Another school shooting (Oregon) - Ho hum

[DaveW]

http://edition.cnn.com/videos/us/2015/10/02/umpqua-community-college-oregon-shooting-gunman-name-presser-sot-ctn.kptv/video/playlists/community-college-shooting/

 

Hard to argue with that.

[glunn]

Moderator note -- let's try to be a little more civil.  I understand the anger over what happened, but we are all Twins fans whose team has played a meaningful game in October.  Let's turn our anger on the problem, not each other.

 

As I grow older I have less sympathy for those who say we cannot do better.  I am also frustrated by mind-closing bickering about what might or might not work.

 

It seems to me that there have been some good ideas in this thread and that combining those ideas would probably make a big dent in the problem.  Personally, I believe that the most effective strategy would be to spend a lot more on mental health, including preventative measures starting with parenting classes.  I would rather spend $100,000 on a teen to provide intensive counselling for him and his family than wait for his life to spin out of control at which point he goes nuts and kills people (or ends up in prison where he will cost us $50,000 per year).  If I were in Congress, tomorrow I would propose a plan to raise $10 billion or more per year from taxing new guns, sales of existing guns and sales of ammunition, with the revenue to be devoted to helping school districts hire more psychologists and social workers to treat students and their families and hopefully make millions of lives better.   

 

I also agree with those who see our culture as different and somewhat warped.  I was raised to believe that I had a right to have guns.  People don't like having rights taken away.  But I have to admit that people in other countries seem to do quite well without a Second Amendment and without keeping a huge percentage of their citizens in prison.  I also realize that my entire arsenal would be a liability in terms of civil insurrection -- even a 10 gauge shell is not going to stop a tank or a drone. 

[TheLeviathan]

I have deep concerns about how we approach mental health as a solution.  I think mental health changes are the more effective way to attack this particular problem (gun control laws in general are a worthy discussion to have to see if they can help gun violence in general, but appear to be a pretty poor form of solution to this problem), but we already diagnose and treat mental health at a rate like nowhere else.  From ADHD to depression to all sorts of things, I worry about our very concept of mental health and how we should respond to it.

 

Throwing more money at the issue worries me that it will become even more of an industry on to itself.  Let me be clear: that doesn't mean I want people untreated, but offering more money for something has a way of inviting a host of problems.  Mental health is a difficult issue as it is without adding profiteering (even more so) to the mix.

 

It needs to be a very delicately handled part of the solution.

[diehardtwinsfan]

I know this will be the unpopular route, but I fail to see how gun control will somehow fix this problem.  There's a real problem with people who have no value on human life, so much so that taking a dozen or so lives of children/innocents is no problem.  Somewhere along the line, we need to get away from attacking symptoms of the problem and start looking at the actual problem.  Again, I don't think that answer is to simply bolster mental health and give people the power to just commit someone (that's a whole different can of worms).  Like gun control, it won't stop this. 

 

Perhaps we should asking why it is that we have this mental health problem?  What makes these types of people click, and how can you undo that?  I'm not sure there is a simple 1 shot answer (and as a society, this is what we are conditioned to expect), because at the end of the day, you are asking us to figure out why deprave human beings behave in a deprave manner.  The issue at the core is the heart of man.  Sure, cultures play into this in various ways and causes it to play out in different manners, but the core devaluation of human life will still persist and people will find more shocking ways to show it.  Legal or not, they will still get the guns, and if by some chance you could eliminate all guns in our society, people will still figure out how to get around it. 

 

The problem isn't a gun issue.  It's not a mental health issue.  It's a heart issue.  No laws or regulation can fix that. 

[Mike Sixel]

The rest of the world uses bombs.

for every US citizen killed in the last decade by terrorism, 1000 US citizens have been killed on US soil by guns.

 

That we know of, since this right wing congress passed a law making it illegal for the government to track gun violence......

[Mike Sixel]

I know this will be the unpopular route, but I fail to see how gun control will somehow fix this problem.  There's a real problem with people who have no value on human life, so much so that taking a dozen or so lives of children/innocents is no problem.  Somewhere along the line, we need to get away from attacking symptoms of the problem and start looking at the actual problem.  Again, I don't think that answer is to simply bolster mental health and give people the power to just commit someone (that's a whole different can of worms).  Like gun control, it won't stop this. 

 

Perhaps we should asking why it is that we have this mental health problem?  What makes these types of people click, and how can you undo that?  I'm not sure there is a simple 1 shot answer (and as a society, this is what we are conditioned to expect), because at the end of the day, you are asking us to figure out why deprave human beings behave in a deprave manner.  The issue at the core is the heart of man.  Sure, cultures play into this in various ways and causes it to play out in different manners, but the core devaluation of human life will still persist and people will find more shocking ways to show it.  Legal or not, they will still get the guns, and if by some chance you could eliminate all guns in our society, people will still figure out how to get around it. 

 

The problem isn't a gun issue.  It's not a mental health issue.  It's a heart issue.  No laws or regulation can fix that.

Crime is not all about mental health. To blame this all on mental health ignores poverty, lack of hope, and other root causes.

 

Funny, but in other countries, they don't "just easily get guns". They don't.

[Craig Arko]

Small Arms survey.

 

http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/A-Yearbook/2007/en/full/Small-Arms-Survey-2007-Chapter-02-EN.pdf

[DaveW]

I was talking to a kiwi in our building last night, she was saying that the gun "control" in Australia has worked wonders, after reasearching them a bit, I don't see why we can't at least "try" something similar, will it end all mass shootings? Absolutely not, we are past the tipping point on that, but even if it prevents run, or cuts shooting deaths by even 10% it absolutely would be worth it, no?

 

I mean, hell, try something? We waste so much money on military and a host of other stuff we overspend on, for once let's just try something! Nothing seems to ever change.

 

Full disclosure: Gun violence/Gun Culture hits close to home for myself, a good friend from high school was killed senselessy trying to break up a fight at a party. Some random kid thought it would be cool to buy a gun from his church group friend and crash a "black tie" party my friend was hosting.

 

Once he wasn't allowed in he started a heated arguement/fight and decided to shoot his gun in the air twice and then into the crowd of people outside. Two of the bullets hit my friend Jay and he bled out/died in the arms of several more of my friends. As Jay's father put it: "this wasn't done by a terroist, this wasn't done by a gang member, this wasn't done in a bad area of town" this was a "Christian" who was so enamored with gun culture he somehow thought that carrying a pistol to a party and then firing it senslessly was the "cool" thing to do. Needless to say this affected a lot of people in a lot of terrible ways, in addition to losing Jay, I have a couple friends who never fully recovered from the events of seeing him killed in front of their eyes, even close to a decade later some of these guys aren't the same and likely never will be.

 

We can sit here and bicker all day about how to fix this big problem, the money it would cost etc, but when it happens to a friend, relative etc of you, it just gets infuriating more than anything else. This. Should. Not. Happen. In. America.

 

http://victimsupportservices.org/memorial/jay-clements/

 

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Student-shot-to-death-at-party-1213513.php

 

 

 

[twinsnorth49]

 

The rest of the world uses bombs.

What? 

 

In all seriousness, what are you saying here?

[ashbury]

Why? In nearly every state, any person can write a petition for committal for mental health reasons. A qualified mental health professional has to do the evaluation to do the final sending, but any person can write the petition under all current laws in most states.

As you say, currently people can be institutionalized, with appropriate checks and balances. If 2nd Amendment proponents counter that no gun laws should be added and the shootings problem should be addressed from the mental health side, then there will have to be even more people placed under officially-sanctioned supervision (of whatever form) than now. So some aspect of the protection of individual freedoms will have to be loosened.

 

I don't know of any specifics being proposed - indeed that's what's frustrating for me, because when a shooting occurs there will be vague statements about "mental health" to try to take focus away from the guns, and then no substance follows.

 

Plus, can you actually see a Republican congress allocating any significant additional funds toward genuine mental health initiatives?

[twinsnorth49]

 

I know this will be the unpopular route, but I fail to see how gun control will somehow fix this problem.  There's a real problem with people who have no value on human life, so much so that taking a dozen or so lives of children/innocents is no problem.  Somewhere along the line, we need to get away from attacking symptoms of the problem and start looking at the actual problem.  Again, I don't think that answer is to simply bolster mental health and give people the power to just commit someone (that's a whole different can of worms).  Like gun control, it won't stop this. 

 

Perhaps we should asking why it is that we have this mental health problem?  What makes these types of people click, and how can you undo that?  I'm not sure there is a simple 1 shot answer (and as a society, this is what we are conditioned to expect), because at the end of the day, you are asking us to figure out why deprave human beings behave in a deprave manner.  The issue at the core is the heart of man.  Sure, cultures play into this in various ways and causes it to play out in different manners, but the core devaluation of human life will still persist and people will find more shocking ways to show it.  Legal or not, they will still get the guns, and if by some chance you could eliminate all guns in our society, people will still figure out how to get around it. 

 

The problem isn't a gun issue.  It's not a mental health issue.  It's a heart issue.  No laws or regulation can fix that. 

It's a multi faceted issue, it's not just about heart or compassion. US citizens somehow have less heart than the rest of the advanced world? That just doesn't seem to make much sense.

[DaveW]

 

US citizens somehow have less heart than the rest of the advanced world?

Counterpoint:

[Vanimal46]

I think there's multiple prongs to this issue. The easy access to acquiring guns is one issue that should be fixed. Mental health is also a key to this issue. You can't tell me someone who goes through with planning and implementing a mass shooting isn't a sick individual. Finally, I think the media coverage is the final prong. These sick people live their whole lives unnoticed, and when they commit these unthinkable crimes, now their face is plastered all over the Internet, TV, and radio.

 

All of these problems need to be addressed, but just like politics, we have an agenda to talk about the issue we care about the most.

[Squirrel]

 

It's a multi faceted issue, it's not just about heart or compassion. US citizens somehow have less heart than the rest of the advanced world? That just doesn't seem to make much sense.

Right. And further, even if heart and culture are the broader issues, we cannot ignore the symptoms. The accessibility to the type of weaponry we have and who can access them is plain and simple, ridiculous. We need to start somewhere. As long as guns remain as prolific in our society as they are, the culture will not change.

[TheLeviathan]

 

Crime is not all about mental health. To blame this all on mental health ignores poverty, lack of hope, and other root causes.

Funny, but in other countries, they don't "just easily get guns". They don't.

 

Again, what will gun controls do about the current proliferation of guns?  I hate to make this practical, but at the end of the day any law that doesn't literally take guns away from people is probably going to be an ineffective solution.  The issue here is this.  Guns are just friggin everywhere in this country and they have been since the dawn of our existence.   And, since apparently I have to continually say this, this isn't to say we do nothing.  But we should go into this discussion with our eyes wide open about the real scope of the problem.  

 

We need to be careful how much we argue "more money for mental health" will help this.  We're already diagnosing and treating mental health at a rate almost double any other country.  

 

I'm worried about how we untangle this web without pulling too hard on one and making the problem worse.  I don't want to give up hope, but the solutions need to be very thoroughly thought-out. 

[Mike Sixel]

apparently Trump thinks "ah, this stuff happens" is an acceptable response.....

[PseudoSABR]

On gun control:

1) Mandatory two-week waiting period, with multiple agency background checks.

2) Close the gunshow and internet loophole for background checks (how can anyone be against this?!)

3) Ban semi-automatic weapons and high-ammunition magazines. 

 

Yes, criminals may know where to buy illegal weapons; but these mass-shooters are not criminals.  I have no idea how to buy illegal weapons, and nor do they.  To believe that these people would go into some inner city and "Hey mister" gangster's is intellectually defiant.  Making guns illegal will not eliminate violent crime, but it will hinder the latent crazies hiding in suburban normalcy.   Convenience is not a right; and high-tech weaponry is not guaranteed by the 2nd amendment. 

 

On mental health:

1) Invest in those around you.  It is your problem.  Be okay with more taxes, cheapskates.

      1a) Really pay attention and give a crap about the people around you.  Both the VT and Tucson killers had taken creative writing classes where they       invoked their predilection for distraught violence, and both were essentially ignored.  These people can cry for help,  but we have to take responsibility when we are within ear shot.

2) Establish universal Mental health care - it is a PUBLIC safety issue; not individual health issue.

3) Work to abolish the stigma of mental health, and work to eliminate to the barriers to mental health care.

 

Not all the crazies will be identified by changes in mental health; that's not the point--the point is that it may stop some of them from going untreated or without care before they get to their breaking point.

 

Maybe none of this works, but all we have to lose is some dollars and our convenience, which is certainly worth the cost to figure out what policies will work.   These efforts, may not stop this or that mass killer, but they do help foster a culture that isn't going to stand by, throw up their arms, and say there's nothing we can do.   Let's make it difficult for them, even if it means making life more difficult for ourselves.

[biggentleben]

 

As you say, currently people can be institutionalized, with appropriate checks and balances. If 2nd Amendment proponents counter that no gun laws should be added and the shootings problem should be addressed from the mental health side, then there will have to be even more people placed under officially-sanctioned supervision (of whatever form) than now. So some aspect of the protection of individual freedoms will have to be loosened.

 

I don't know of any specifics being proposed - indeed that's what's frustrating for me, because when a shooting occurs there will be vague statements about "mental health" to try to take focus away from the guns, and then no substance follows.

 

Plus, can you actually see a Republican congress allocating any significant additional funds toward genuine mental health initiatives?

 

I guess I don't get how the government being involved within the commitment process is a viable thing - that was what I was saying. When judges have the final say, nearly 3 times the amount of people are committed as when a qualified mental health professional is the final say. Frankly, as little as the government supports mental health, their say in the field should be absolutely nil.

[biggentleben]

 

I think there's multiple prongs to this issue. The easy access to acquiring guns is one issue that should be fixed. Mental health is also a key to this issue. You can't tell me someone who goes through with planning and implementing a mass shooting isn't a sick individual. Finally, I think the media coverage is the final prong. These sick people live their whole lives unnoticed, and when they commit these unthinkable crimes, now their face is plastered all over the Internet, TV, and radio.

All of these problems need to be addressed, but just like politics, we have an agenda to talk about the issue we care about the most.

 

The struggle you have there is that rarely do these shooters exhibit qualifying mental health problems to anyone but those closest to them. This is where the stigma of seeking mental health services for family members causes so much damage in this country. I've had a mother tell me that I shouldn't even say hello to her in public because people know I work in a mental health facility, and that they would assume I work with her or her family. That's scary to me. Those who have committed the largest shootings have not shown much publicly that would cause a person encountering that person on the street to file a petition or a complaint on the person's behavior. In home exhibition of mental health symptoms have to be addressed rather than covered up.

[biggentleben]

 

We need to be careful how much we argue "more money for mental health" will help this.  We're already diagnosing and treating mental health at a rate almost double any other country.  

 

It depends on where the money is going. More money for psychotropic medications? No. More money for state institutions? No. However, not only did SD opt out of the Medicaid changes in ACA, the state maintained the funding of mental health while accepting more providers into the system, meaning that community mental health centers are actually funded at a LOWER rate in 2015-2016 fiscal year than in 2014-2015. In what world does that make sense?

 

On top of that, funding to get those psychotropics that are needed to an affordable rate is a great place to put some funding.

 

Funding and legislation requiring more mental health coverage from insurance plans (I'm allowed a maximum of 10 covered visits to a therapist in a 12 month period - the rest comes out of pocket, and my insurance would be considered a mid- to upper-tier type of plan under ACA in the open market) would be another great place to put the funding.

 

On that note, more funding to those who are uninsured or underinsured to get the treatment that they or their children truly need. Therapists aren't paid tremendously (by and large, some find their way to milk the system in any industry), but visiting one on a weekly basis or more would cost hundreds and possibly thousands of dollars out of pocket, even if covered. Imagine for those who are minimally insured or on Medicaid/Medicare, which are both notorious for poor mental health funding programs.

 

Lastly, and possibly most importantly, funding, and more funding, and more funding after that for education programs to combat the stigma of seeking mental health services.

[TheLeviathan]

I will reply more thoroughly later ben, but that was what I was getting at. We are heavily reliant on medication, including an alarming rate for children. Mental health, in our country, seems to be code for "medicating it away". So more money into that vicious cycle worries me.

 

Also, is there some pattern to weapon acquisition in these cases I'm not aware of? My impression has been that most of them got their weapons by stealing them from neighbors or loved ones that would be perfectly eligible to purchase weapons under most plans. What am I missing?

[Vanimal46]

 

The struggle you have there is that rarely do these shooters exhibit qualifying mental health problems to anyone but those closest to them. This is where the stigma of seeking mental health services for family members causes so much damage in this country. I've had a mother tell me that I shouldn't even say hello to her in public because people know I work in a mental health facility, and that they would assume I work with her or her family. That's scary to me. Those who have committed the largest shootings have not shown much publicly that would cause a person encountering that person on the street to file a petition or a complaint on the person's behavior. In home exhibition of mental health symptoms have to be addressed rather than covered up.

 

That's just sad to hear. As a culture we need to view mental health and seeking treatment in a more positive light. There's nothing taboo about it, and becoming more common over the years. 

[Willihammer]

Here's a report that has some facts:

http://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/MassShootings_CongResServ.pdf

 

and a spreadsheet from motherjones.com which appears to have a slightly different data set.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data

[TheLeviathan]

 

It depends on where the money is going. More money for psychotropic medications? No. More money for state institutions? No. However, not only did SD opt out of the Medicaid changes in ACA, the state maintained the funding of mental health while accepting more providers into the system, meaning that community mental health centers are actually funded at a LOWER rate in 2015-2016 fiscal year than in 2014-2015. In what world does that make sense?

 

On top of that, funding to get those psychotropics that are needed to an affordable rate is a great place to put some funding.

 

Funding and legislation requiring more mental health coverage from insurance plans (I'm allowed a maximum of 10 covered visits to a therapist in a 12 month period - the rest comes out of pocket, and my insurance would be considered a mid- to upper-tier type of plan under ACA in the open market) would be another great place to put the funding.

 

On that note, more funding to those who are uninsured or underinsured to get the treatment that they or their children truly need. Therapists aren't paid tremendously (by and large, some find their way to milk the system in any industry), but visiting one on a weekly basis or more would cost hundreds and possibly thousands of dollars out of pocket, even if covered. Imagine for those who are minimally insured or on Medicaid/Medicare, which are both notorious for poor mental health funding programs.

 

Lastly, and possibly most importantly, funding, and more funding, and more funding after that for education programs to combat the stigma of seeking mental health services.

 

Ok, more in depth now:

 

1.  The complexity of many forms of funding for mental health, or physical disabilities, or just basic health care is pretty ridiculous.  The system is a mess that is impossible for most people to understand, including me.  I just know that the amount of regulations and many of the funding streams are completely non-sensical or impractical to the people on the ground.  And that covers the range from the physically disabled to youth in foster care.

 

So yeah, clean that mess up.

 

2)  Medication, in general, is overpriced in our country.  But medication, in general, is also vastly over prescribed.  As I said in my short post, we are using vast amounts of psychotropic medication on people (and children) at a rate no one in the world even approaches.  Not all mental health conditions need that approach.  So that recommendation comes with a giant red flag for me.  

 

3)  The stigma issue is real, but (in my experience at least) most of the stigma is again attached to medication.  People feel that if they accept some kind of help or are labeled in some form, that it necessitates medication.  That's what scares off a lot of parents and I know of many schools that are up front about that exact distinction in many student evaluations.  

[biggentleben]

 

Ok, more in depth now:

 

1.  The complexity of many forms of funding for mental health, or physical disabilities, or just basic health care is pretty ridiculous.  The system is a mess that is impossible for most people to understand, including me.  I just know that the amount of regulations and many of the funding streams are completely non-sensical or impractical to the people on the ground.  And that covers the range from the physically disabled to youth in foster care.

 

So yeah, clean that mess up.

 

2)  Medication, in general, is overpriced in our country.  But medication, in general, is also vastly over prescribed.  As I said in my short post, we are using vast amounts of psychotropic medication on people (and children) at a rate no one in the world even approaches.  Not all mental health conditions need that approach.  So that recommendation comes with a giant red flag for me.  

 

3)  The stigma issue is real, but (in my experience at least) most of the stigma is again attached to medication.  People feel that if they accept some kind of help or are labeled in some form, that it necessitates medication.  That's what scares off a lot of parents and I know of many schools that are up front about that exact distinction in many student evaluations.  

 

I typed this out completely once and then my page accidentally reloaded, so I hope I address everything again. Feel free to ask if I've seemingly left a hole in my discussion.

 

I believe you and I approach the issue of mental health from two very different (albeit both real and viable) perspectives. I agree that in the case of youth, there is still tremendous stigma due to over diagnosis and over medication of what are often simple hormonal shifts in a growing child.

 

However, I work with adults with SPMI. These adults often aren't seeking assistance until they're committed once and forced to work with someone in order to gain release from an institutional setting. They're not seeking help because they don't believe there's anything wrong, and their family is often left struggling to do anything about it because they are unaware how to get someone into treatment without forcing them into the door (and less than half of the paid mental health treatment in 2013-2014 occurred at a community mental health center building, so it can truly happen anywhere). On top of that, in South Dakota, a high percentage of the mental health consumers are Native American, and many of the tribes have a heavy resistance to seeking mental health assistance as it was used by "the white man" to over medicate and subdue the Native American population. New, more enlightened leaders in the tribes have helped tremendously in moving toward treatment, but as most SPMI illnesses include a genetic component, these diseases will take a couple of generations to even see a lessening/bettering of the treatment of illnesses before they reach the point of permanent damage to the person.

 

The issue you run into is that mental health is the redheaded stepchild of social work funding in most states. Take schizophrenia for example. Schizophrenia was nearly removed entirely from the DSM-V as schizophrenia is NOT a mental illness. It is a developmental disability. The individual's brain becomes irreversibly damaged by a chemical flood that happens post-puberty (typically). However, because Schizophrenia is recognized by AMA and other medical associations as a mental illness, it is going to be hard to re-classify it, in spite of a decade's worth of evidence to show it is truly misclassified as a mental illness. Schizophrenia should be treated along the lines of epilepsy, another illness that can onset post-puberty, but due to epilepsy being classified as a developmental disability, there is significantly more funding for caretakers, social workers, and medical providers who assist with a person with epilepsy than for someone with schizophrenia. Nevermind that there are some medications that do a very solid job of combating the damage done to the brain, but they frequently are near-impossible for someone without medical insurance to afford.

 

Mental health has many facets. These youth should have the comfort of seeking assistance without worrying about being over diagnosed or over medicated, but likewise, those who do have a diagnosable SPMI should be able to access the treatments that could help their illness.

[TheLeviathan]

Oh I agree, the distinction you raise is important. "Mental health" is an umbrella term that captures a very wide range, with very different circumstances. I think what you say here is important for people to understand.

 

I look at the initial post-CT massacre reaction to Autism and then look at what might be made of this case and how radically different these two kinds of "mental health" issues could be.

[biggentleben]

 

Oh I agree, the distinction you raise is important. "Mental health" is an umbrella term that captures a very wide range, with very different circumstances. I think what you say here is important for people to understand.

I look at the initial post-CT massacre reaction to Autism and then look at what might be made of this case and how radically different these two kinds of "mental health" issues could be.

 

Spectrum disorders are the worst situation for all involved. Did you know that in any state that did not accept Medicaid expansion, there is no coverage for an adult with a spectrum disorder? They do not qualify under developmentally disabled OR mental illness, so you either need to find another diagnosis for the individual to get them services, or the family is left to fend on their own.

[Hrbowski]

 

What? 

 

In all seriousness, what are you saying here?

I was saying that if someone wants to do a massacre they will use bombs if they can not get a gun, and with the way people reacted with the clock down in Texas people will be too cautious with bomb alerts, making it easier for someone to do a bomb attack.

 

As for the rest of the gun violence, couldn't those murders be done in a different way? People use knives, clubs, etc. Also many gun deaths are suicides, which can be performed in many, many ways, and I don't think that not having a gun will stop people from committing suicide or homicide.

[PseudoSABR]

 

I was saying that if someone wants to do a massacre they will use bombs if they can not get a gun, and with the way people reacted with the clock down in Texas people will be too cautious with bomb alerts, making it easier for someone to do a bomb attack.

 

As for the rest of the gun violence, couldn't those murders be done in a different way? People use knives, clubs, etc. Also many gun deaths are suicides, which can be performed in many, many ways, and I don't think that not having a gun will stop people from committing suicide or homicide.

Well, let's give up on the war on terrorism, while we're at it, because your reasoning applies just as much there.  Using this logic, laws are essentially just a waste of time.

 

There's a big difference between pulling a trigger and bludgeoning someone.  The mindset and the willpower to follow through are completely different.   

[Hrbowski]

 

Well, let's give up on the war on terrorism, while we're at it, because your reasoning applies just as much there.  Using this logic, laws are essentially just a waste of time.

 

There's a big difference between pulling a trigger and bludgeoning someone.  The mindset and the willpower to follow through are completely different.   

No, laws are not a waste of time using this logic. Laws against murder aren't meant as a way of preventing it, they are meant to be used for prosecuting and punishing murders. People who murder are not rational people, so the laws against it don't stop them, they will murder anyways, and the only way to stop individual murder requires a weapon, which some people want to outlaw, so people who want to defend themselves can't have legal access to firearms, and murders, who obviously don't care about the law, will still get them.