“Chains” of Mental Illness, or the “Enslavement” of Gun Control?

17 December 2012

In “You keep saying semi-automatic…,” Ken Wheaton speaks to the mental-health aspect of contemporary American massacres, rather than to the aspect of weapons control.

Writes Mr. Wheaton:

“Me? I find myself not interested in arguing about guns. My mind’s kind of full=up with the sort of person, the sort of brain capable of committing such an act.”

Mr. Wheaton raises what seems to be a point more-important than what sort of guns mass murderers use, and how they get them.
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A compelling issue in Mr. Wheaton’s “gun control” or “mental health” question is the following:

The side of our political divide that is most-averse to controlling weapons is also the side most-averse to implementing a substantive safety net for issues of mental health.
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It also happens to be the side that takes least seriously the ramifications of the “touchy-feely” aspects of contemporary life:

That side’s loudest-expressed attitude toward such issues as “what sort of person” finds reverberation in the attitude that, as long as we have enough guns, we can handle the “sort of brain” that keeps coming into America’s schools and businesses and homes, and opening fire.
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These sorts of persons and brains open up fire, not for criminal gains, but for freedom from whatever chains enslave them.

Meanwhile, those on the “gun control” side see less of a distinction in the different forms of “chains,” whether of mental illness, of bad parenting, or of gun-control laws.
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The point about weapons-ignorance/gun-control versus mental health is sound.

But another good starting point seems to be the way that the different issues seem to align in sets along the opposing sides of our national, political divide.

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

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This essay was originally posted as a comment at:
THE WORD O’ WHEATON