On the March 26 episode of Morning Joe, guest host Nicolle Wallace dusted off the issue of mental health reform, which has long been ignored by liberals in the media as regards the national debate over gun control. Wallace cited NY Times columnist David Brooks’ March 25 piece on gun violence. The piece focused on how Americans like to focus on the gun, instead of human nature – and how the “acquisition” of the weapon is subject to the least influence from policymakers in Washington.
It seemed that for a short while, the panel was in agreement that we don’t talk enough about the evil inherent in Adam Lanza's deadly mass shooting in Newtown Then again, Lanza was mentally ill, which brought things back to Wallace’s point (emphasis mine):
NICOlLE WALLACE: But the other piece that doesn’t get enough attention is the mental health piece. I mean, we live in a country where there is absolutely nothing that a family can do for a mentally ill family member until – and unless – they commit a violent crime. There’s no one to call. There’s nothing to do. There’s no one to help you. Until – and unless – you call the police and have them taken away because they’ve already committed a crime. You can’t even call the police because you think they might commit a crime. They’ve to have already become violent to themself – or to somebody else – and it’s almost always a crime – or violence – taken out on someone else in the family. So, we live in a country where until we have that conversation – until there’s maybe one thing that a family with a mentally ill person in her nest – in their midst – can do. It doesn’t matter what you do to the guns. It doesn’t matter what you do to the movies because they’re people in our population, who are too fragile to have guns. Who are too fragile to consume violent television, and whatnot – until we have that conversation the problem won’t go away.
Given this fact, perhaps the media would’ve been more constructive in their reporting about the abject failure our mental health system is, and not focusing so much on being a lapdog to gun control pushers like New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Vice President Biden, or rant about assault weapons and magazine sizes. In the end, the Holy Grail for anti-gun advocates – the assault weapons ban amendment – will go down in flames, and Congress is doing little to nothing to address the mentally ill people in this country who still don’t have the services needed to prevent them from being a danger to themselves and others.
