[zljones]

Originally Posted by Runscott

By the way, Zack, I know someone who is in their early '20s and bipolar with schizoaffective disorder. Before his first manic break, it's true that he had drug problems, but he was not hateful or particularly angry. Now he is very angry and until recently hospitalized, was carrying a gun and threatening to kill people (while in a manic episode). No one who knows him ... now, with his new manic mind .... has any doubt that he would have carried out the threats. He's currently hospitalized, finally taking medication voluntarily, and doing very well. He didn't hurt anyone. This only occurred because he had a family that went above and beyond what many are capable of.

If more people asked questions about mental illness, then awareness might rise ,and as a result, funding. That leads to more hospital beds, more psychiatrists per patient, less inappropriate drugs administered simply because of lobbying, quicker identification by the public of mental illness symptoms....and fewer manic or psychotic episodes that result in harm to others. Wouldn't that be a good thing? I think the people related to the five who were killed at Cafe Racer in Seattle, by a mentally ill man whose parents had unsuccessfully sought treatment for for years, would agree with me.

If the person I mentioned in the first paragraph had not been hospitalized, and had killed a few people, I WOULD NOT have been looking for a death penalty for him. I would have been horrified that, while out of his mind, he had carried out actions that he would not have done otherwise.

If Ian Stawicki had gotten the help he needed, I doubt those people at Cafe Racer would have been killed. But who cares? Murder is murder - let God sort out his own.

Now, back to our regularly-scheduled program from the mountains of Idaho.

This is not what I meant. You are taking things way out of proportion. I simply said there is too much media attention, and these guys the usually do this stuff are not mentally ill. How often do they get an insanity plea? Almost never. My problem is that there is too much media attention on this. How will the media and causing widespread panic help us understand mental illness, especially if many of these killer are not mentally ill at all. Dahmer, Gacy were all never diagnosed with disorders. You are acting like I have no compasion for the mentally ill. I just have no compassion for those who kill for the hell of it. Is this guy one of them, I do not know yet. But tons of media exposure to it and our society in a state of fear is ridiculous.