CBT does not work with untreated schizophrenia spectrum disorders

The evidence is tiny because there is enormous pressure to treat schizophrenia with drugs; but it disagrees with your assertion. "CBT is a feasible treatment for people with schizophrenia who are not prescribed antipsychotic medication. It may be a valuable alternative to medication in treating symptoms of schizophrenia."

These are devastating illnesses.

Some of these are devastating problems, certainly. Whether calling them "diseases" is accurate, is part of the question here.

Non medical treatment hasn't been shown to be terribly effective.

Medical treatment hasn't been shown to be terribly effective.

What the hell else do you do?

How about treating a cognitive and behavioral problem with cognitive and behavioral solutions?

The brain is clearly chemical in nature

Computers are electronic in nature, but you don't fix a software bug by rewriting them. (Yes, the computer/brain analogy can be hazardous if carried too far.)

Bad example, because it actually is tracked who owns and uses a car.

And certainly if I was going to go buy a car to mow down a bunch of pedestrians, I'd go title and register it at the MVA after I buy it from some guy on Craigslist for $500.

Here's how effectively cars are tracked: despite the law, 1 in 7 drivers are not insured.

Of course, a hyper regulated country with an ever shrinking 'freedom sandbox' is the leftist definition of liberty

No, it's not. Left vs. right is the "common people" vs. the aristocrats axis -- labor vs. capital, in modern times. One's opinion on how much government regulation there should be is independent of one's opinion on whether that regulation should benefit working people or the investment class.

Why do we have laws at all then? Why do we say don't have sex with children when criminals are just going to do it anyway?

If I sell you a gun, you and I both consent to the transaction. Doesn't matter whether it's legal or not, neither of us will call the cops.

If you sexually assault someone, that person is not consenting, and will call the cops (or their parents will).

You cannot effectively enforce a law against a transaction where all parties involved consent, and even trying to do so inevitably involved measures corrosive to liberty.

I think there are plenty of perfectly nice large and strong people to handle the tiny few who suddenly decide to go rogue.

Violent people very rarely "suddenly decide to go rogue". They typically have a history of increasing violence.

The odds of one of those perfectly nice large and strong people being around when one of those rogues attacks you is low; and firearms enable people who are perfectly nice but not large and strong to protect you.

A quick internet search turns up many instances of ">older ladies defending themselves with firearms, and of mothers defending themselves and their kids, when no nice young large and strong folks were around. People who want all guns to disappear want a world where those ladies would be defenseless against their attackers.

Hey, I already walk around unarmed --- a short, flabby weakling --- and yet don't regularly get beset by burly bandits.

Nor are you regularly shot at by gun-toting thugs.

Part of the reason that, if you live in a middle-class area, you're not very likely to be assaulted is because we hire people with guns to lock up burly bandits. And also because potential burly bandits know that some portion of potential victims are armed -- armed citizens create a penumbra of protection.

With guns, I'm still at the mercy of those better armed, with better marksmanship, and more willingness to initiate violence with the element of surprise

All of those factors apply even more without guns (except substitute "marksmanship" with more general "skill"). In a typical assault scenario, if you have a gun your attacker is not significantly "better armed" even if he has a bigger gun, and marksmanship is not much of a factor because assaults happen at close range. With knives or other weapons, both the size of the attacker and of the weapon matters much more, and skill is a huge factor.

Moreover, the data shows that lack of gun availability really does reduce suicide rate

No, it doesn't. What the data shows is that people who choose to commit suicide and have a gun around, will use a gun; that suicide is more common in rural areas; and that people in rural areas are more likely to have a gun around. International comparison shows that the U.S. has a lower suicide rate than many nations with strict gun control.

Generally speaking suicides are impulsive acts, and the person committing suicide isn't willing to go through a complicated process to do so.

Observation of cultures with higher suicide rates disproves this hypothesis. Jumping off a building or in front of a train takes some preparation.

Anyone can build a bomb with instructions on the internet, but most of us don't. Why? The public has decided that bombs kill way too many people and the law (in the United States, at least), severely punishes people who, successfully or otherwise, blow up a bomb.

SHM. No. The reason most of us don't build bombs has nothing to do with bomb control laws. The reason most of us don't build bombs is because bombs are not useful to most people.

Guns are useful to 1) good citizens who want to defend themselves, and 2) bad people who want to hurt, steal from, and kill other people.

Good citizens can't use a bomb to defend themselves against someone home invaders or muggers. Bad people can't rob or rape someone with a bomb. (Though most robberies and rapes don't use firearms). Bombs are poor tools for murdering a specific person, and most murderers want to kill someone specific.

When bad people actually want bombs, as Boston proved it's not hard for them to get them.

You know, registration is required, licenses are required, insurance is required. In some states, an inspection is required.

This is one of the stupidest arguments that gun control advocates makes, because you don't need any of that to own a car, only to drive one on the public roads.

I don't have a problem with requiring that folks have a permit to carry a handgun in public (provided it's a "shall-issue" to any qualified person and is affordable to all citizens), though of course Johnny Gangbanger isn't going to stop carrying just because he lacks a permission slip from the government. But telling me that I can't own a firearm on my own property, though, is a different matter.

Simply not true - gun ownership among criminals in the uk is pretty low.

...because when the population is disarmed, crooks don't need guns to inflict a violent crime rate much higher than that of the U.S.

A 20-something male mugger doesn't need a gun to attack the average 70-year-old lady; Grandma needs the gun to protect herself.

It sounds perfectly reasonable to me that it would be much harder for them to injure each other without weapons.

You've confused "without weapon" with "without firearms".

Despite the easy availability of firearms in the U.S., about 30% of our homicides are committed without them -- with knives, clubs, fists and feet, fire, poison, and so on.

Which would cause more problems: all the guns in the country spontaneously jamming and failing to fire, or all the cars in the country breaking down?

If cars break down, there are bikes, busses, mass transit, and walking. It's inconvenient but civilization as we know it could survive.

If firearms stop working, every human being is at the mercy of larger and stronger people. As the cliche goes, ""God created men, but Sam Colt made them equal." A free and democratic nation cannot exist without firearms.

Homicides using firearms number about 10,000/year in the U.S.; defensive gun use estimates range from 55,000 to 2,500,000 (yes, the error bars are that huge). Guns are used far more often to protect people than to murder.

BEFORE: Skilled Blue Collared metal workers could make a zip gun.

Skilled metal workers? Zip guns are more like the work of juvenile delinquents and prison inmates. Skilled black market machinists can make much better weapons, like submachine guns.

The UN's response has nothing to do with the international legitimacy of a Palestinian state.

Since Israel's only claim to legitimacy is the U.N.'s declaration, I suppose this means no legitimate state occupies that land?