The Sept. 25 edition features a front page photo of my state senator, Republican Camera Bartolotta, with three women who are involved in organizations related to psychiatry and mental illness. I find irony that the occasion which brought them together was National Suicide Awareness Month.
Bartolotta is a friend of the gun manufacturers’ lobby, the National Rifle Association, deriving a 92% positive rating from the organization when she was last re-elected in 2022 (her rating from Ceasefire PA, which is dedicated to stemming gun violence was 0%).
Nearly 43,000 people died from gun injuries in the United States in 2023, 56% of them from firearm suicide. Suicide is the second most prevalent cause of death for individuals between the ages of 10-14 and 25-34.
Thanks in part to pro-gun, NRA-driven legislators like Sen. Bartolotta, and in contravention to what wide swaths of the public would support, Pennsylvania has no red-flag laws, no requirement to report a lost or stolen gun, no universal background check, and an individual who is 18, years away from mature adulthood, years away from being able to legally purchase alcohol or cigarettes, or to enter a casino, can secure a weapon designed to mow down human beings in rapid succession.
The individual the mental health advocates stood with is not devoted to public safety.
Oren Spiegler
Peters