Mental Health And Mass Shootings-What’s The Fix?

Recently President Joe Biden spoke to the Nation about his ideas for greater gun control. As I wrote at the time, if taken at face value, the gun control argument is about keeping innocent people safe from "bad guys" with a gun.  I don't believe that.  "Bad guys" with guns know the law but don't care and mentally ill people with guns don't know reality much less care about gun laws.  So who do gun control laws impact?  The answer is you and me - the law abiding citizens exercising our constitutionally guaranteed right.

We talked about it on the Morning News radio show at the time late last week and Mike Johnson, Director of the Union gospel Mission called in to share his take, on mental health, homelessness, gun laws and needed leadership and legislation.  It was late in the show and we ran out of time to get the kind of detail the subject requires so we invited him back on today, 4-16-21.

My point is this.  Mass shootings are not committed by criminals. Mass shootings are committed by people who are mentally ill.  But rather than dealing with the dicey & difficult task of getting/forcing people into mental health care, many on the left in America are seeking to remove guns from society thinking that solves the problem.

It doesn't solve the problem and it impinges on the constitutional rights of millions of law abiding gun owners.   The subject that started this conversation was Red Flag laws.  Under those laws, people who are deemed by some authority as a danger to themselves or others, they can have their guns confiscated to protect themselves and the community at large, but as Mike Johnson says those laws stop too soon.  His point -if you are too dangerous to own guns than you need to be in treatment but we are reluctant or unwilling to force that step.  Ironically, forced treatment is just what the individual really needs.

Mike says it best and I encourage you to listen to his interview but let me set it up with this.  Today 8 people were shot and killed at a Fed Ex facility in Indianapolis, several others were wounded and the shooter shot and killed himself when police arrived .

According to the Washington Post, the 19 year old "suspected shooter in Indianapolis was interviewed by FBI agents last year, authorities revealed Friday, after his mother contacted law enforcement to report that he might try to commit “suicide by cop....Indianapolis police placed him on an “immediate detention mental health hold.......( Did he get treatment at that time -we don't know) ....FBI agents interviewed Mr. Hole the next month because of “items observed in the suspect’s bedroom at that time....a shotgun was seized and it was not returned."