[Note: included here because of the clammy odour this letter gives off.]
AFTER reading so many news articles of violent deaths and murders in the past few weeks I am sure I am not alone in wanting a solution to the problems that cause such occurrences.
Frustrated politicians and social commentators tell us that we have to stop the killing, and the primary solutions offered are more police, tighter gun controls, "intervention" with enforced mental health "treatment" and tougher prison sentences.
And while it is obviously true we have to do something about violent crime, such solutions are a stopgap measure. They do not address the real source of the problem. And like all solutions that discount the problem's cause, sooner or later the solution itself becomes a problem.
Since the 1960s our society has been characterised by escalating social problems: illiteracy, drug abuse, violence, crime, declining morality, divorce, child abuse and racial and religious intolerance.
What false solutions have been foisted upon us during this time and what problems have they created?
It was in the 1960s that psychiatry grandly posed as the omnipotent social solution and (well-funded by billions of taxpayers' dollars) forcefully entered into medicine, education, family, criminal rehabilitation, juvenile detention centres and our courts. The results have been catastrophic, not only in terms of financial waste but human suffering and even life itself.
Credit where credit's due, psychiatry has brought violence and suffering into our society and gun laws and censorship won't ease it.
JOHN McGUINNESS
Darlinghurst