Should hammers have similar restrictions that guns do?
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Cruiser (
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October 20th, 2015
”A Minnesota man arrested for bludgeoning his grandmother to death with a hammer told police that he attacked the 84-year-old victim because she blew her nose at the dinner table.”
Steele, who claimed to have heard voices in his head, told police that he “believed that if he killed the victim the feeling and smell of mucus that he was experiencing would go away.” Steele confessed to striking his grandmother in the head with a hammer “seven to eight times.”
Again, we have mentally unhinged committing senseless murders. Regulating hammers is obviously not the solution, but when we have people biting of the faces of others, what is the answer to preventing these insane events from happening?
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27 Answers
Better access to mental health care, and reducing the stigma of mental illness.
I’m not nearly as sick as some of these people, and I know the struggles I go through to talk myself out of self-harming.
More mental health care services are needed. I don’t want to get into a gun control argument, but it is disingenuous of you to compare a hammer to a gun. One can’t reload a hammer or kill people at a distance. That doesn’t make the poor grandmother any less dead.
Sure. Since 10k+ people are killed by hammer each year, we need to combine an expanded effort to tackle mental health with background checks for people purchasing hammers.
relevant
Do you want a real answer to your question, or do you want to discuss mental health issues?
Hammers are not designed to kill. Neither are knives. Their ability to kill is a side feature, but not the purpose of their creation or design. One cannot say that about guns.
@marinelife I was merely taking the focus off the weapon of choice and more on the people with voices in their head that clearly need more help than they are getting in hopes of preventing senseless violence of any mode or form.
Problem is, sometimes the voices in the head are their “get out of jail free card”
Identifying mental illness early & prescribing the correct treatment is far harder than it may appear, sad fact of life.
Thanks for the link @DoNotKnow but the author lost me with his high powered knife launcher that could shoot a knife 1,55 miles per hour that is 2,200 feet per second and THAT is fast! A .45 caliber bullet only does 1,100 fps.
@ucme I do struggle with what you just said almost daily since the day 3 years ago my son attempted suicide twice. It took many months of intensive treatment and finding the right medicine to shut down the noise in his skull that pushed him figuratively “over the edge”.
__“Mental health professionals are required to inform state authorities about patients who display violent, suicidal or threatening behavior, for inclusion in the Human Services database(firearms)“__
I would have hoped the FBI or Illinois State Police would have contacted us to inform us his FOID card was revoked. But no such luck. I took it away myself
No but we should seriously consider a 30 day waiting period for a Nail Gun and there should be restrictions on how many nails you can purchase at one time. Seriously, who needs 2500 nails at one time!
All tools can be used as weapons.
@rojo – My husband does. Often.
Commercial flooring installation is a bitch like that.
I’ll bet he has a box or two squirreled away somewhere safe just in case “They” come and try to confiscate his gun
Nah. They tend to rust, which is bad on the gun. Damned humidity.
Great @Seek Not only do we have to concern ourselves over nails whizzing through the air…we now have to worry about Tetanus too!
No. I’m sure the number of deaths by hammer is significantly low. and one person with one hammer in a public place could be taken down easily enough. Not the same for guns. Now if the guy has an electric saw than that’s another matter. Unless its a plug in. Then that’s easy. LOL
@cheebdragon I suspect this has been going on all along but does not grab headlines or make for good reasons to picket city hall….SHARP KNIVES MATTER! just won’t make the front page.
Australia has hammers, so does Norway.. No hammer killings that I can find in either country. So what the fuck is wrong with people from the United States? Are you all mentally ill?
@johnpowell “So what the fuck is wrong with people from the United States? Are you all mentally ill?”
The jury is still out on that one.
Actually, the jury is out because we cannot find twelve sane people to fill it.
“What the fuck is wrong with people from the United States?” There are too many mother fucking people here, that’s what’s wrong. Go sit in traffic for several hours and see how much you feel like swinging a hammer at some dumb fuckers head.
Conversations about any form of law with an aim to control or abolish is a moot point. In recent years, the technological advancements and affordability for 3D-printers has drastically improved. One can print an assault rifle with unlimited amounts of bullets on a 3D printer that costs $500 in their own home. Likewise, one can print any knife style or hammer. The prices are only getting cheaper and the tech continues to evolve.
Mental health is an issue but not the underlying cause. Child abuse is another. Ethnic, cultural and religious diversity are other causes of violence. If do a comparative/contrastive study on violence that controls for population size, density, demographics, religion, culture, and segregation, you will find higher rates of violence in areas that are more diverse and desegregated. There are a myriad of evolutionary reasons such as: resource absorption, status, hierarchies, etc..
“If I had a hammer, i’d hammer out a warning…”
Love to hear Jason or Michael singing that in the musical version of Friday the 13th/Halloween
@cheebdragon Considering how per capita violence rates increase as population densities rise, there is a big grain of truth to that.
Gotta love Cheebs….“Go sit in traffic for several hours and see how much you feel like swinging a hammer at some dumb fuckers head.”
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