Thank God the freedom-hating liberals couldn't keep Mindy McCready from exercising her God-given Second Amendment rights:
On Sunday, McCready, whose turbulent personal life overshadowed her music, was found dead on the front porch of her Arkansas home -- the victim, authorities said, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.Yes, thank God the freedom-hating evil government didn't take away her access to firearms, using the fascist excuse that maybe she wasn't a suitable candidate for firearm ownership:
She was 37.
McCready leaves behind two boys -- a 6-year-old and a 10-month-old.
Just a month earlier, police had paid another visit to the house in Heber Springs.
On that day, they found the infant's father -- record producer David Wilson -- dead on the porch.
He too had apparently taken his own life. He too had used a gun.
Country singer Mindy McCready's boyfriend David Wilson died from a gunshot wound on Jan. 13, and though his death was thought to be a suicide, McCready is speaking out amid speculation that she killed her boyfriend....More:
The singer made multiple suicide attempts herself over the years, struggled with addiction and in 2007 she was charged with battery and resisting arrest after a fight with her mother. The singer made headlines in 2011 after she went on the run with her son in the middle of a brutal custody battle....
McCready's list of problems is long:Yeah, we wouldn't have wanted to deprive McCready of her sacred right to self-defense just for a few personal weaknesses and difficult life circumstances, now, would we? Sure, things didn't work out all that well, but ... FREEDOM! STAND AND FIGHT! FROM MINDY'S COLD, DEAD HA ... er, sorry, never mind.
* August 2004: Charged with using a fake prescription to obtain the pain medicine OxyContin. She pleaded guilty in November.
* May 2005: Charged with drunken driving in Nashville. The charge is pending.
* May 2005: Former boyfriend William McKnight charged with attempted murder after he allegedly broke into her home and beat her up. Charges against McKnight are pending.
* July 2005: Charged in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, with unlawful use of transportation and hindering prosecution after police say she and a known con-man tried to use her celebrity to obtain two luxury boats. Charges are pending.
* July 2005: Hospitalized in Florida after a drug overdose that authorities say appeared to be a suicide attempt.
* August 2005: Jailed in Tennessee after authorities say she violated her probation on the drug charge. She was released on bond and the case is scheduled for trial in November.
* Earlier this month she testified in court that she was pregnant by McKnight, the man charged with trying to kill her. Later she was hospitalized after overdosing on antidepressants after a quarrel with McKnight.
What a horrible story.
ReplyDeleteAbout the only plus side that I can think of, is that she didn't kill the children first, in a murder-suicide.
But those poor, poor, kids...
At first I was going to try to write some Ted Nugent gag, but there's nothing funny at all about suicide, or what people who even contemplate committing it, are going through.
I wouldn't even wish it on that sociopathic idiot, Nugent.
This is something that really bothers me about our entire society and criminal justice and health system--its (almost) entirely focused on the rights of the individual, rather than the needs of the family group. Don't get me wrong--breaking the rule of the family and the domination of the individual man/woman/child by the patriarchal family unit was one of the great gifts of feminism and children's rights. But,nevertheless, people live in families--what happens to one family member happens to them all.
ReplyDeleteWhen a person has a mental illness or addiction problem their ability to handle lots of rights (driving, taking medication, owning guns) needs to come into question. When one person in the family shoots themself (the boyfriend) or has an addiction everyone in the family is affected and the mental health status of everyone should be re-evaluated with respect to owning/using harmful substances like guns.
This poor woman. It sounds like she had a lifetime of abuse and self abuse--if the Clemens story is true she started letting herself be sexually abused by celebrity figures at a time when most of us are protecting our children from such contacts. She had already tried to kill herself multiple times but each time she had not succeeded. Clearly the boyfriend killing himself gave her the idea of a more final way to lash out at the world and end the pain.
We don't have enough money or care to offer someone like this woman the circle of love and attention she needed after losing the father of her 10 month old child. She should have been surrounded by family and friends at that point and clearly no one bothered. She was left alone with her guns.
Once again, kids are the victims of a failed system...we will never learn...
ReplyDeleteSomething else that I wanted to add here is the popular/media confusion between locating a cause for any given incident and locating a public health action that could be taken to limit harm.
ReplyDeleteI see from the headlines that the Police are going to end up attributing the Lanza Massacre to "video games." I don't want to enter into that argument because its a total dead end. For a person with a mental health problem and extreme rage issues anything can be a cause, and anyone can become a target. Trigger events are so various and so plentiful that attempting to end mass shootings by preventing triggers is a fool's errand.
The entire debate is given away when we accept right wing attempts to frame the debate as "guns cause/don't cause" violence. They don't have to be the root cause of violence in order to be the prime facilitator of violent acts because of their ease of use, their ready availability, their iconographic status as "equalizers" and as penis extenders and as tools of the "good guys."
These massacres are always perpetrated by people with an emotional and cultural axe to grind--there's a reason why the victims are usually women, children, work associates, people in authority (judges and policemen) who are seen as "on the side of" women, children, work associates, legal enemies. The gun is seen as an honorable and reasonable way for a man to work out his issues. It would be just as easy to poison one's enemies but poison is thought to be a woman's tool and only a very few would be mass murderers get a thrill from it.
Cut down on the heroic status accorded to guns (nearly impossible given the history and the pushback from the right) or cut down on the availability. These are our only choices.
As usual - WHAT AIMAI SAID!!!
ReplyDeleteThere's a limit to payin' dues to sing the blues. Nothing in her behavior says anything more than Doper. Con. Junkie. A well heeled tweaker. Not even enough class to be a cokehead.
ReplyDeleteMississippi, as m'da ' n g'da would have said (though here of course Arkansas) White Trash.
I feel for the kids, feel hard for the kids - I've grandkids that age. I also have a very impressionable nine year old grand-daughter who is very impressed with this genre, this... individual, who by her celebrity is held out as some kind of role model. A Junkie. A Con-artist... a tweaker. Why? Because she's a white christian girl who can barely speak english? Bah! Good riddance to bad rubbish. One less carbon footprint choking the rest of us.
No fear...
Aimai,
ReplyDeletePerhaps it's my pedantism but I'm a little uncomfortable with your implied definitions of cause and trigger.
i.e. the cause of Lanzi's actions was his mental illness. The rest were contributive/cumulative triggers. The cause of his mental illness is still beyond the comprehension of current science (genetic/epigenetic etc, etc).
A classic example of cumulative effect is the “Battered wife syndrome” .
The big question for me is here is the same as battered wife, 'how much of his actions were under HIS (Lanzi)/ Her (McCready) control' ? Experienceon many levels suggests not as much as is comfortable to believe.
I am NOT arguing the the miss called 'liberal/left ' argument for determinism 'on steroids' i.e. we are the sum total of our chemistry/circumstances etc. To me that is as absurdly superficially overly simplistic as the diametrically opposite and emotionally self salving it's “all their fault and therefore good riddance to bad rubbish” as expressed in other comments here. This latter view is often expressed by those who are either unwilling or unable to accept that reality is that we don't understand that “shit” DOESN'T happen in a vacuum regardless of our beliefs or wishes.
The problem with the public is not so much what they don't ACTUALLY understand (or don't) but rather what they don't WANT to understand/accept.
People tend to create their own reality regardless of the objective facts then argue for legitimacy of these perceptions based on their emotion. (i.e. Wants ) .
As you know the primary issues with anybody afflicted either addiction or mental illness is that they must *first * recognize that they do indeed have a problem.... This is of itself is often impossible, they simply can't see that there is a problem or that it is THEIRS ! This isn't of course unique to them, One can tell /point out to a republican/ tea bagger until you are blue in the face that their policies/prejudices are a major part of the problem with society take the 2nd Amendment (please!).... They simply can't see the problem exists or that it's largely their collective fault. Likewise both the addict and the psychotic must accept, themselves, that they NEED help before corrective assistance can have any lasting help. Sadly this last point normally doesn't happen until a catastrophe (hit bottom). In the political analogy sea water actually inundating their home or it's member(s) of their family is/are a victim of say accidental fire arm tragedy.
Neither are the 'liberals' immune from such myopia. Consider how many children are killed by a parent backing over them in their own properties or have driven home effectively DUI ?
The point I'm leading to is that we are far too inclined toward indulging our emotions at the expense of our brain. The real problem here is that we know the problems but we CHOOSE to do things that way because it's more gratifying.
Buddha said if we want true contentment we must control our desires (wants). that goes to handing out judgement on others to salve our fears and responsibilities