Insights

“We studied 26 million Americans over 12 years. Here’s what we learned about gun ownership.” Continue reading

“Some leaders are calling for an end to stay-at-home orders to save the economy, while public health experts argue this will result in a surge of COVID deaths. The implication is that we have to choose between a financial crisis and a public health crisis, and that lives are more important than money. But economic crises are public health crises. Unemployment, lack of education, poverty, and homelessness kill people, too. 

“Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has people around the world feeling vulnerable and scared. In America, individualism and firearm culture have generated a unique response to this threat: stockpiling firearms and ammunition.1 

Historically, it is unlikely that these firearms will be used defensively.2 In fact, there is strong evidence that, on balance, firearms in the home don’t protect people from harm, but instead put everyone in the household at increased risk of injury.3  

“A few days ago, Salon published an interview with psychiatrist Bandy Lee, who argued that Nancy Pelosi should put President Trump on an involuntary 72-hour mental health hold after he ordered a drone strike in Iraq. While there are plenty of reasons to see Trump’s presidency as a problem, this is the wrong approach to solving it.

“People who knew him as a child described him as “odd” and, later, “disturbed.” Only after it happened did they use the word “scary.” As a teenager, he was picked on and teased for his sullen demeanor and his love of military gear. He lashed out, fighting with classmates and destroying property...” Continue reading

“Many of the problems that lead people to kill themselves cannot be fixed with a little extra serotonin...” Continue reading

“The police picked him up from his high school after a terrified student told her principal he had threatened to slit her throat. She showed them his Instagram, where he had posted pictures of the Charleston Church shooter with the word “hero” underneath it, and a picture of their science lab with the caption “Columbine 2.0”. The officers didn’t find any guns or explosives, and couldn’t arrest him for the alleged threats, since the girl was too scared to be interviewed.

“Before I went to medical school, I had a seemingly unrelated job as a backcountry mountaineering instructor for Outward Bound. At the beginning of each season, I’d sublet my apartment, freeze my credit cards, breakup with my boyfriend, and drive my truck out to Colorado. I’d spend the summer traveling on foot through the high mountain passes and rough-hewn peaks of the Rocky Mountains, carrying everything I needed on my back. I slept in meadows under the stars, drank from streams, and wore the same socks for 3 weeks at a time. 

“J.P. had begun to believe that the mafia was monitoring him and that they had deployed operatives to follow him to Oregon when he moved from California. He thought a tracking chip had been implanted in his neck, that robotic birds were conducting surveillance on him, and that he was being watched through his cell phone, which he destroyed in a fit of rage. At one point, he was sleeping with a shotgun under his bed to defend himself, despite a prior arrest for carrying a handgun illegally.

 “Yes, again. 
 
In another it-can't-happen-here community, a young man has taken the lives of many others, and then his own...” Continue reading