Sandy Hook– 1 Year — Things I’ve Learned.

Most importantly, I’ve changed my view on mental health.  I used to think it was a weakness. I now see it as a disease.  I know I always accepted it as a disease, like when I talked to others, but inside, I thought since I was tough enough to beat it, others could too….  Like lifting weights to build body mass, one could rigor himself out of mental illness.  Boy was I wrong.

So much came out , and particularly in the “Gun Battle” that followed, I saw that regulating guns was not the real issue.  The real issue is helping those who see nothing wrong  with taking other’s lives and then their own…

I used to think the rising trends of mass murders,  came solely because we lost control over who bought guns… To some extent, it still is.  But there was another trend of which I was then ignorant and that was how cutbacks since the Recession was  and still is, ..creating more mentally unstable people…

Our society’s basic overall problems come down to this one single thing:   too-little money.  The self-imposed lack-of-it behind supporting government functions, means those functions are now not there, because no private entity volunteered to step up and take it on… The money needed for these programs is out there, but continues to filter up to the top 1%.

Had we had a healthy, thriving support system to deal with our mentally ill, … other choices may have been made leading up to that shooting..   Had we had the same in Aurora…. that disaster may have been prevented…  Had we had the same in DC, there is a good chance the Navy Yard Shootings would never have happened….

We make choices and those choices have consequences… We consciously chose to cut taxes on the wealthy and by doing so, hasten our government into bankruptcy … I know it was a conscious decision because I was right there eloquently arguing against it… and was over ruled.   Not by a lot, but by enough…  It was the way they saw of making ourselves better… and often when one narrows one’s universe a little smaller, to where those things happening on the outside nolonger matter, one can make a smaller universe indeed appear better… until of course the outside comes crashing in….

As so the problems of one burned-out divorced mother trying to deal with a mentally ill child, crashed in upon the national consciousness in a sickening way. So we’ve learned:

Lesson 1:  Mental illness is a security risk..  Mental illness is a disease.   We need to spend lots of money to cure and contain mental illness from crashing into our lives ever again…   No sliver amount of billionaire’s income is worth the loss of those children at Sandy Hook, ever again.

Secondly.   Unless a shooting takes place over drugs, almost all shootings are caused by those mentally ill.  Husbands, wives, children, killers, non killers, or Floridians  prejudiced against hoodies…  We are learning in just one year, particularly with Gun Fail publications now illuminating all the deaths around the country,  that all shootings probably have mental illness at their root…..

Which practically means, if we could completely eliminate mental illness from our society, we wouldn’t have to regulate guns at all, (except for the drug warriors of course… )

But until we do… we need to keep the guns our society has chosen to make so readily available, out of the hands of those who really don’t have the same values of right or wrong as do the rest of us,  particularly when it is about our lives….

In that regard, we need to hold those of red states accountable and put the blame squarely upon them, for they are the blockage of both directions at this problem… Either they open the now dry channels of dollars to fast flow towards  the treating of mental illness. or they opt to tighten the free flow of guns in order to make sure that only those who are not mentally ill, can legally own them…

There is truth in the saying that criminals  being criminals can always get guns if they want, because criminals aren’t worried about obeying the law….  That is entirely true.

However, the converse is also true, that if you have guns laying all over the street and readily available, more are going to get used than if it is really difficult and expensive to acquire even one…  A lot of legislation designed to tighten up the easy access to guns and gun paraphernalia,  was lobbied down this year…

Often by people a little mentally ill themselves (Wayne LaPierre) who fear the government of the People, for the People, and by the People, more than they fear a bullet escaping out of a gun nozzle headed their way….  Those who have the other fear,  ie, guns over government, need to clarify their argument, button down the rhetoric, and state that at stake, is just keeping guns out of the hands of those mentally ill….

Mental illness is a disease… Curing it should be our first priority, and from just hearing the results of the passing of the US Budget today,  that will never happen until we can get into Congress, only those who agree with those sentiments….  It’s about money. We know where it is kept, and we need more of it now….