Listen HereBy: Grant Goetcheus
Twitter: @goetcheusg
Email: goetcheusg@Findlay.edu
There will always be anger and hate in the world. That is something that cannot be stopped or changed. That is something people need to understand. The latest mass shooting in Sutherland Springs, Tx. has many people asking, why and how?
With each tragedy, we seek to find the answer to why someone would commit it. The complexities of the human mind are not assisted when the person that has committed these tragedies dies either by their own hand or by another person.
According to DailyNews.com, after the event in Sutherland Springs, President Donald Trump said, “This was a very, based on preliminary reports, a very deranged individual. A lot of problems over a long period of time.” During the joint news conference in Japan on Monday, Nov. 6, Trump also stated, “We have a lot of mental health problems in our country, as do other countries. But this isn’t a guns situation.”
That is something that I completely disagree with. This is totally a gun issue. The gunman used a gun to kill people, that makes it a gun issue. Devin Kelley was the shooter in Texas and according to nbcnews.com he did escape from a mental health facility in 2012. So, he was mentally ill. He obtained a gun legally, and that is where the problem is. Not in the victim’s mind, but in the actions, that were taken or not taken that allowed a man that was mentally ill to buy a gun.
Not everyone that goes out and kills people is mentally ill. Fox News wrote an article about the Las Vegas shooter in connection to mental illness. In it they state, “The fact is the vast majority of those diagnosed with psychiatric disorders do NOT commit violent acts, and only about four percent of the violence in the U.S. can be attributed to those diagnosed with mental illness.”
We as a nation need to come together to put an end to the violence. We need to talk to our representatives and tell them that we need more gun control. I do not mean that all guns should go away. Gun control is a grey topic and there are many levels that need be present to aid in the limiting of the mass shootings that we have in this country.
Mental illness is something that does need attention and the two go hand in hand. However, to say that these mass shootings are only caused by one issue is ignorant and uneducated.
