Thoughtful article on guns, crime, etc. by a forensic psychiatrist.

Insightful article by a forensic psychiatrist, that is another way of looking at this controversy. Part of article is below:

"People, especially those who are suffering, often do not want to wait, to study, to think about what interventions should be implemented based on a full understanding of a problem.


This is my response to the urgency in the wake of Newtown.

Sure, it was a hugely tragic event. So many young lives taken so suddenly, heroic teachers trying to protect their young charges, even the apparent suicidal despair of Adam Lanza. Just horrible, all of it.

But as our mayors and police chiefs point out, we have many Newtowns every day in this country: children (and adults) killed in drug disputes, in gang violence, in rage acted out within homes. Where is the outrage?

Like my relative, we want a quick fix. We wrongly perceive Newtown to be an acute problem, when in fact it is a blip against a background of chronic violence pervading our society—a scourge to which we are so inured that we do not even see it.

As with my relative’s shingles, the virus of violence is harbored within our society, and occasionally it breaks the surface so dramatically that we cannot ignore it, at least for a few news cycles.

We are unable to accept that perhaps the best thing to do is to wait—to study the problem, to try to understand the cause or causes, to develop rational interventions for those causes.

This takes time.

Instead, we craft urgent laws . . . "