Walk The Talk America Attempts to Build Bridge Between Firearms and Mental Health Industry

1. Big Pharm and SSRI drugs are the 80,000 pound gorilla. Until we start talking about the real issue this is all a distraction, window dressing…

   • True

     SSRI’s and SNRI’s are 2 of the most addictive and dangerous drugs out there.

     Most of the ‘mass shooters’ out there have been on at leaste one anti-depressant or another or have abruptly stopped taking them just prior to the killing of innocents and family members.

     This is a know ‘side-effect’ of these drugs.

     • Yes Sir… Lots of data out there now, it’s no coincidence… SSRI’s are making murders out of a % of the people unfortunate enough to be on them.

   • It’s amazing how the ignorant can scream the loudest.

     Educate yourself about drugs and mental health before enlightening us with your amazing comments

     • Wow… did you make up that screen name just to lambast me… I think you need a better hobby… 🙂

       God Bless…

       • 👏👏👏

   • I’m not sure where Skyman and Yarbles got their information from, but, with all due respect to you both, you’ve unfortunately been misinformed. Please allow me to explain:

     Antidepressants like SSRIs, SNRIs and the atypicals (like buproprion) are not addictive (meaning you dont have a compulsion to take the drug) nor do you develop a tolerance (meaning the need to take more of the drug to gain the same effects).
     The side-effects of SSRIs and SNRIs include water retention, weight gain, drowsiness/insomnia, but perhaps the most troubling is sexual dysfunction (a side-effect that the atypical anti-depressants don’t have, which is why many physicians perscribe those over SSRIs/SNRIs). The most dangerous side effect is Serotonin Syndrome (which is when one has excess of the neurotransmitter serotonin, causing hyperreflexia (excessive reflex response), clonus (repeated muscle spasms), irritability, hyperthermia and hypertension), but Serotonin Syndrome occurs when you combine SSRIs/SNRIs with other Serotonin-promoting drugs like TCAs or MOAIs.

     Now, if you suddenly stop taking an anti-depressant with a short half-life after having been on it long enough for it to take effect (which is roughly 4-6 weeks), you might experience mild adverse effects like flu-like symptoms, trouble sleeping, dizziness and mild anxiety/depression. These symptoms are often mistakenly considered a drug “withdrawal” but technically that’s not the case because of the way antidepressants work and the fact that they are non-addictive. These symptoms are mild and resolve on their own in a couple weeks. This, however, doesn’t mean that as soon as one stops taking the medication that they go berserk on a murderous rampage.

     Clinically this is important because if a patient no longer needs to take anti-depressants, the physician should change the medication to a longer-acting form and gradually taper the patient off the anti-depressants to avoid these adverse effects.

     Anyways, I hope that clears things up. Best regards to you both.

     • Thanks for taking the time Fully Involved. This has been a topic of discussion here for some time and you opinion is most appreciated.

       • your…

       • My pleasure, and Thank you Skyman, your comment means a lot to me.

     • It should also be noted that while there are claims that many mass shooters were on SSRI or MAOI drugs that this may be a symptom rather than a cause.

       That is to say that the people were already unstable, which is why they were on the drugs, rather than that the drug made them unstable.

       Further, certain medications were originally thought to have side effects that they probably don’t. Celexa is an example. Back in the day when I had my run-in with mental health thanks to idiot administrators at my high school I was placed on Prozac, which did nothing (other than make me a very cheap date) because I didn’t have a problem it would treat. When Prozac was ineffective I was switched to Celexa which also did nothing. When I graduated and decided to say “Fuck this” and get off the drugs I was told I had to be weaned off Celexa over the course of a few weeks because cold turkey could cause “suicidal or homicidal thoughts and actions”. These days that is no longer thought to be true but the concept persists.

   • “mental health INDUSTRY?”…..sounds pretty scary!…..

2. “Mental health *industry*…” (Emphasis added – ed.)

   • Demtard voters (pshrinks) funded with taxpayer wealth doing NOTHING.

     • think about half of them need to see a shrink themselves…they’re the “we don’t get no respect” element of the medical field….and for good reason….do all you can to avoid falling into the clutches of these bozos…

3. The educational system in this country is probably more responsible than anyone for the mental health problems in the younger population. They are not only failing to prepare young people for the adversities of normal life, they are specifically inhibiting young people’s development and adaptive skills.

   • WAY beyond that. They actively promote and instruct and endorse antisocial degenerate behavior.

   • giving the parent(s) a free pass?….

4. We should all welcome this Walk the Talk America initiative. The intersection of guns with mental-health is critical to all of us.

   The Antis – those who would disarm us – are altogether too eager to use mental-health as a tool. They don’t mind at all throwing under-the-bus everyone who might suffer from mental-health issues. To make their state Utopia, they will cheerfully break as many eggs as necessary.

   Practitioners in the MH field badly need resources to meet their responsibilities. First, they need to understand those of their patients who are members of the gun culture. Without such understanding they will be unprepared to distinguish peaceable from violent gun users. Second, they need to protect confidentiality of all their patients who are vulnerable to stigmatization by government agencies, employers and society at large.

   Two-thirds of gunshot deaths are suicides; clearly, a mental-health intersection. One-third are homicides; intuitively, mental-health issues are playing some role in a large fraction of these as well. We should all be striving to ask the right questions.

   Do we have a gunshot suicide problem? Or, is it a suicide (regardless of means) problem? Or, should we actually be recognizing that the problem to be solved is not suicide; rather, it is a mental-health issue? Probably depression – a readily treated disease. Likely, a large interplay of alcohol and drug-abuse. Whose role is it to address the real problems here? How can those of us who are gun-owners help?

   Do we have a problem with gunshot-homicide problem? Or, is it a homicide (regardless of means) problem? Or, not homicide but rather, a propensity to violence problem? If we want to deal with violence, to whom should we turn? Is it the criminal-justice system? Is it self-defenders? These are remedial actors. If we hope to be constructive won’t we need to engage with mental-health experts?

   • the courts don’t really respect these guys…using them as a tool when it serves their ends…but also frequently overruling their determinations…

   • @Mark

     As one of those scorned MH professionals who dares own and use guns, I’m going to still say that violence is not related to guns. Violent people are going to be violent regardless of what they’ve got at hand. Now, if that’s a gun, that can cause big problems. But the propensity to violence is not necessarily related to gun access. All gun access does is give a bigger hammer to the gorilla. The gorilla is still a gorilla whether it’s got a stick or a sword, and it will try to stab you with both.

     We’ve talked before you and I about the inherent issues with trying to interface mental health and stopping violence. As you know, I have a fair number of gun owners as clients and I do believe that people who seriously own and practice with guns are different than the general population both in terms of mindset and worldview. It doesn’t really have much to do with being liberal or conservative from my limited experience. It has to do with views of personal responsibility and what people perceive as threat and what they consider appropriate responses to threat.

     Confidientiality between practitioner and client is supposed to be a given with HIPPA. That’s built into the law and has been for quite some time. Mental health practitioners are generally obligated by law to inform LE if there is probable cause to believe that a client will harm themselves and/or another person, by any means – the means is not important. So that is a legal mandate that practitioners must follow.

5. If someone’s in so much distress that the risk from their having a gun is too much to bear..

   … maybe they shouldn’t have access to much else. Like sporks.

   … maybe try helping with their mental health? What’s a national flag scrutinizer cost? That’s a lot of docs, therapy n home care.

   … maybe putting a penalty on people who aren’t crazy (n haven’t done anything) shouldn’t be the first idea — unless that’s the idea to begin with.

   When the “mental health industry” starts with “We have a mental health problem, so you guys need to mop up our mess better down-stream; B T W, we’ll tell you how.” … somehow, I’m skeptical of a mission to “work with” them. Who put them in charge? Because they’re doing such a good job?

   The message I wanna see from gun folks “working with” “the mental health industry” goes like:

   “Our products do a ton of good — says the CDC — except for whack-jobs. Whack-jobs are your problem, so how about you get on that? (Before it gets to us?)”

   “How can we help you get people like Florida whack-job, or Connecticut whack-job, into useful treatment n supervision before they do something with our products like they are already doing without?”

   I’m not a fan of people giving themselves a field promotion by declaring incompetence: “We can’t fix our problem of known wolves & known brokens we can’t repair, mitigate or monitor, so, now you work for us mopping up what we’ve passed through.”

   You can’t do that? What is your job, exactly? Why are you here?

   The alternative is to get better at their frakking jobs, n do the work. A firearms industry group oriented toward helping the “mental health industry” do that I’m all for.

6. Mental health expert is an oxymoron. Mental health is 100% pure subjective opinion. There is not a single mental illness which can be ruled out or confirmed with lab tests or imaging, despite the dupes that insist otherwise. Mental health also seems to attract people with troubled lives and searching for their own answers….that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it based off what I’ve seen.

   • 100% dead-on!…

   • Ditto!

7. Only when the NRA endorsed legal penalties for metal health problems are destroyed can metal health cease to be a taboo. Nobody will seek metal health care when they know it can be used to Adrian Schoolcraf them and strip them of their rights for life.

   • NOW the NRA is supposed to fix YOUR problem? After all your whinning and bitching about them. Tool

8. Well, there’s another distributor that can live without my $, forever…dang, and I so much wanted a…Bersa…-30-

9. Don’t make me laugh. If you really believe that we can do any business with the gungrabbers, you are clearly insane.

   • also 100% dead-on!…

10. This is a great idea and one that I would be happy to support if done correctly. The gun community are the first ones to scream that there is a breakdown in mental health but when it comes time to talk about about how to be involved in fixing mental health the silence is deafening. There has been a ton of talk in the comments about mental health drugs and how they are bad or good. The fact of the matter is that big pharm is willing to pony up the cash to do research and studies that prove that their drugs work in a particular situation. That is why research in marijuana is so lacking, nobody is willing to pay for the research and studies to confirm a usefulness. The firearms industry is a multi billion dollar industry and if we would be willing to donate even a 1/4 of a percent we would have the ability to pay for the research to prove that firearms are the the cause of the problem and prove that the people that support guns are the solution to the problem.

    • Actually big pharma doesn’t do the bulk of the research or compound synthesis. Big pharma often ponies up for FDA studies after buying or licensing a promising compound from a smaller company.

      The smaller companies often have expertise in a specific area of medicinal/chemical research but don’t have the resources to get a potential drug to and through clinical trials. So the smaller company does the bulk of the R&D and then sells or licenses the chemical they’ve synthesized to a larger company with more financial resources.

      Really, FDA rules and clinical trials need to be entirely revamped because they’re stupidly expensive, generally ineffective and really slow. This is why drugs are often used safely in other countries for years or even decades before being submitted for FDA clinicals. Consider a basic drug like Metformin, a first line anti diabetes drug. Discovered in the early 1900’s, heavily researched, found useful and sold in Europe in the by the 1950’s. Synthesized from a plant, effective and CHEAP, ot becomes a first line anti-diabetic drug in Europe and is officialy recognized as such, pretty much as the drug of choice for Type 2 diabetes, in 1978. It doesn’t become available in the US until 1996 thanks to the cost of FDA clinicals,

      • Please. Your defense of an industry that kills for profit 1/4 million Americans/year helps explain your blind faith in the vaccine branch of this same industry, the products which never undergo testing against inert placebos and which are neurologically disabling a generation of young Americans.

        • And this right here is why I put exactly zero stock in anything you have to say.

          At no point in my post did I “defend” anything. I merely pointed out how many medicinal compounds are created and that the FDA creates a set of problems.

          It’s truly amazing that someone with the level of reading comprehension you’ve displayed here can expect to be taken seriously about anything. Then again, maybe you’re too dense to realise how poor your arguments actually are.

          What gets me isn’t your ignorance. It’s your blithe arrogance and obnoxious tendency to insult people for no particular reason while discussing topics you clearly do not and cannot comprehend. All while flat out making shit up in terms of what other people have said.

        • Your phony righteous indignation is on par with much of your previous posting on this subject. Are you denying that you’ve taken a hard pro-vaccine stance despite your knowledge these products have not been adequately safety tested? We’ve had at least several exchanges on this.

    • Looks like a typo? “… to prove that firearms are the the cause of the problem and prove that the people that support guns are the solution to the problem.” Two “the the” inplace of a “NOT the”?

      I do agree up to a point. The solution though is only partly lawful gun ownership. The main solution, the true 80,000 pound gorilla in the room, is in fixing our entire mental health infrastructure. Rebuilding what we once had and improving upon it. There was a time in the USA when dangerous crazies could be found out more quickly and confined. There were facilities, there was funding and doctors and nurses.

      It was not a pretty picture. Many scandals, inadequate practices, medical malfeasance. In a very American Political way of doing things, we tore it all down and declared success.

      These days there are too few beds to commit the number of sick people needing commitment. Too little money to keep them confined. Too much pressure to boot them out and make space.

      So many cases of mass shooters have in their story some mention of family trying and failing to get mental health care. Or worse, unable to get authorities to act, such as in the Sandy Hook shooter. His mother was desperate to get him help and was turned down repeatedly.

      That is but a part of what needs fixing.

11. An acquaintence and I were talking this very subject via phone today. We both agreed gunz could stop the mental health problem.

12. Oh gee-golee willikers, all this mental health stuff has one (and only one) outcome: flagrant expansion of the definition of who is mentally ill. The definitions change to incorporate whoever is deemed an enemy of the hidden empire. It serves no other purpose. The entire field of mental health has continuously changed through its entire short-history since Sigmund Freud (who was related to Edward Bernays, founder of propaganda, [who is also related to the founder of NETFLIX]). There are a lot of war veterans from the middle-east wars. Lots of PTSD disability registration. Add PTSD to the list of mentally ill and BOOM, you just got an easy way to take away guns from the very-people who would defend the constitution with combat experience when this whole thing goes into open-war, which it most-certainly will. It’s really unfortunate that our citizens are so blind and so dumb as to: number one, not see how what’s going on has already happened many, many times in history, including very recent history of the last 100 years. Number two: Our citizens not being able to identify when their yoke of despotism is being cinched down. Number 3: not being able to simply connect the dots between all of the people who are involved in gun control, who btw, are the same people involved in marxism, who are the same people involved in immigration NGOs, who are the same people involved in mass protests, who are the same people who run the media. It’s simply absurd that we can be this dumb. Just do this: Take a handfull of foundations NGOs and groups which you yourself judge to be damaging to the United States, look up their IRS form 990s, tax returns, “ABOUT US” pages. Put the listed officers and board members into a spread sheet, make sure to collect a large enough sample group. Consider all of their possible affiliations between these people, you could use a lot of variables, alma-maters, age, location, place of birth. Eventually youre going to give up because you cant figure out one consistent, common link which is dominant between them. Then it hits you! “it cant be!”. You work backwards to verify and validate, you cross-reference and test theoretical falsification. And now you enter a new phase of your life where everything suddenly makes sense. The muddied, illogical past becomes crystal-clear and succinct. You begin to make predictions of the immediate future, and then watch as they manifest. Congrats, at this point you have found the rosetta stone. Welcome to reality. Surely god must know this too. A terrible, terrible deception of the most vile dishonor. Enough to make men go mad. Keep your head up, there are those of us out there who see the truth and know in our hearts that although we may or may not live forever, at least while we breathe we will defend you and what is true and right. The constitution is the litmus test. Unconstitutional against the people=despot. Full stop.

    • Jesuit’s……

      • Are jesuits *really* all jesuits? Or, is it possible that elements within jesuitism actually belong to something quite opposed to jesuitism? Perhaps a phenomena with a long-held-tradition celebrated and recorded in the book of Esther?…

        “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” -Samuel Adams

        • Ha, you passed the test. And it’s far more obvious than you implied in your initial post.

13. The one time I can remember a “group” trying to build a bridge with a firearm manufacturer was HUD and Andy Cuomo getting to the then-owners of Smith and Wesson. Not going into it all now but it nearly ended their (S&W’s) existence. I remember the 2 hour line of people at the NRA convention waiting to get into the S & W booth and let them know how their customers felt. Poor Roy Jinks could hardly raise his head to look at us.

    The gun makers for the most part do their job. Maybe groups like Walk the Talk need to go into the inner city and try to sell their lingo to the gangbangers- that’d make a good reality TV show.

    • It’s a rouse. The ecelebs involved in WTTA probably know nothing about the funding or the ultimate reason the thing exists. Just like the NRA, where they have been continuously subverted by the top donors and board. The apex of stupidity was when the NRA published an online article about the Council on Foreign Relations being a big well funded anti-gun group while simultaneously having on its board Jim Gillmore III and Norquist who were both listed members on the CFR’s public membership roster. A lot of these gun guardians are just gate guards. Like how every piece of anti-gun legislation has passed through the submission of the NRA: 1934 NFA, 1968 GCA, 84 FOPA and the new stuff. NRA had a couple of members make a public statement but they did jack as far as lifting a finger to stop it. They simply opened the gate which theyve delegated themselves to guard and let them through. Also notice the media always makes sure to mention the NRA as the only consolidated source of power for Americans that own guns. That should tell you something… SHOT used to make AR manufacturers block off and cover their advertising posters and imagery back in the day because they were too “tactical”. Nothing but a bunch of red coats.

      • So- what’ve you done lately for the Second Amendment besides this little posting?

        • Well, for starters, I don’t walk around telling the general public to give me millions to protect the 2nd amendment, then publicly bend over for gun control and claim afterwards it’s diplomatic chess. Second, I don’t reinforce the normalcy bias of Americans telling them everything is peachy. We’re at the phase before they start doing things to you they couldn’t do if you had guns. Slippery slope is an understatement. We more closely resemble the description of king george cited in the Declaration more than we resemble the United States of America. People need to wake up. Or dont. Choice is yours and so are the consequences.

        • So- your answer according to what you’ve replied is “nothing”.

        • “I get uncomfortable when people account for what the NRA has done because Ive given large amounts of money to them to defend my 2nd amendment, yet as it turns out, despite the seemingly great job theyve always done I now find myself on the door step of confiscation without due process, arbitrary bans of devices which really cant be defined without including all guns, and potential loss of the ability to buy and sell firearms privately. This causes me cognitive dissonance but instead of directing my pressure at the entity in which I hold stake, I direct my frustration at people who point out that this entity has done the opposite of what they said they’d do, by accusing complete strangers (who unbeknownst to me, have worked their entire lives to proliferate firearms in the American citizenry) of not doing as much as the NRA to defend the second amendment which necessarily, because of the present situation, which is worse than anytime in the historical past, amounts to jack.”
          –Craig

14. Let’s not pretend that mental health is a science. You can’t take an X-Ray, MRI, or CT Scan and determine if there is a mental health problem. You can go to three mental health “professionals” and get three different diagnoses/treatments. Let’s face it; mental health in this country is a joke. The really scary part is that a judge can have you sent for mental health evaluation and they pretend the diagnosis is fact.

    • 100% true. Despite the dupes and trolls that insist otherwise, but are unable to provide credible evidence for their beliefs. John Rappoport, and investigative journalist, does a nice job exposing this elephant in the room on his site nomorefakenews.com.

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