Another US Gun Massacre - 27 Dead in Texas Church

[Graeme]

I did, for the most part. I think the US government should go about taking steps to dramatically reduce the number of guns rattling around on its landmass and bring gun distribution in line with most of the other western democracies. Whether that's restricting sales or encouraging amnesties... all of those count towards "getting rid of the fucking guns".

As opposed to what is going to happen, which is nothing... See you in the next massacre thread.

[DieselDaisy]

A rather evasive 'sticky-plaster' method really, attacking firearm (no pun intended). You have a maniac who wants to kill a bunch of people. You give him the gun. He kills the people. You ban the gun but are still left with a maniac wanting to kill a bunch of people!

Islamists switch from home made explosions to trucks as modus operandi should tell you all you need to know about the ability somebody passionate enough has in obtaining alternative methods of destruction. 

 

[Ace Nova]

7 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

A rather evasive 'sticky-plaster' method really, attacking firearm (no pun intended). You have a maniac who wants to kill a bunch of people. You give him the gun. He kills the people. You ban the gun but are still left with a maniac wanting to kill a bunch of people!

Islamists switch from home made explosions to trucks as modus operandi should tell you all you need to know about the ability somebody passionate enough has in obtaining alternative methods of destruction. 

 

That's true and probably the #1 counter-argument to gun control by conservatives in the U.S.

[Graeme]

10 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

A rather evasive 'sticky-plaster' method really, attacking firearm (no pun intended). You have a maniac who wants to kill a bunch of people. You give him the gun. He kills the people. You ban the gun but are still left with a maniac wanting to kill a bunch of people!

Islamists switch from home made explosions to trucks as modus operandi should tell you all you need to know about the ability somebody passionate enough has in obtaining alternative methods of destruction. 

 

So, does the US just genetically have more mass murderers per capita than any other western democracy?

[Ace Nova]

2 minutes ago, Graeme said:

So, does the US just genetically have more mass murderers per capita than any other western democracy?

We might.  Pretty sure we have among the most serial killers per capita in the world...and a lot of them didn't necessarily use guns.

[DieselDaisy]

2 minutes ago, Graeme said:

So, does the US just genetically have more mass murderers per capita than any other western democracy?

I'd have to see the facts because I see a lot of stats argued from both sides pertaining to crime in the United States and other countries and a lot of it is contradicted in another set of facts - wasn't Johannesburg the ''murder capital of the world'' for years?

Does America have a problem with people chucking acid in one and another's face like we do? That is a rather nice new trend we have developed for ourselves, isn't it? Doesn't exactly make one feel arrogant enough to lecture the yanks on their guns, does it? (And yes, the ideal solution would be to have far less guns and far greater gun prohibition, but we are not dealing with a tabula rasa here but the current reality).

[SoulMonster]

4 hours ago, DieselDaisy said:

A rather evasive 'sticky-plaster' method really, attacking firearm (no pun intended). You have a maniac who wants to kill a bunch of people. You give him the gun. He kills the people. You ban the gun but are still left with a maniac wanting to kill a bunch of people!

Islamists switch from home made explosions to trucks as modus operandi should tell you all you need to know about the ability somebody passionate enough has in obtaining alternative methods of destruction. 

I for one am happy they can't easily get tteir hands on weapons and explosives. 

Regarding your point that we are treating the symptoms and not the disease, see my earlier post about why USA is struggling with gun violence. 

5 hours ago, gunsguy said:

@Graeme said exactly that

I didn't think he literally thought that was realistic. 

[SoulMonster]

Let's imagine a society without any regulations, then Diesel would be the guy who would go, "Oh, we shouldn't make land mines illegal to buy because even if we did we'd still be left with maniacs wanting to kill a bunch of people". Duh. Yes. And I think measures to reduce the number of maniacs should go hand-in-hand with gun control, as previously stated, but we can't wait for the effect of that, or even think the effect of that would be 100 % (because violence is inherent to humans). So in the meantime we have to apply regulations to make the maniacs less deadly.

And also, "Oh, we shouldn't ban bazookas because terrorists would still get their hands on hand guns and knives and trucks". Duh. Yes. Again, I would much rather have my maniacs with less deadly weapons. They throw acid? Boo-hoo! They ram people with cars? Oh no! It's all bad, of course, but it could be unquestionably worse if Diesel's way of thinking was shared by our politicians. It's like people think that if we can't come up with a law or measure that is 100 % efficient, then we shouldn't do anything at all. Politics isn't usually like that, it is about implementing regulations that give incremental effects and together you see an end result that is significantly better than the alternative. You don't just go looking for that magic bullet and when you can't find it you give up. Some people here live in such a fantasy world.

[SoulMonster]

5 hours ago, DieselDaisy said:

I'd have to see the facts because I see a lot of stats argued from both sides pertaining to crime in the United States and other countries and a lot of it is contradicted in another set of facts

If you look at number of mass shootings per capita (defined as at least two victims in the same incident), from 2000 to 2014, then USA is only beat by Finland as having the largest number of such events when compared to western European countries (and also more than Canada, China and Mexico). But with only two mass murders in Finland, that is below the point where you can draw any statistical conclusions. 

And if you look at the number of fatalities in mass shootings per capita, then Norway, Switzerland and Finland comes out worse than the US. This is of course due to some big mass murders happening in these countries grossly affecting the statistics. I know you hate statstics, but these would be called statistical outliers, and normally, if you were to analyse trends, you would remove them from the data. You could also say that mass murderers in these countries are better at what they do than mass murderers in USA. But I wouldn't. Still, USA is in fourth place on this list, compared to the same countries as above.

So, to summarize, USA has the largest amount of mass murders per capita (with the possible exception of Finland where the jury is still out), but they don't all involve lots of fatalities (although some, as we all know, do). 

Here is the data:

[DieselDaisy]

9 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

If you look at number of mass shootings per capita (defined as at least two victims in the same incident), from 2000 to 2014, then USA is only beat by Finland as having the largest number of such events when compared to western European countries (and also more than Canada, China and Mexico). But with only two mass murders in Finland, that is below the point where you can draw any statistical conclusions. 

And if you look at the number of fatalities in mass shootings per capita, then Norway, Switzerland and Finland comes out worse than the US. This is of course due to some big mass murders happening in these countries grossly affecting the statistics. I know you hate statstics, but these would be called statistical outliers, and normally, if you were to analyse trends, you would remove them from the data. You could also say that mass murderers in these countries are better at what they do than mass murderers in USA. But I wouldn't. Still, USA is in fourth place on this list, compared to the same countries as above.

So, to summarize, USA has the largest amount of mass murders per capita (with the possible exception of Finland where the jury is still out), but they don't all involve lots of fatalities (although some, as we all know, do). 

Here is the data:

Well? The Yanks are not even beating Helsinki? How violent must Finland be? All there is is snow?

[SoulMonster]

For a thorough statistical treatment of the data, read this article: http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2015/07/De-Obfuscating-the-Statistics-of-Mass-Shootings.html

Here's the summary:

To get meaningful information from data concerning mass shootings, it is necessary to be aware of statistical fluctuations that result from an insufficient numbers of incidents. Once that is done, it becomes obvious that the rate of mass shootings in the United States is significantly higher than the other OECD countries.

Of course, this isn't an academic exercise. Nobody will be surprised to learn that there is political motivation behind these attempts to demonstrate that the United States doesn't have horrendous incidences of mass shootings and other gun crimes. If the United States has levels of gun violence comparable with the rest of the world, there is certainly no need for gun-safety legislation.

Our political arena is open enough to debate these issues. But the debate should not involve the abuse of statistics. If people are opposed to gun-safety legislation, they should own the consequences of that opposition rather than try to hide those consequences behind a bogus interpretation of statistics.

Actual lives are at stake.

[SoulMonster]

3 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

Well? The Yanks are not even beating Helsinki? How violent must Finland be? All there is is snow?

You are predictable in your inability to understand things 

[DieselDaisy]

1 minute ago, SoulMonster said:

You are predictable in your inability to understand things 

I'm not really interested enough to argue either way to be honest. All I will say is I prefer to live in a country with minimal guns (I am in agreement here) but also recognise the impracticability of implementing federalist gun control on the United States, a country with a rather different historic relationship with fire arms than countries such as Great Britain. It is a difficult thing for the Yanks to ponder over.

[Dazey]

6 hours ago, DieselDaisy said:

A rather evasive 'sticky-plaster' method really, attacking firearm (no pun intended). You have a maniac who wants to kill a bunch of people. You give him the gun. He kills the people. You ban the gun but are still left with a maniac wanting to kill a bunch of people!

And he now doesn't have a gun with which to do so. That's called progress. 

6 hours ago, Kasanova King said:

That's true and probably the #1 counter-argument to gun control by conservatives in the U.S.

It's bollocks but it's the best they've got.

 

[DieselDaisy]

1 minute ago, Dazey said:

And he now doesn't have a gun with which to do so. That's called progress. 

And I suppose you'll say he'll go quietly in the night? Have a Pauline conversation? Become a hippy and adopt peace and love? Now any barely competent driver can hire a van and kill a multitude of people. 

[Ace Nova]

17 minutes ago, Dazey said:

And he now doesn't have a gun with which to do so. That's called progress. 

It's bollocks but it's the best they've got.

 

I think there's some truth to it.  The recent attack in NYC would be a good example.  Serial Killers, like I mentioned before, typically don't use guns...or a lot of them don't, anyway.

I don't necessarily think it's a great counter-argument either because I think that some gun control would eliminate "the spur of the moment" type killings....like the recent one in Texas seems to be. 

But it probably won't eliminate the guys that plan out these attacks and are determined enough to do it.  I really don't think gun control laws would have stopped the Vegas shooter.  The guy was a millionaire and could have easily acquired any gun he wanted to...legal or not. 

[Dazey]

20 minutes ago, Kasanova King said:

I think there's some truth to it.  The recent attack in NYC would be a good example.  Serial Killers, like I mentioned before, typically don't use guns...or a lot of them don't, anyway.

I don't necessarily think it's a great counter-argument either because I think that some gun control would eliminate "the spur of the moment" type killings....like the recent one in Texas seems to be. 

But it probably won't eliminate the guys that plan out these attacks and are determined enough to do it.  I really don't think gun control laws would have stopped the Vegas shooter.  The guy was a millionaire and could have easily acquired any gun he wanted to...legal or not. 

Might not have stopped the Vegas shooter, you're right. Sure as hell would've stopped Sandy Hook though and if that's not a good enough reason then I don't know what is.

[KiraMPD]

22 hours ago, SoulMonster said:

No, we don't have any comparable cases because Breivik is something else entirely. We have never had anyone doing anything close to what he did. 

Whether you agree with it or not is irrelevant to us, we only care about whether it works. 

But Breivik will never be a free man again, and he might have to spend the rest of his life in solitary. He is universally despised and other inmates have already tried to break into his cell.

The only other "high profile criminal" I know of from Norway is Varg Vikernes, who was released in 2009 and is still a fucking nutter (now with a YT channel). Vikernes is definitely not as bad as Breivik though...

 

Edited November 8, 2017 by KiraMPD

[SoulMonster]

1 minute ago, KiraMPD said:

The only other "high profile criminal" I know of from Norway is Varg Vikernes, who was released in 2009 and is still a fucking nutter (now with a YT channel). Vikernes is defiantly not as bad as Breivik though...

The whole Mayhem story is fascinating in all its morbidity.

[soon]

29 minutes ago, SoulMonster said:

The whole Mayhem story is fascinating in all its morbidity.

yeah, I have to admit that a documentary about it called Until the Light Takes Us is one of my favourite music related documentaries.

[-W.A.R-]

[downzy]

A good explanation why arguments that mental health is the problem (versus gun control) misses the point.

Stop blaming mental illness for mass shootings
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/9/16618472/mental-illness-gun-homicide-mass-shootings

A familiar pattern plays out after every mass shooting in the US. 

First, advocates of gun control point out, accurately, that taking guns off the streets and limiting who can buy them will save lives. Then opponents of gun control argue that there are no regulations that can stop a determined shooter, and that what we really need is to address mental health. Then liberal gun control advocates insist they too want better mental health care, and that Republican gun control opponents are hypocrites because they oppose expanding access to health insurance that would help people get it.

It’s an understandable pattern. Trying to slash Medicaid funding nearly in half, as President Trump proposed in his budget, and then explaining the Texas church shooting by saying “mental health is your problem here,” as Trump did during a press briefing, really is hypocritical. It’s not something a person who genuinely cares about mental health access would do. And it remains the case that too few Americans have access to good-quality mental health care.

But the convenient cries of “mental health” after mass shootings are worse than hypocritical. They’re factually wrong and stigmatizing to millions of completely nonviolent Americans living with severe mental illness. 

The share of America’s violence problem (excluding suicide) that is explainable by diseases like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is tiny. If you were to suddenly cure schizophrenia, bipolar, and depression overnight, violent crime in the US would fall by only 4 percent, according to an estimate from Duke University professor Jeffrey Swanson, a sociologist and psychiatric epidemiologist who studies the relationship between violence and mental illness.

“People with mental illness are people, and the vast majority aren’t any more of a risk than anyone else,” Swanson says.

That doesn’t mean, he says, that we can’t do more to identify people at risk of committing gun violence and prevent them from getting guns — particularly if they are a danger to themselves or others. But portraying mass shootings as a mental health problem misrepresents the evidence.

Mental illness isn’t a major cause of gun murder, or mass shootings

The data on mental illness and violence is somewhat tricky to wrap your head around at first. People with severe mental illnesses — particularly schizophrenia and bipolar disorder — do have an increased risk of violence compared to the general population. But the absolute risk they pose is not high (being male or having a substance abuse issue are both bigger risk factors), and the vast majority of people with severe mental illness aren’t violent. 

Mentally ill people are far, far likelier to be the victims of violence (including violence committed by police) than the perpetrators. And because a distinct minority of the population has schizophrenia or bipolar, mental illness doesn’t contribute much at all to the overall violent crime problem.

A study conducted from 1980 to 1985 illustrates these complicated dynamics well. The Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) study, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health, conducted an ongoing survey of about 10,000 people in five different urban areas (Baltimore, St. Louis, Raleigh-Durham, New Haven, and Los Angeles), asking, among other things, diagnostic questions to see if respondents met criteria for mental illnesses, and if respondents had hit, punched, pushed, shoved, or otherwise violently attacked someone.

Before the ECA study, attempts to study mental health and violence typically started either in psychiatric hospitals or in the criminal justice system. Those methods have obvious problems: Scouring hospital wards only catches people who’ve been diagnosed and chosen or forced to get help, and scouring prisons doesn’t give you a representative sample of the mentally ill either. By using a general household survey, the ECA study avoided those biases.

The study did find that people meeting diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia, major depression, and bipolar were more likely to report violent behavior. But, as Swanson found analyzing the study data, the attributable risk rate — that is, the share of overall violence explained by serious mental illness — was between 3 percent and 5.3 percent, for a midpoint estimate of about 4 percent. That’s where the idea that if you wiped out serious mental illness overnight, violence would fall 4 percent, comes from.

The contribution isn’t just small, however; a large part of it is due to factors that often come with mental illness, rather than mental illness itself. A 2002 paper by Swanson and seven co-authors, looking at 802 people in treatment for severe mental illness (which, as discussed earlier, biases the sample a bit), examined how the relationship between mental health and violence varies by social factors like substance abuse, childhood maltreatment, and living in an adverse or violent social environment (like being homeless, or living in a very high-crime area of an inner city).

What they found was that mentally ill people who didn’t have substance abuse issues, who weren’t maltreated as children, and who didn’t live in adverse environments have a lowerrisk of violence than the general population. 

“If you add any one of those three, it doubles,” Swanson says. “If you add any two, it doubles again. If you have all three, your risk triples.” Subsequent research using Swedish datafinds that while non-substance-abusing mentally ill people have only a slightly higher risk of violence, substance abuse hugely increases that.

Given that mentally ill people are substantially more likely to have substance use issues, to live in adverse environments like homelessness, and to have been maltreated as children, it stands to reason that their rates of violence should be higher. That exaggerates the effect that mental illness itself has on violence.

Nor does this picture change when you look at just mass shootings and mass murders, not all violence or all homicides. Michael Stone, a psychiatrist at Columbia who maintains a database of mass shooters, wrote in a 2015 article that only 52 out of the 235 killers in the database, or about 22 percent, were mentally ill. “The mentally ill should not bear the burden of being regarded as the ‘chief’ perpetrators of mass murder,” Stone concludes.

Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, a frequent writer on mass murder and mass shootings, and fellow researcher Emma Fridel analyzed a Stanford Geospatial Center database compiling shooters who killed four or more people since 1966. Of the 88 shooters who met that criteria, only 14.8 percent had been diagnosed with a psychotic disorder. And even for them, it’s hard to say with any certainty that mental illness caused or contributed to their shooting.

The difference in the US is guns, not mental illness

Subsequent studies, both in the US and abroad, arrived at broadly similar conclusions to the 1980s ECA study that concluded only 4 percent of US violence is attributable to mental illness, even if the precise numbers were slightly different. “When we reviewed the literature, it varied between 3 and 10 percent in six studies,” Seena Fazel, a professor of forensic psychiatry at Oxford who has studied mental health and violent crime extensively, says, referring to a recent meta-analysis he and colleagues conducted. “But none of these was in the US.”

The US and other countries are more similar when it comes to violence than you might think. Most crimes, even most violent crimes, aren’t any more common here than in other countries. You see that in crime victim surveys (like the one highlighted in the above chart, which Swanson created), as well as in official government crime statistics. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's collated government data, the crime of assault was rarer in the US in 2014 than it was in Australia, France, Ireland, or the Netherlands. The assault rates in Belgium and England/Wales were more than double the US rate. Some of that is due to differing assault definitions, but scholars generally agree that for most offenses, US crime rates are pretty normal.

The one huge, glaring exception is homicide:

The difference isn’t that mental illness is more prevalent in the US than in other countries. It’s not even that the US has worse access to mental health care — that’s true, but it’s hard to see why it would lead to more homicide, but not more of any other violent crime, in the US.

Instead, a major factor is that the US has a lot more guns floating around. Swanson offers an example: “Imagine three immature, impulsive, intoxicated young men who come out of a pub in the UK in the middle of the night and get into an argument. There, somebody gets a black eye and a bloody nose. In one of our big cities, it’s statistically more likely someone has a firearm, so you’re likelier to get a dead body.”

Sure enough, international data shows that countries with higher gun ownership rates have more gun deaths:

And similarly, US states with higher gun ownership levels see more gun deaths, including gun homicides.

America has a critical mass of angry people with guns

Swanson, the Duke University researcher, is not a fan of broadly forbidding all mentally ill people from owning guns. But he still thinks there’s a high-risk segment of the population it would be useful to target.

In a 2015 paper, Swanson, Harvard's Ronald Kessler, and five co-authors sought to identify how many Americans show a pattern of impulsive angry behavior. So they looked at data from a survey that just asked people. Specifically, it asked if they agreed with one of three statements:

“I have tantrums or angry outbursts.”

“Sometimes I get so angry I break or smash things.”

“I lose my temper and get into physical fights.”

We don’t know with certainty that this group is likelier to impulsively use firearms. But it stands to reason they would be.

About 8.9 percent of Americans, the study found, report one of these behaviors and have a gun at home; that’s roughly 22 million adults. And 1.5 percent (3.6 million) report one of the behaviors and carry guns with them outside the house. “Fewer than 10 percent have ever been in a hospital for mental health or substance abuse,” Swanson says. Barring people with severe mental illness from getting guns isn’t going to reach this population.

What could, Swanson argues, are extreme risk protection order laws. Those laws, passed in Connecticut in 1999, Indiana in 2005, Washington and California in 2016, and Oregon this year, offer legal avenues for police to seize guns temporarily from people determined to be a danger to themselves or others.

The laws typically require a judge to approve the order on the basis of evidence offered by police or a concerned family member; it can last up to a year. That could, in theory, let concerned friends and family flag impulsive and angry people of the kind Swanson’s research identified and keep them away from guns. Unlike restrictions on gun sales, it would apply to people already in possession of guns.

And the people affected tend to have a lot of guns — seven each on average, according to a study by (yes) Swanson and nine co-authors focusing on Connecticut’s experience. The study found that the law was most often used to take guns away from people at risk of suicide, not homicide. Since most gun deaths are suicides, and guns are a much more lethal tool of suicide than just about anything else, that saved a significant number of lives. About 44 percent of people who had their guns taken away received psychiatric treatment they weren’t getting before.

The study estimates that the law prevented one suicide for every 10 to 20 removals carried out. Whether or not that’s a good deal depends, naturally, on how you weigh gun rights against the cost to human lives. But it’s indicative of effectiveness on suicides.

As for homicide or mass shootings, the law’s effect is less clear and evident. It didn’t, and likely couldn’t have, stopped Adam Lanza from killing 26 people in Newtown, Connecticut, because Lanza used his mother’s guns rather than ones he bought himself. And while it stands to reason that taking guns away from angry people would reduce homicides or mass shootings, we have little concrete evidence that the angry people Swanson’s research has identified are likelier to commit violent crimes, or how much likelier if so. It’s an area begging for more research.

But Swanson thinks it’s a better place to be looking than the mentally ill as a whole. “What if the president had said, instead of, ‘This is a mental illness thing,’ that [the Texas church shooter] was a veteran, this is a veterans’ problem, ban guns for all the veterans”? he asks. “That would be outrageous. … We need to understand risk for what it is and not just assume punitively that this whole huge category of people is risky.”

[Pishy]

49 minutes ago, Oldest Goat said:

"If you kill people and/or commit mass murder. You're probably mentally ill lol." - Dr. Oldest Goat

Indeed because 16 years of war, US militarism, economic disaster, fear, poverty, moral deprevation, alienation and screen damage, makes for violence at home and mental decline/illness. Guns didn't make these people crazy. 

Libs dutifully playing role of gatekeeper to any meaningful solution by throwing up the strawmen "guns kill!" Thanks Einsteins

I would like to see some dedication from the wonky libs speaking against US arms trade,  de-militarization of the police , a no war of ANY kind tolerance , you don't get to conduct proxy wars or send in Wahhabi contras and call it a civil war and demonize leaders of other states . Libs are warmongers but want to cry about guns? No, you don't have any moral or political standing there. First check yourselves regarding the guns you aim at the heads of millions around the world . Maybe if you stop that, your own people won't be so encouraged towards violence .

 

[soon]

6 minutes ago, Pishy said:

Indeed because 16 years of war, US militarism, economic disaster, fear, poverty, moral deprevation, alienation and screen damage, makes for violence at home and mental decline/illness. Guns didn't make these people crazy. 

Libs dutifully playing role of gatekeeper to any meaningful solution by throwing up the strawmen "guns kill!" Thanks Einsteins

I would like to see some dedication from the wonky libs speaking against US arms trade,  de-militarization of the police , a no war of ANY kind tolerance , you don't get to conduct proxy wars or send in Wahhabi contras and call it a civil war and demonize leaders of other states . Libs are warmongers but want to cry about guns? No, you don't have any moral or political standing there. First check yourselves regarding the guns you aim at the heads of millions around the world . Maybe if you stop that, your own people won't be so encouraged towards violence .

 

Well said!

[DieselDaisy]

There is a lot more mental illness around because there is too much choice. In the old days, aristocrats and mega rich aside, you were born, grew up and died in the same town. You followed one career pathway - in Britain you did your national service until 1960. Your holidays were few and far between (perhaps once per year) and usually taken domestically. You followed a religion which offered comfort, not by choice but the precedence of your parents, and were content within that religion. Political beliefs were still divisive however the hierarchies of state (governments, monarchs, anthems, flags, armies) was still given a certain reverence. Food was also basic but healthy and substantial. Further, you grew up with people exactly like you.

Your life was fixed, but you were happier as there was nothing else beyond that horizon - that is all you knew of. 

Now people are surrounded by examples of things they do not have - money, gizmos etc. There are things to acquire, money to make, careers to pursue, destinations to visit, places to be seen at and in the company of certain people, all in order to Keep up with the Joneses. This would be all well and good except there is always someone (seemingly) doing better than you are. You are surrounded by examples of inadaquency through posturing on social media. 

Beliefs are now ''pick a mix''. You can begin protestant, become agnostic, descend into atheism then convert to Catholicism in one lifetime - you can pick your metaphysics like one would choose a coat. People live all over the place; we live in a era of gap year students, backpackers and university globe-trotting types. People now expect to live somewhere else rather than their birth place. 

The extended family has collapsed. Before, people were sustained within the care of an extended family. Now families become anatomised, splintered. 

Everything is out of flux!

Is it little wonder people go nuts?