We begin today’s roundup with The Washington Post and its editorial on the need for common sense gun laws to end America’s gun violence epidemic:
Mass shootings have become commonplace, and shootings far more so: Guns kill more than 30,000 people every year and injure roughly 80,000 more. Just as there was a last time (an outdoor musical festival a little more than a month ago in Las Vegas) and a this time (a rural Texas church), there will surely be a next time unless national lawmakers come to grips with the problem and take meaningful steps to stem the obscene and unfettered access to weapons of war. [..]
There is no way to prevent all shootings, but steps can be taken to reduce the carnage, as has been proved by sensible and effective gun control in other countries that also must contend with issues of mental health. After every high-profile mass shooting — at a movie theater in Colorado, a college campus in Virginia, a parking lot in Arizona, an elementary school in Connecticut — Congress is beseeched to serve the American public rather than the National Rifle Association. Lawmakers are asked not to prohibit guns but to enact common-sense safeguards: muscular background checks, keeping guns away from domestic abusers, banning weapons designed for battlefields.
So far, Congress has refused. That dereliction is what is truly unimaginable.
Here is David Perry’s analysis at The Nation on the NRA and Republican deflection to mental illness in the wake of such gun massacres:
Within a day of the massacre of men, women, and children in a Texas church, President Donald Trump made three claims. First, he maintained it wasn’t a guns problem. Second, he said the shooter was stopped by someone else with a gun. Third, he blamed mental illness. Together the statements made one thing very clear: There is no amount of violence or sympathetic victims that will ever shame today’s Republican Party to take action on guns. [...]
Stigma is dangerous. When we spread the lie that mental illness leads to perpetrating mass murder, we push people to closet their conditions. Mental health, like all forms of health, requires maintenance and support. Secrecy just leads to vulnerability and self-harm. Even worse, the GOP, led by now-disgraced Representative Tim Murphy (R-PA), has frequently used high-profile incidents of violence to call for forced medication and easing the requirements for involuntary commitment. In other words, the GOP is more than willing to strip away liberties from people with disabilities in order to avoid talking about guns.