Since nearly no one is talking about it...

[Crankin]

Funny, I relate much more to this one. There have been several national or local incidents that have caused my synagogue to hire a police detail. Every year, when I walk in the door for the High Holidays and there are 2-3 Acton police officers standing there, I think of this.
I didn't talk about the Colorado thing with anyone, except DH.

[Trek420]

.... While we are at it, I"m also ashamed at the lack of health care too. ........

PS. I don't want to get involved in a huge debate but just thought I would put my .02 in. Ride on, friends!

I think in all the ongoing talk about health care (and I'm not wishing to turn this into a debate about the Affordable Care act) I just want to say that we need to add to the civil conversation; mental health care IS health care.

So when people lack access to affordable care mental health is part of what's unavailable.

We talk easily about the child with miss-set broken bones or consequences of poor prenatal care, the missed or late diagnosis of cancer. What happens to a veteran under stress who can't get help? Perhaps this. We saw in the Gabby Giffords shooting the family had been trying to get mental health care to the shooter. Same seems to be true in Colorado: the shooter may have fallen off the radar or through the cracks.

We need to remove the stigma of asking for help and make mental health care easily and widely available.

My $0.02. Back to cycling.

[indigoiis]

I honestly think many (myself, for one) are just in shock that this has happened again. What does one say? I thought the Colorado coverage was different only in that there was so much focus on the shooter. Perhaps because he was still alive and "still wasn't finished" i.e. the bomb-laden apartment, etc. In this case, it's just like, egads, again???? Do we really have to endure the stupid rants of the NRA crowd again??? I feel so awful for all of the victims. It is just so terribly tragic and unnecessary. But I will not read the comments in the news stories anymore.

[Koronin]

I've also seen news coverage of it. I'm in the same camp as indigoiis. My first thought was great again.
The Colorado shooting got a lot more after the fact coverage because the shooter is still alive and had an apt full of bombs, which had to be carefully gotten into and diffused. In this case the gunman is dead.
Also this one appears to be more of a hate crime is is much scarier because many times if the person doesn't have access to a gun they will use other ways such as home made bombs which can have even worse outcomes.

Trek420, totally agree about the mental health coverage. It really isn't there. Even if you can get it it's not great. My sister is bi-polar and until she got on medicare really could not get help for her mental disorder.

[OakLeaf]

I actually think the coverage has improved, because they're finally calling it terrorism.

In the past, the mass media has only been willing to apply that word to a narrow subset of crimes. If the perpetrator was a white person/group targeting women, members of a minority religion, or governmental agencies, it was never called terrorism.

Should it have been the top story on every website/paper this morning? Should the Joplin mosque arson have shared the headlines? I don't know. I think good arguments can be made either way.



Also, I can't disagree that health care, including mental health care, needs to be much more widely available in the USA. Nevertheless, would mental health care have identified or stopped these attacks? For all the controversy over DSM-V, no one has even remotely proposed that racism (or religious hatred) should be a psychiatric diagnosis. It used to be a truism among people who work with victims of domestic abuse, that wife-batterers typically have the most "normal" psychological profiles out there. Just like the refusal to provide health care, the sickness is much more in our culture than it is in any individual...

[PamNY]

Funny, I relate much more to this one. There have been several national or local incidents that have caused my synagogue to hire a police detail.

I had a similar reaction, since I have often seen police stationed at houses of worship.

[zoom-zoom]

I'm not the only one who is seeing drastically less outpouring of support and sorrow directed to the community in WI vs. previous mass shootings. Even 24+ hours later I'm seeing no prayers, poems, or memorial graphics, unlike the days immediately following the CO theater massacre of just 2 weeks ago. The mainstream media is covering this non-stop, but on FB I'm seeing the same emphasis on the Mars Rover and Olympics that that writer is.

[Koronin]

Since the Olympics have been on, I haven't watched much regular news or really much of anything else at all. However I did watch Rachel Maddow's show tonight and she did a segment on the Wisconsin shootings. So there are some out there trying to cover it.

Would this latest one have been prevented by better mental health care, most likely no. However the VA Tech shooting most likely would have been, Gabriel Gifford's shooting most likely would have been. The Colorado one may or may not have been.

[Bethany1]

Mental illness of any kind has been dropped from health care completely. It can be hard to diagnose and once diagnosed if you don't have access or refuse to take the medication terrible things happen. It's something the medical community ignores and is disgraceful. It's a silent epidemic that is showing it's ugly head more and more. Something like heart disease is easily detected. Not so much with any form of mental illness and most of us with a mental illness are not going to take a gun and start shooting in a public place.

What makes it hard it that most of those drugs have terrible side effects and just numb you so you don't feel anything. I'd rather feel something than nothing as i've been on several of them. Most people with mental illness end up in jail, get medication and once out can't afford it or refuse meds and repeat that cycle over and over until they are dropped completely from the system.

I was also surprised and very saddened that this story was basically ignored. I'm so sick of hearing about the Olympics. My heart goes out to this group of people and hope they get the help they need.

The only thing that truly has me upset over our obnoxious new health care is that the Muslim community doesn't have to have insurance due to some stupid cop-out religious law. Something about that insurance is a form of gambling. What about car insurance or house insurance? If we all are required in the US to have it, everyone is in the system and there are no exceptions. Do Muslims in Europe have health insurance or are they exempt?

Gun control will always be a hot topic when some pathetic loser uses one and those countries that have strict control still have crime rates, just not with guns.

I refuse to let these people win and have me cower in fear wherever I go. If we start putting metal detectors and other stuff around "soft targets" we let them win.

[shootingstar]

The only thing that truly has me upset over our obnoxious new health care is that the Muslim community doesn't have to have insurance due to some stupid cop-out religious law. Something about that insurance is a form of gambling. What about car insurance or house insurance? If we all are required in the US to have it, everyone is in the system and there are no exceptions. Do Muslims in Europe have health insurance or are they exempt?



Maybe someone can elaborate on this. Is this more about buying health care insurance from private insurers?

In Canada, a Canadian Muslim gets public health care, like everyone else, regardless of income because they are taxpayers...like everyone else.

[Crankin]

Mental health care is not ignored everywhere, Bethany. Massachusetts has a mental health parity law, which means people need to be able to access mental health care the same way they access physical health care. I'm sorry you have had such a negative experience in accessing care; as a provider, it makes me angry that there's such a difference in other places.
People in European countries have health care as a right; it's mostly run by the government and everyone is covered. Whether certain groups access the system is most likely up to them. There are religious exemptions for lots of things in this country.

[OakLeaf]

the Muslim community doesn't have to have insurance

http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/exemptions.asp

Maybe you noticed that some of the loudest protests about religious exemptions have come from Roman Catholic institutions (not Roman Catholic individuals).

[PamNY]

I'm not the only one who is seeing drastically less outpouring of support and sorrow directed to the community in WI vs. previous mass shootings. Even 24+ hours later I'm seeing no prayers, poems, or memorial graphics, unlike the days immediately following the CO theater massacre of just 2 weeks ago. The mainstream media is covering this non-stop, but on FB I'm seeing the same emphasis on the Mars Rover and Olympics that that writer is.

Does Facebook actually provide news? Where would the prayers, poems or memorial graphics come from?

[OakLeaf]

It's a (nonscientific) measure of the importance of the issue among sites and persons that you subscribe to. Sure, some individual or some news outlet creates the graphics to begin with, but then they get shared to a greater or lesser extent ("going viral").

I understand the OP's concerns, but I don't know if there's a general answer - the question is specific to her group of subscriptions and FB friends, and I think she was asking whether the rest of us were seeing the same thing in our groups.

I personally am seeing plenty of attention to Oak Creek in my FB news feed. But I do find it distressing that the Joplin mosque arson is getting so little attention in the so-called MSM - and that this very thread is being used to attempt to spread false rumors about Muslims.

[Crankin]

Thank you.