Is the real problem Guns-Drugs or Mental Illness?
If you’re a regular reader of the Gem State you know how we have been fighting to get the RINOs out of our state government with only minimal success although this last primary did show us that there is still hope for the future. It is not only here in Idaho that RINOs have been a serious problem as they are scattered throughout the Republican Party which is why I have reservations about what the republican party stands for any more. When you look at the 15 Republican senators who voted for the gun bill otherwise known as the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act it shouldn’t shock anyone who they were.
What is shocking is the inclusion of “Incentives for states to pass ‘red flag’ laws that allow guns to be temporarily confiscated from people deemed by a judge to be too dangerous to possess them.” Which means confiscation without due process. This is very egregious for gun owners and will do nothing to make the public or our children safer from mass shooters. Of these 15 RINOs four are retiring this year and the other nine need to be retired in the general election as they are a worthless and you can be sure they will betray us again.
You can find out who these RINOs are here: https://www.deseret.com/2022/6/23/23181102/senate-gun-bill-2022-which-republicans-voted-for-bipartisan-safer-communities-act
We already have enough gun laws on the books to choke a horse and this bill does nothing to address the real cause of these mass shootings that keep taking place. If anyone thinks that enhanced background checks for prospective gun buyers ages 18 to 21, and requiring that juvenile records, including mental health records from age 16, be vetted for potentially disqualifying material they are whistling past the grave yard. Antidepressants are the real prescription for mass shootings. In too many of these instances we find these shooting linked to a shooter with a history of using SSRI prescription drugs. Before the late nineteen eighties, mass shootings and acts of senseless violence were relatively unheard of. It’s interesting to note that it was around the end of the eighties that Prozac the most well-known SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) antidepressant came on the market. Prozac was followed by a series of newer antidepressants and it was not long after that mass shootings and other violent incidents started to be reported.
The most common denominator for most of these incidents was that the shooters were on antidepressants or withdrawing from them. This is not about one or two isolated incidents, so the question is, during the past thirty years is the use of antidepressants here a coincidence or a causation of this violent behavior. I believe that with all of these mass shootings there is more than a coincidence at play and that these drugs are part and parcel of the causation. https://www.cchrflorida.org/antidepressants-are-a-prescription-for-mass-shootings/
Psychiatrists generally will tell you that these people were mentally ill and were not treated in time; however, there are those psychiatrists who say that depression rarely leads to violence and that it’s only since the SSRI’s came on the market that such mass shootings have taken place. If the drug companies are responsible for these problems why hasn’t anyone accused them of being the reason for these horrible crimes? Well think about where most of the money for political campaigns comes from and you have the answer. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you. We don’t have a gun problem in the U.S. we have a mental illness and drug problem and no one seems to want to admit it. They claim that these drugs are safe and effective but obviously they aren’t if you look at their history and the violent behavior attached to their use.
It’s time our political representatives including the RINOs stopped looking at the guns as the problem for all of this violence and started looking for the root of the problem which appears to be mental illness and the drugs used to treat this disease. We need to face the real problem in our society and that is we have too many mentally ill who do not get proper treatment and care. The cost of mental disorders is not cheap by any means but it has been shown that for every dollar spent towards treatment for common mental illnesses, there is a return of four dollars in improved health and productivity.
Idaho has recently ranked as one of the worst states in America for mental health care, coming in at 49 out of 50. According to the National Alliance for Mental Illness 311,000 adults in Idaho have a mental health condition – which is more than 2.5 times the population of Meridian. More than half of these people received no treatment last year. Idaho ranks 5th in suicides with 23.2 per 100,000. https://1035kissfmboise.com/mental-health-care-in-idaho/ That my friends works out to over 400 suicides per. year.
Over the past 2 years we have seen Idaho’s 2 primary hospitals suck up over $100 million in Covid relief funds but what are they doing with all of that money? Have they allocated any of it to the care of the mentally ill? We have over 100,000 Idahoans on Medicaid that that do not qualify so why isn’t the Governor and the Dept. of Health and Welfare fixing this problem and reallocating these misdirected funds to support better mental illness programs? These are good questions but we never seem to get any relevant answers.
“We Get the Government We Deserve”
