The Antidepressant Connection to Mass Murder

The Columbine shooters wandered the school for 49 minutes shooting kids before the SWAT team arrived. Why is it that we continue to focus on the type of guns they used? 49 minutes could do damage whether auto or not. Whether or not we ban automatic weapons, we will continue to read about other mass murders until as a country we begin to deal with the root causes of mass murder.

Is it the 10 million automatic guns in the hands of the public responsible for mass murders? Can something more than confiscating autos be done to deal with mass murder? What about the perpetrators? Are there any similarities between them that point to something other than the type of weapons they used? Because if we cannot find another answer, 49 minutes could do similar damage no matter what arsenal they bring to the school.

Articles have addressed correlations other than guns regarding mass murders yet no one has discussed them on this thread or others really. Why is that? Should we not at least mention in parting the correlation of antidepressants? Now 40 million white people on Prozac or other antidepressants is probably a good net thing for America.

We do get benefits from cars, although 1 in 100 have bodily injuries from them every year, which some might say is very high odds but worth the potential maiming or death. Similarly, I am very thankful that antidepressants help so many millions of people have more normal, functioning lives. Most Americans have benefited either from seeing a loved one come back to life or having been given a second chance themselves.

Yet are we measuring the cost benefits well? Does our nation even understand the cost benefits? And if we do, are we willing to accept them as readily as we do 40,000 deaths and 3.6 million injuries by automobile each year?

Did you know that about 100 acts of violence are reported to the FDA each month related to the use of antidepressants? Did you know that about 3 murders are reported to the FDA each month related to the use of antidepressants? Did you know that the FDA estimates that only between 1-10% of violence is reported to them so that would put murders related to antidepressants at somewhere between 100-1000 per year.

Did you know that there have been 22 international drug regulatory warnings on psychiatric drugs citing effects of mania, hostility, violence and even homicidal ideation? Did you know that 15 percent of white people take antidepressants in America? Did you know that two thirds of them haven’t even seen a doctor in the past year? Did you know that the majority of mass murderers in the past 30 years were white males using antidepressants?

How effective is our medical profession at filtering out those antidepressant users that have turned homicidal? If 3.5% of these drug users are at risk from negative mental side effects, or 1.5 million people, what is our medical, legal, and law enforcement’s process for keeping them from acquiring and using weapons to kill? Do you know?

Why is it that America isn’t focused like a laser on this connection? Is it because so many of us know the benefits of the drugs in our families? If the answer is that like cars, the benefits outweigh the horrendous costs, then so be it. Live your lives quietly and let this pass.

If you simply cannot and must wash your guilt in a futile gesture, fight with the NRA. 
You may even win the battle. But as you congratulate yourselves, don’t dig deeper into the mass murder statistics because they will still be out there to haunt you.

Otherwise, once again, I must implore you to stop QQing and focus on the root causes.

God Save Our Liberty

Stewardship…it used to refer to one who was paid to look after the belongings of another. We now hug the term and give it a whole new meaning, referring graciously to the ethical responsibility we freely accept for something that we do not own and that is not central to our immediate selfish needs. What draws us to steward certain abstractions and not others? Are the objects of our stewardship of any more or less import than those chosen as responsibilities by our fellow man?

Christians speak of stewarding that given to them by God including family. Environmentalists see great import in stewarding the world for future generations yet unborn. Global warming advocates are challenged to steward the climate so that it may keep the world inhabitable for our grandchildren. The Tea Party feels great passion in stewarding America’s credit, realizing that it is the engine of our future prosperity. Liberals are equally passionate about stewarding the path for progress toward civil equality and personal freedoms.

Why is it that we choose to place our stewardship above those of others? Why is it that we choose to be blinded by the cause of others that choose to steward America’s future from tyrannical leaders that would steal the freedoms of their subjects? We know that every nation that has existed for enough time has been tested from within from tyranny. Are we so naïve as to think that America will escape this phenomenal historical record? I hope and expect that it will not occur in mine or my children’s lifetimes. Yet the time will come when a charismatic leader will ride the wave that is now tightening our freedoms in the name of security. It is for this distant time that freedom lovers everywhere stand guard of the 2nd Amendment.

When that time comes, I hope that we have not given up our arms. I hope that the hundreds of millions of guns and ammo have not been rounded up in the name of gun control for the safety of our present in exchange for the demise of our posterity. I own no gun. They scare me. Yet I am proud of the wall of steel they present to those that would harm America from without or within. God save our liberty.