Massachusetts’ law prohibiting the possession and sale of some semiautomatic weapons commonly used in mass shootings is acceptable under a recent change to Second Amendment precedent from the US Supreme Court, a federal judge said Thursday.
That seems like a convenient definition if one wants to okay possession of large numbers of guns. Thinking on it, collecting anything with no non-intrinsic value seems like obsessive behavior. Just because the obsession doesn’t express itself in physically hazardous ways doesn’t mean it’s healthy.
Mental health is largely about being functional. There are lots of people out there who are functional but unwell (and they are considered mentally healthy) until one day something pushes us over the brink. My son has bipolar and is able to function fairly well, but the incident that led to the diagnosis was a disaster. No one knew until he flipped in an incident that put him and everyone around him in danger. Fortunately guns weren’t involved.
The point of which is the accumulation of guns may very well be an indicator of a mental illness being kept in check and just waiting for the right trigger to turn into tragedy. And regardless of whether you agree or not, I think that’s what the OC was getting at: amassing a bunch of anything, specifically guns in this case, beyond what one can use is inherently an indicator of illness. I agree with that in concept although I think there is a lot of room for disagreement about what is an unhealthy number.
That seems like a convenient definition if one wants to okay possession of large numbers of guns. Thinking on it, collecting anything with no non-intrinsic value seems like obsessive behavior. Just because the obsession doesn’t express itself in physically hazardous ways doesn’t mean it’s healthy.
Mental health is largely about being functional. There are lots of people out there who are functional but unwell (and they are considered mentally healthy) until one day something pushes us over the brink. My son has bipolar and is able to function fairly well, but the incident that led to the diagnosis was a disaster. No one knew until he flipped in an incident that put him and everyone around him in danger. Fortunately guns weren’t involved.
The point of which is the accumulation of guns may very well be an indicator of a mental illness being kept in check and just waiting for the right trigger to turn into tragedy. And regardless of whether you agree or not, I think that’s what the OC was getting at: amassing a bunch of anything, specifically guns in this case, beyond what one can use is inherently an indicator of illness. I agree with that in concept although I think there is a lot of room for disagreement about what is an unhealthy number.