries are the #2 killer of children after automotive accidents[1]. The rate of firearm related deaths for young people went up nearly 14% between 2019 and 2020 alone. I do agree with the importance of socio-economic solutions, though, even before gun regulations. [1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761
rjbwork 4y ago
How else would you analyze the issue? A binary analysis would lead us to conclude that gun regulations are completely bereft of any benefit whatsoever, given that gun violence, even mass shootings/spree killings, happen in countries with quite strict gun control - I mean, the former PM of Japan was killed via firearm just this month! But that is not the case. There is a clear gradient of occurrence and effectiveness of regulation. So, we need to move into the realm of statistics. And the statistics are that over the course of the decade from 2010 to 2019 ~350 kids were killed in school shootings, and ~26000 took their own lives. My assertion is that given these numbers, an inordinate amount of resources, political capital, and conversational bandwidth is being spent on what is actually a rather rare occurrence and that this is largely a waste compared to what we could be spending said resources, political capital, and conversational bandwidth on - namely, solving the problems that affect broad swathes of the populace and that I, and others, believe actually drive people to commit such violence in the first place. Or, we can spend the next century fretting about a statistically vanishingly rare occurrence, keeping the blue and red tribes divided, making little to no progress on the existential problems that we as a country, culture, society, and species face, as the world becomes increasingly uninhabitable.
- fleetwoodsnack 4y ago
  It’s really quite simple, you didn’t have to spell out your confusion so elaborately: Statistics deals in degrees; violence against children is something that is sufficiently cognized in absolutes.
  - chii 4y ago
    policy decisions and budget allocation should an emotionless utility function that allocates what produces the best outcome with maximal efficiency. To do otherwise is to be biased one way or another.
  - JamesBarney 4y ago
    If we shutdown all schools we would have 0 mass shootings at schools. This is the only moral choice when dealing with absolutes.
BobbyJo 4y ago
What else should you do when considering legislation? Should we legislate by blindly trying to stop anything bad? That doesn't seem like a good idea.
eastbound 4y ago
- rjbwork 4y ago
  Obvious race baiting is obvious. Say what you mean instead of being a fucking pussy and dancing around it by asking pointed questions that we have to then fill in the blanks on. Do you mean to say "people in Africa and the diaspora thereof have a shit culture and the places they reside end up being war-torn and using child soldiers?" If so, say so. If not, please clarify because I may just not be quite smart enough to grok your meaning if it is otherwise.
  - eastbound 4y ago
    It’s a problem that is taboo. And if the taboo suddenly blew up? I believe I’d actually blame it on culture, not race. We can do amazing things with culture. Let’s try. But we can only tackle it if we can address the taboo problem.
    - rjbwork 4y ago
      Which you continue to dance around and refuse to elucidate. Speak clearly.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
> Amazing that you can look at kids being shot in primary schools and then try to analyze it statistically. You have to. For effective policy you need to distance yourself from the deed no matter how terrible they are. All other venues for grief are better than policies motivated by retribution, which will very likely not lead to constructive outcomes and resulting in repeats. Otherwise you end up invading random countries because someone attacked you.
- sudosysgen 4y ago
  There is a psychological dimension to your kid having to confront the possibility of being shot in school being mere numbers of deaths.

eriktrautman 4y ago

Firearm deaths just overtook auto deaths as the leading cause of death in children and adolescents in the US: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761 Unclear the portion that is suicides but homicides are the fastest growing segment beyond unintentional poisonings

brigandish 4y ago
From the article: > Although the new data are consistent with other evidence that firearm violence has increased during the Covid-19 pandemic,5 the reasons for the increase are unclear, Seems like there is a pretty obvious candidate for that, lockdowns. Still, only time will tell, as they go on to say with the rest of that quote: > and it cannot be assumed that firearm-related mortality will later revert to prepandemic levels.
sneak 4y ago
This bundles in firearm suicides with firearm homicides, obscuring the real issue. When most people say "gun violence" they do not mean gun-as-tool-used-in-suicide, they mean nonconsensual use of a firearm against someone. Suicides are way up. Gun murders are up too, but they're still pretty low in the scheme of things. They're "safe to completely ignore" low if you're not in one of a few specific counties in the US where gang violence causes 70-90% of the gun murders. The movie plot/evening news gun violence stuff that you hear about is so rare as to be safely ignored in all parts of the US.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  Making guns harder to access probably reduces suicide rates as well because there are few faster, easier methods of suicide than a gun[1]. I think it's valid to lump gun suicides with other gun violence for this reason. > The consensus among public health experts is that there is strong evidence that reducing firearm suicides in contexts where more-lethal means of attempting suicide are unavailable will result in reductions in the total suicide rate (see, for example, Office of the Surgeon General and National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention, 2012; World Health Organization, 2014; for review, see Azrael and Miller, 2016). [1] https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/suicide.html https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/suicide.ht...

dr_dshiv 4y ago

It would also help to have mentally healthy streets and neighborhoods that kids and adults can safely play in. Ideally without worrying about violence of any kind.

chii 4y ago
Taking away guns does not solve the reason for which they become used by some people. The cost, such as politically and time & energy to lobby, would be better spent making the social net better, or add more mental health services that target more people, and to prevent people from getting to a state of destitution (and fall into crime).
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  I generally agree. However, I’d say “both/and” is reasonable. Yes, let’s avoid a society filled with destitution—the market actually works better when you take care of people. Also, let’s stop the proliferation of murder machines. A conservative court should recognize that there is not an individual right to bear arms except by the convention of the court. The second amendment supports well-regulated militias. The current court is not conservative so much as cynical. “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”

lkois 4y ago

>Kids are like 80x or more likely to kill themselves than to be killed in a school shooting. It's not even close to the top of list of real issues affecting the country. But what's the comparison with the rest of the world here? Are you trying to counter the claim that gun violence is a uniquely American issue? Or are you saying that even higher rates of youth suicide are an even more American issue? Because suicide happens everywhere, but unless the US is doing remarkably well on this, that 80x figure is still far far lower than any other developed country. Where, you know, a non-non-zero chance of shootings means infinite more chance of suicide, most other places in the world. You're dismissing an acute problem with common sense solutions behind issues that are common enough to almost be normal, in order to justify doing nothing. It's like someone's pointed at your bleeding foot and you've said it's fine, because you've also got high cholesterol.

rjbwork 4y ago
I elaborated here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32163407 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32163407 But TL;DR: I think that the juice is not worth the squeeze and that it is just another issue for the two tribes to fight about while the ruling class continues to destroy the human habitat and loot our country's wealth.

lawgimenez 4y ago

I don’t understand your reasoning. US is the only country in the whole universe that has an active shooter problem in schools. Why in the world shoot kids in the first place?

rjbwork 4y ago
>Why in the world shoot kids in the first place? I don't know. I certainly don't think anyone should be shooting kids. >US is the only country in the whole universe that has an active shooter problem in schools. Because we have guns that are relatively available and a handful of wingnuts that want to hurt kids. That said, it is not the only place that has a violence against children problem. Not even the only place with a violence against children in schools problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_attacks_in_China

watwut 4y ago

> It's not even close to the top of list of real issues affecting the country. They do have active shooter drills as routine part of education. And schools have cops in them routinely and Americans talk about it as normal. You cant those wish away, those are very really affecting the country.

ZetaZero 4y ago

> Kids are like 80x or more likely to kill themselves than to be killed in a school shooting. Sure, if you limit the numbers to just school shootings. Why not count all kid deaths by firearms? A kid is twice as likely to die by bullet than by suicide. School shootings are just the currently most visible form of kid death by bullet.

ineptech 4y ago

The number of school shooting victims in the US looks small compared to the number of suicide victims, and it also looks small compared to the number of cancer victims, or the number of car crash victims, or the distance to the moon in inches. But all of those seem like ways to distract people from comparing it to the number of school shooting victims in other countries.

Bhilai 4y ago

As a parent of kids in public schools in a state that has open carry laws, school shootings are definitely top of the list of things I hate about America. And yes, I do think banning guns is on the table for me as a solution to this problem. I would wholeheartedly vote for representative who support banning guns. Spare me your lecture on 2A, if you think your rights to carry assault weapons reigns over the life of kids, then there is not much to debate about. Its astounding that gun proponents refuse to accept that Kids exists in all other countries across the world and kids are kids with their video games, all of their insecurities and mental health problems but America is the only country where school shootings are rampant.

jamie_ca 4y ago

They can both be problems? US Teen suicide looks like around 8-11 per 100k, age 15-19, depending on year (source: https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/health-of-women-and-children/measure/teen_suicide/state/ALL https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/health-of-wom...), with 9 states over 20. Compare to Germany, 184 between age 15-20 (https://www.aerzteblatt.de/int/archive/article/213427 https://www.aerzteblatt.de/int/archive/article/213427) from a population of 5.41 million (https://www.statista.com/statistics/454349/population-by-age-group-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/454349/population-by-age...), or 3.4 per 100k.

tcmart14 4y ago

Agree and disagree. I dont think it is as simple as an issue that just gets clicks. It is a real issue because it is insane. Where I agree is, no one wants to do any real analysis to figure out how we got here because, its not a simple a problem. It is a problem with a lot of sources, and being able to tackle this, will probably help in other areas (like suicide rates). Good way to word it. Suicides alone are an NP hard problem. Homelessness is an NP Hard problem, etc. Mass shooting could be a sort of NP Complete problem. If you can come up with solutions that prevent mass shootings, those same solutions will probably greatly reduce the others. Just to name, a probably short, list of sources. - We have a poor gun culture. Guns used to be viewed as tools, now they are some cool gadget that is apart of someone's identity. - We often ignore and stigmatized mental health issues. If you want mental health, you are seen as weak or pathetic. When in reality, we probably all could use some sort of neutral third party counseling at the very least to talk about issues we individually face out loud. - Insurance coverage is pretty shitty for mental health. My last employer had good benefits, good medical benefits, but it only covered 3 or 4 mental health appointments. Other than that, it was a decent plan. - We probably should honestly evaluate the process of purchasing a firearm. You can be placed on a no-fly list for suspected involvement in terrorist activities, but can still purchase a gun? Doesn't seem to make sense to me at all.