rev0lver: I agree with you on over prescribing, I believe part of the mental illness issues in the US is that often times we see children at too young of an age being diagnosed with some form of mental illness, I was even told by our doctor, that my 6 year old son suffers from ADD and needed Ritlain, this is a M.D. not a psycologist, 6 years old is way too young to even consider diagnosis of a mental illness and by placing him under a heavy prescription of drugs will only further damage is brain development as he grows. So, therefore I do see you point 100% at what you mean, but I do not feel this is the main reason we have this strong emaphasis on heavy gun violence in the US.
Relaxedstate and
Doombawkz: You are also correct gentilmen, there has been countless atrocities committed by the human race that do not involve drugs or any kind of mind altering substance, but at the same time there has been plenty of cases reported as well, but not enough to support the claims being made by the OP.
Scoot Magee: I am not going to insult you here, but the issue here is not guns, drugs, video games, movies, music, or even mental illness, it is just plain old human nature. These scapegoats are a socity's of way not wanting to accept responsibility for its actions. People do not want to believe that a person is capable of doing said things, which is why we tend to call these people monsters. By dehumanizing a person its makes it easier on us to criminalize and punish them, same goes with using scapegoats, it is people not wanting to accept what has occurred. A good example is the attacks on 9/11, we don't refer to the perp.s as bad people or humans, we call them terrorists or Islam extremists, it is only a form of dehumanization that is all. Back in older days before people understood mental illness, it was then referred to as demonic possesion, but now today it is better understood and there are drugs and substances to use that help to take care of these problems.
I know a very large amount of poeple with PTSD, Bipolar-Disorder, and other crazy mental illnesses, mainly due to my time in the military, heck due to an incident that happened to me in the Ukraine while my time in the military I now have flashbacks of being beaten by a crowd of people when I see large groups running in my direction. The list of names you put out make a very small percentage of the population that has and lives with mental illness in the US and I do agree. For all those on this list there is a much larger degree of people who are on the same exact medications as them that live day in and day out and do just fine with them. For those that are more volitale it is different and these cases are unique in their own right, those people may be alchahol users as well, any and all those medications are not to be mixed with that kind of substance, also though in the initial treament of these diseases a person is more unstable until they adjust to that medication, the person has lived so long out of whack that they do not understand what normal is suppose to feel like. Hell I went through strange issues when I was initially treated for Type-1 Diabetes and discovered that feeling normal wasn't that normal to me and I had to re-adjust myself to it, now when my Blood Sugar is high I feel out of whack.
The other problem here is the gun control issue, it cannot be trully enforced unfortunately and if we allow our government to circumvent the Constitution of the US then they can continue to take more rights away from us, for instance, after taking the 2nd Admendment what is next the 1st or our freedom of religion. Consider what your saying here, for unfortunately there is just not enough evidence to prove these claims and please stay away from the tin-foil hat folks that come up with strange conspiracies.