Autism is not a mental illness, so get that thought out of your head immediately. Where do you learn this nonsense?? Autism is a very real developmental condition of various degrees of severity, and it can last a lifetime. It's not something you "cure" with therapy.
Occasional depression and the occasional bad day are also not necessarily signs of mental illness either.
When we talk about mental illness, we're usually talking about someone who disconnects from reality and/or creates their own reality. And yes, you CAN screen for that, especially if those around the individual are able to see the odd behavior and take steps to do something about it. In the case of the shooter in Nashville, her parents were very aware of her problem and took what steps they could. She was under the care of a mental health professional and her parents, knowing she had a gun, took it away and sold it. They say they were unaware that she had legally purchased seven other guns that she hid from them; three of those were used during the attack on the school.
TN does not have or want red flag laws. If they did, she probably would have been unable to purchase the guns she purchased. This is a simple solution rejected by Republicans and their puppet masters, the NRA, as a violation of 2nd Amendment rights. How one arrives at that conclusion is beyond me. I, and a lot of other people, believe that SCOTUS improperly interpreted the 2nd Amendment in 2008 with the Heller decision.
http://giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/second-amendment/the-supreme-court-the-second-amendment/
So the argument that mental illness cause mass shootings falls apart when the people who make the rules absolutely REFUSE to do anything about mental illness. A bill came up in the House to increase funding for mental health programs in schools - 205 Republicans voted against it. Why? If they think that's the cause and they want to fix the problem, all they're doing is blowing smoke by refusing to take simple common sense measures to address it...
How hard can this be??? Our country put men on the moon and brought them back to Earth safely.We can do ANYTHING we set our minds and talents to. All it takes is for the GOP to stop salivating over that sweet, sweet free NRA money for once and to actually DO something to help their constituents.
Instead, we get meaningless "thoughts and prayers". Every. Single. Time. Keep your thoughts and prayers go yourself - God has already answered them, and His answer is a resounding ,"No! You broke it, you fix it!"
So now, fix it! |
