Why the GOP blaming mental health — not guns — for mass shootings is a win-win for Democrats
GOP lawmakers keep blaming mental health — not guns — for mass shootings in the U.S. Democrats have an opportunity to call their bluffs.
After the mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, the conservative response to calls for gun reform was to blame mental illness. During a news conference following the terrible school shooting in Uvalde, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said “We, as a state, we, as a society, need to do a better job with mental health … Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge, period.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has expressed a similar sentiment: “It seems to me there are two broad categories that underscore the problem, mental illness and school safety.”
This is an absurd — yet familiar — analysis from Republicans that ignores the reasons why the United States uniquely struggles with mass shootings. While it is probably true that many of the people who commit these horrific crimes are not mentally well, mental illness is global; the U.S. is unusual, however, because people struggling with mental illnesses — and everybody else — can so easily get powerful weapons like the kinds used in mass shootings. Unlike any other country, the U.S. now has more guns than people.
It seems like immediately after a mass shooting, Republican leaders (pretend to) understand the importance of addressing this reality, but somewhere in between talking about it and approving funding for such services, amnesia sets in.
But if GOP lawmakers are going to make the fact that we have already had more than 200 mass shootings this year about mental illness — and not the lack of federal gun laws — then fine. It creates an opportunity for Democrats to help a vulnerable and underserved group of people in the U.S. by calling for significantly increasing funding for mental health-related programs.
This would be particularly timely and important because, as many mental health experts have argued, the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated mental health problems in the U.S., especially among younger people who had to miss important and valuable periods of in-person learning and social life.
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