Fox News' crackpot psychiatrist, Dr. Keith Ablow broke away from his column, called Tragedy in Connecticut: How do children, parents move forward? in order to gratuitously advance his position on gun control and take a swipe at those who disagree.
In his FoxNews.com article, Ablow tries to answer his question: "How do we help the survivors, their families and all the American families whose kids feel less safe today than they did yesterday?"
But then, at the end of his column, Ablow writes:
One other thing: Those who call for gun control after incidents like this contribute nothing to the solution. Gunmen like Friday’s plan their actions, right down to wearing military garb. They could certainly procure illegal firearms or use incendiary devices to kill. I only wish the kindergarten teacher and principal in Connecticut had been armed.
So as the nation recoils in shock, horror and grief over this awful tragedy, Dr. Ablow doesn't just use his psychiatric platform for political purposes but to sneer at those who have a differing point of view. Very compassionate, comforting and healing - not.
Viz, you have Ablowme’s response correct — you just have the order of that response backwards . . .
.
.
Everyone being armed and trained does nothing to stop crime- If anything, it gives the offenders a better idea of who’s the biggest threat fighting back.
Oh, and Ablow claims to have been a criminal profiler at one point. I hope to God he didn’t do any shootings, because the reason they get victims even at bases and outside police stations is that it catches them enough off guard for the trained professionals to get caught off-guard. What would a civilian that happened to be armed do- especially if they find they can’t shoot another person, even in defense?
A. A very bad one.
The trio on the curvey couch is doing a lot of broad-reaching rabble-rousing today.
A background check would at the very least establish the principle that gun ownership is not a right but a privilege reserved to responsible individuals (like driving a car, actually). Even the constitution refers specifically to the need for a well-organised militia. The authors were not thinking about an armed mob, quite the opposite.
Now, if firearms were perceived as the dangerous things they are, people might even start keeping the friggin’ things under lock and key. Can you find out how many kids are killed each year simply because they found a gun just lying there? I’m pretty sure the annual average are more than 20.
My aversion to routine mental assessments is based on apprehension that we might go back to a time when women and other undesirables could be put away at the whim of someone with the money to pay for the likes of Ablow. A background check should bring up any examples of illegal behavior, especially violence and ownership of any arms that may have been used for crime. No need to worry about finding psychiatrists that actually know what they’re talking about.
Have been listening to Fox and Friends in hope of catching the next press conference and it’s been hard keeping my hands off the remote control. Guest after guest is shooting off a different list of things that people should be reporting as potentially dangerous. At this rate, they’d be confining over half the population of the USA in mental institutions.
There was a new legal analyst called Aidalla (sp) who sounded more reasonable than Judge nappy.
I sort of agree with this, but at the same time… think about this, Bemused:
James Holmes was found to be mentally ill, and Jovan Belcher was claiming long concussions. Both were flagged, and the vendors who sold them their guns legally didn’t consider their mental health to be a factor.
Guns are literally the only type of weapon that have no purpose other than to hurt/kill people. Note I said type of weapon, not actual weapon. Their only two functions are to fire a high velocity piece of lead, and to be a club if it’s not in your best interest to pull the trigger. This is twice as much reason to flag potentially dangerous people around them.
And I do extend this to people who already own guns- when someone’s a suicide risk, they take everything that could easily be used as a weapon until the person’s no longer a danger to themselves. What’s wrong with the inverse?
However, that should never be at the expense of programs that aim to address the root causes of mental illnesses.
Several guests, even on FoxNews (a cause of irritation to some of the hosts), have mentioned the consequences of severe cuts in funding for outpatient assistance to the mentally unbalanced (as well as for schools). The hosts prefer the likes of Dr. Ablow who’d want everybody to be carrying a gun thereby increasing exponentially the risks of mayhem and death.
So far, I’ve heard nobody mention the possibility that it would have been totally “normal” to buzz in the son of a teacher. If the hunting season is open as I suspect (late December), nobody would even have wondered why he was wearing camouflage gear and carrying a rifle.
There’s still an awful lot we don’t know and the police are behaving very professionally by refusing to say anything at all rather than say the wrong thing.
PS: The Fox reporter from NJ seemed awfully anxious to say that “he didn’t know where the story about the bodies in Hoboken came from”. It would be so refreshing if the foxies would just shut up for a minute and check the facts before speculating away.
At no point in time over the past 24 hours have I heard any of the foxies complain about the lack of information. They have been accepting, without a peep, the cautionary statements by police and informed persons that it will take weeks even months to get the full story of what happened in CT.
Totally unlike their coverage of Benghazi which is not – so far as I know – located within the USA. Just saying.
Apologies for the typos in the last post but was too het up to read it before posting and spellcheck didn’t pick them up. Humans are still better than machines!
Fewer guns would already reduce the risk of situations where bullets are flying around. Please note that did not write “eliminate”. This is simple arithmetic. Fewer guns = fewer situations.
Further reductions in the likelihood of a crazy to commit carnage could be obtained by apply four very easy-to-implement measures:
1) a total ban on the rapid-firing toys that exist only to shoot people in large numbers; anybody who uses such toys for killing deer, ducks, even varmints is – to my mind – potentially dangerous for people; that person certainly does not merit the appellative of “hunter” and most of them don’t even keep their arms in a sturdy locked cabinet;
2) background checks (not a mental assessment which is far too invasive of individual privacy);
3) mandatory training in a licensed shooting range where competent instructors can instill a more responsible mindset;
4) mandatory insurance (as already recommended for the owners of cars and large pets: mind-boggling that the same principle is rejected for guns)
Cue Doug Rowan who I actually do think is paid by the NRA. He keeps on talking about himself as a responsible gun owner to justify his rejection of any form of regulation that would bar ownership by the crazies. No dialogue: only text from the NRA handbook.
Gee…it seems that technically, at least, she WAS armed….but died at the end of her own gun.
Now….what could be wrong with that picture, Ablow?
People like Ablow are insane…and those that believe them are largely responsible for what occurred in Connecticut.
Well, why stop there, Ablowme?
Why not advocate for the kids to be armed, too?
.