Under Construction - MHWA Retreat

My major issue is that public policy tends to go overboard. One example is mandatory sentencing for crimes; this ties a judge's hands when it comes to weighing individual circumstances. Another example is marijuana. When it was outlawed, the policy makers outlawed all forms of marijuana when in reality a very few varieties (perhaps one or two) are of any use as a recreational drug. Hemp is now making a comeback for use in fabrics, soaps, and other things, but that took a long time.

My concern with mental health is there are plenty of mental disorders that don't necessarily make a person a danger to themselves or others. I suffer from a couple of anxiety disorders, and related to it, some depression. This doesn't make me suicidal or homicidal. When someone makes a blanket statement about keeping guns away from the mentally ill, it shows a lack of understanding of just how broad the definition of mental illness can be.

I haven't been hunting in years, but occasionally I like to go to a gun range and shoot at paper targets or go to a range and do some skeet shooting. That's really the only interest I have in guns at this point, but I still don't like to be lumped together with people who have totally lost it.

Do I think that only mentally ill people do mass shootings? Certainly not. There are abusive people who do not have a diagnosis. There are radicalized people who think they are justified in "breaking a few eggs to make an omelette." There are politically motivated people (not necessarily in the US) who serve warlords and have no problems wiping out whole villages. There are genocidal people who blame the world's ills on people based on race, nationality, or whatever characteristic irks them. Then there are people who are thugs, for one reason or another, and have little regard for human life. I don't think just focusing on the mentally ill is going to make a significant dent in the violence problem -- any kind of violence (not just guns).

On a case-by-case basis, if a person is deemed a threat to society, measures should be taken to protect society from that person, but one size doesn't fit all when it comes to and umbrella as large as "mental illness."