With Guns We Do Have a Mental Health Crisis in America: In Congress.

Republican Rep  Michael McCaul , Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, in responding to the mass casualty shooting at a community college in Roseburg Oregon,said the problem with this and other mass shootings is not a gun problem but a mental health problem in America.

 

He's right.  It is a mental health problem. And the mental health problem is with him and conservative members of congress who have seen over 300,000 Americans killed in gun violence since 2004 (compared to 36 killed in the U.S. by terrorism)  and have blocked every piece of meaningful gun control and safety legislation that would reduce the risk of this kind of gun violence. Including blocking all the tepid, lukewarm legislation proposed by the Obama administration  who wrongly thought that if the legislation was weak enough conservatives would go along.

 

The mental health problem with guns in America  is with conservatives in congress, in state

legislatures around the country, the leadership of the NRA and fringe lunatic gun owners who see guns as some kind of symbolic extension of themselves instead of what they really are, implements of self defense, sport and hunting. This isn't to say all gun owners see guns as some kind of symbolic  extension of their manhood or sexual appendage  (when was the last time there was a female mass murderer?) But it is to say that too many with mental problems do. And that includes gun owners with those kinds of mental problems who haven't committed any  crimes  but who can influence legislators  like Mike McCaul. 

 

When speaking of the NRA it has to be stated as "leadership" of the NRA  and not rank and file members because there is no indication that the NRA and their positions, represents or is embraced by any but the most radical, lunatic  fanatical NRA members, people who also fall in the category of America's mental health problem with guns and not the bulk of their membership.

 

 McCaul  who has been in the pocket of the NRA, displayed his mental health problems with guns some time ago when he blocked legislation that would have denied guns to people who were put on no fly lists by the Department of Homeland Security. Maybe you'd like to read that again, then go for a walk, think about it,  discuss it with your friends, and then ask where the real mental health problems are when it comes to guns.

 

People deemed dangerous enough by Homeland Security  to be in a data base  that would keep them off airplanes because they might blow it up were deemed okay by McCaul to buy guns.

 

If that's not enough to declare someone like McCaul mentally unfit for office then that's where the discussion has to start.

 

An even bigger indication of the mental health problems with conservatives in congress is that more than 87,000 Americans have been killed by gun violence since the shootings at Sandy Hook elementary school.

So by all means lets deal with the mental health problems in America with regards to guns. And all the other problems that need to be addressed. But it can start with congress,  the leadership of the NRA  And what to do about it.