After Wednesday’s school shooting in Georgia—the 23rd on an American campus this year—a therapist from Charlotte talks about Republicans’ latest attempt to scapegoat mental health rather than guns.
A 14-year-old boy opened fire and killed four people at his Georgia high school Wednesday. Another eight students and one teacher were reportedly injured.
It is the 416th school shooting in America since the Columbine massacre in 1999, when I graduated high school. And it is the 23rd shooting reported on a school campus just this year.
After the shooting, Republican opponents of gun law reform again tried to divert conversations about gun reform to conversations about mental health.
Here are some thoughts:
- People have mental illness all over the world.
- At times, people, especially males, have violent impulses all over the world.
- People go to school all over the world. However, students and teachers don’t regularly experience mass killings at school at the hands of civilians not motivated by war with such frequency all over the world. Is this what folks mean when discussing American exceptionalism? If so, American exceptionalism = terminal uniqueness.
- There are way more people in America who want to take measures beyond thoughts and prayers to prevent folks from being able to mow down kids at school than folks who want to pretend it’s inevitable and there’s nothing we can do.
- That said, we can’t even research things related to gun violence, let alone consider passing legislation to stop having teens easily mow folks down with assault rifles because the NRA owns the Republican Party’s elected officials. And yes, it’s that simple.
- And if you want to rightfully talk about money in politics being a problem all around, I’ll agree. Let’s just make sure folks understand that the 2010 Citizens United case that blew the cap off limits on how much money corporations could pump into elections was carried out 5-4 with all the Supreme Court Justices who supported corporations’ right to buy elections being the “conservative” ones (Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, and Alito) appointed by Republican presidents.
- The 4 “liberal” justices dissented (John Paul Stevens was appointed by Gerald Ford but usually voted with liberal justices RBG, Breyer, and Sotomayor, who were appointed by Clinton and Obama).
- I get that folks don’t want to talk politics but if you don’t address policies ALONG WITH doing other day to day actions, it’s half measures. There’s a reason this doesn’t happen in peer nations. And it’s not mental illness. So just stop it. We don’t have a monopoly on that.
- Lastly, many smart folks like to straddle the fence in political conversations and say “both sides are the same.” Respectfully, when it comes to policies that drive many of these conflicts, they aren’t.
One side is trying to pass policies to help reduce the number of guns on our streets, especially ones that spray easily and don’t require precision, and the other is deflecting, blocking, and making it easier to have guns to kill people than to vote.
I pray for the families of 14-year-old students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, as well as math teachers Richard Aspinwall and Christina Irimie, along with every person affiliated with the school.
For me, thoughts and prayers do have value beyond mockery.
However, politicians continuing to offer them in response to mass shootings while blocking potential legislative action to protect students and families from gun violence is a mockery and spiritually bankrupt.