Mental Illness is a Cynical Deflection from Gun Violence — Don’t Fall for it
We know this, because the folks who use it don’t want to do anything to address mental illness either
Whenever another mass shooting makes headlines, as with the recent killing of six — including three nine-year-old children — at a private Christian school in Nashville, the response from conservatives is predictable.
Unwilling to do anything to regulate guns, even the weapons of war so often used in these events — which, in the case of the Covenant School shooting, fired over 150 rounds in a matter of minutes — they pivot immediately to the issue of mental health.
As in, the issue isn’t guns; it’s mental illness. If we could address the latter — perhaps along with the sinfulness they often mention as part of their tendency to reduce everything to some Biblical struggle between good and evil — the problem would disappear.
And yet, when pressed to do something substantive about mental illness, these same forces always punt.
They never propose any legislation to improve access to mental health services.
In fact, when such legislation is proposed, inevitably by more liberal and progressive lawmakers — who agree that guns are…
