Dueling experts and horrifying medicine

Will someone please present me with a comprehensive list of why civilians should not own firearms so I can address them at one time?

This is getting annoying.

UNFIT FOR … ANYTHING

The current reason that people should not have a firearm is mental instability.

Of all the … excuses given, this is the least rational, least plausible and most indefensible.

Certainly, some metal issues are obvious. For the past 21 years, I have lived with a human being with “limited” mental capacity. Jesse, my son, has Down Syndrome. He can read some words. He cannot drive. He has a hard time answering two-part questions or following a series of commands issued as one instruction.

He is also a hunter, knows more about guns, I bet you, than the average person. He has his own rifle (locked in a gun safe) and he’s made kills with it. We turned it into ground meat because hamburgers are his favorite meat. He also has a bow, thanks to some astonishingly awesome friends in Washington State, and was on the 4-H archery team in high school.

LET’S VOTE

So.

Who gets to decide if a person has mental issues that should prohibit them from owning gun?

Psychiatrists? These are the same people who vote, I do mean VOTE, on what constitutes a mental issue. Vote. 

"It (DSM-5) classifies psychiatric diagnoses and the criteria required to meet them. Gary Greenberg, one of the book's biggest critics, claims these disorders aren't real -- they're invented."

"The paper concludes that while the APA represented DSM-III, and the return to descriptive psychiatry it inaugurated, as a triumph of empirically based decision-making, the evidence presented here fails to support that view."


"Historically, many clinicians have been unaware that the DSM is more political than scientific, that there is little agreement among professionals regarding the meaning of vaguely defined terms, and that it includes only scant empirical data."

Where do these quotes come from? The authorities in the links just above.

S'far as the "empirical data" is concerned, psychologists and psychotherapists are some better than the shrinks. They at least rely on real world results.

As for the ability to prescribe medications, only shrinks get to do that. The record on shrink medications is extremely subject to the Decline Effect. "But the data presented at the Brussels meeting made it clear that something strange was happening: the therapeutic power of the drugs appeared to be steadily waning. A recent study showed an effect that was less than half of that documented in the first trials, in the early nineteen-nineties."

Doctors do not vote on whether or not someone has a broken leg. Doctors do not vote on whether or not the flu virus will make people sick.

You want people who vote on what a mental illness happens to be to decide? This same group once declared homosexuality to be a mental disorder.

A look at the history of shrinkology - http://www.uniteforsight.org/mental-health/module2

Mental illness? Get you some MORE history. http://nobaproject.com/modules/history-of-mental-illness

Some of these “illnesses” now horrify us. We are even more horrified by how these “patients” were treated. Yet, that was is mental health treatment.

I recommend you read The Great Psychiatry Scam. No doubt some of you are gonna “BS!” That and say this guy either doesn’t know what he’s talking about or has a axe to grind.  Dr. Colin A Ross is one of the current psychiatric greats on the planet.

Wherefore dost thou protest now?

DIDN’T VOTE ENOUGH APPARENTLY

Let’s make this more real. Why wasn’t Ted Bundy https://www.biography.com/people/ted-bundy-9231165 stopped before he killed more people? I guess enough people didn’t vote to stop him.

The Zodiac Killer. Jack the Ripper. Donald Henry Gaskins. Tsutomu Miyazaki. Luis Garavito.

OK, what about Charles Edmund Cullen? Lots more like him where he came from.

DUELING EXPERTS

Aight. Forget the voting.

Look at the court cases where people are hauled in front of a judge for competency hearings.

BOTH sides bring expert witnesses, experts in the field of mental health who testify to the exact opposite. Who ya gonna believe?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8935818 “Today, expert witnesses are the champions of victims and the accused. Legal disputes are increasingly being decided by the battle of the experts who must undergo the ordeal of cross-examination. “

Here, lemme beat you to near death with reality - http://jaapl.org/content/40/4/581 “Conflicting Expert Opinions Concerning Insanity”

“In the case of State v. McGhee, 787 N.W.2d 700 (Neb. 2010), Eric McGhee appealed his convictions for first-degree murder and use of a weapon to commit a felony. He filed a petition for postconviction relief and based his appeal on ineffective assistance of counsel. Mr. McGhee's primary complaint was that his attorney did not acquire a third expert opinion regarding his competency to stand trial and his defense of legal insanity in the face of conflicting expert opinions. He contended that a third expert opinion was necessary to break the “stalemate” between the two opposing experts. The district court denied his appeal without an evidentiary hearing, and he then appealed to the Nebraska Supreme Court.”

Got money? Hire an expert to tell a judge and jury that the individual is/isnot mentally competent and hope the other side cannot match the fiscal resources needed to bring in expert witnesses. Then, let the unquestioned NON EXPERTS decide which expert is telling the truth?

And we come right back to voting again. Except now, you want people with no background in mental health to vote on whether or not someone is mentally competent to have a firearm.

Can I submit you to the same examination process to decide whether or not you are competent to do anything of my choosing?

Sigh. 

NEXT!