Republicans often claim "guns aren't the problem, it's mental illness." Yes, mental health is a major problem in America — which is why we should fund programs to address it. But all countries deal with mental illness. Yet they don't suffer from the scourge of gun violence like the U.S.
www.changetheref.org
Hollywood has sensationalized gun violence for how long now? They should try showing a mother desperately trying to stop her son's intestines from falling out after being hit by a shot gun blast. Or a child screaming in terror looking at its father's head half blown off. That's entertainment!
In other countries, a person with a mental health issue gets medication and therapy. In the US, a person with a mental health issue gets a gun.
We had a mentally ill mass shooter in Denmark. Luckily he wasn't able to get hold of an AR15 with 30 round magazines, so when he started shooting up a busy shopping mall with an olympic rifle, "only" 3 were killed instead of the 10-20-30 people he could have killed with an AR15.
Leave it to US capitalism to complain about health issues while declining to provide healthcare.
Other countries have universal healthcare
I’ll bite. Mental health programs are a key part of universal health care. In other words, your health problem is mental and is covered by a government program, mine is diabetes and that should be covered too. Health problems are a lottery, so all should be covered.
But they are NOT.
And why ist a good thing Charles can't spew hateful rhetoric anymore
If guns aren’t the problem, then why are you giving the problem guns?
When it comes to mental illness, we need to start with the Asshole in Chief and his enablers. That’s why they refuse to fund mental healthcare, they’ed have to quit drinking and drugging and spend all of their time in therapy.
The attitude is indeed a factor. But it seems just to get down the numbers would help - a lot.
In America, people have a risk of being murdered that is 10 times that of my own country, the Netherlands. If guns aren’t the problem, are Americans 10 times crazier than us?
The irony: His dad works for Public Safety, and his mom is a Social Worker.
Because most countries don’t allow guns sold freely to the citizenry!
It's an easy scapegoat. I know I'm a mental health professional.
Mental illness in America has been a crisis that has been ignored for DECADES.
Just like common sense restrictions. Ugh.
It's been outright demonized by a large portion of religious and anti-science people. 💔
It definitely drives the s*icide rate up by a few hundred percent!
The USA does seem to have more violent mentally ill people, though. We also have more per capita knife violence than other nations even when guns are so easy to access.
Said 1000 times over to a vacuum! I wish it were so simple to just speak logically but if that were the case my engineer ass would have been the coolest kid in school instead of the punching bag.
MAGA is a form of mental illness
Faith is a vector of insanity. Faith is conspiracy theories. Faith is believing preposterous ideas based only on authority. Faith is magical thinking. Faith degrades reason and logic. Faith destroys contact with reality. Faith results in violence. Faith is the original sin.
youtu.be/JpoE2LV1ap8?...
@papst-ny.bsky.social
I don't want gun control until the military restores the Constitution removing this regime, and the 83 IDF🇮🇱 military bases across 🇺🇸 have been destroyed.
It's the guns!!
It also suggests that there would be as many mentally ill liberals carrying out these shootings as there are mentally ill alt-right believers. But the numbers are scewed far to the right.
Given that the killer is a young straight White male, I expect Trump to be rounding them all up NOW! They’re a clear and present danger to America!
Nope, They are sweeping it under the rug like every other mass shooting by the same demographic.
It's not just guns or people, it seems to always be Republicans With Guns. I'm beginning to think they keep the guns just so they can kill. Hard to argue against that given the facts.
They don't have a stupid & evil leader. We do. His impulses and pleasure is all he's interested in knowing. He likes women, grifting, outright thievery, lying, and most of all - EPSTEIN EPSTEIN EPSTEIN - the rest of it is distraction for him. He is not any deeper or more intelligent than that.
He is a pedophile, admit it.
This is a "nazis are fighting amongst each other for influence" problem, not even a gun problem tbh
It’s the combination of mental illness and guns! It’s deadly!
All this hand wringing is futile The best hope for the Àmérican ppl is a national divorce If u r unable&unwilling to do the rational thing here 200 yrs after a civil war&finally accept u r 2 very different cultures&societies, then continue yr self inflicted national dissolution&self- destruction
Robert, this shooting was appears to be altogether differant on the face of it. The term 'hate begets hate' is a truism. What we despise in others- racism, sexism, lack of respect for all Civil Rights can became a poison. The 'we become what we detest the most.' Not in the ideals but in raw hate.
They're all talk about every issue
Doesn't matter what your state of mind may be. If you can't get hold of a gun, you can't shoot anyone. So, the problem is not that mentally ill people exist. It's that mentally ill people are able to arm themselves with guns.
Exactly!
Because they don’t let lunies have guns
Funny how pointing out potential solutions for mental illness crises (like having emergency mental health specialists take 911 calls) suddenly are too expensive, yet we can afford to send JD Vance on yet another overpriced vacation.
In other countries, if you have an issue with someone you'd either have words with them or ignore them, in the USA you grab a gun.
Children brainwashed indoctrinated to believe in gods grow up to be mentally ill. Make exposing children to religions illegal until they are 18, like alcohol, since both destroy young minds.
America is unique in that the mental illness of loving and worshipping guns is an accepted phenomenon.
If you look at violent acts per capita worldwide, the U.S. isn’t uniquely violent as a people — violence is a human constant, and it takes many forms across cultures. What’s different here is the tool of choice. We have an outsized number of guns, so naturally gun deaths dominate the stats.
The data actually supports the point I’m making. The U.S. isn’t uniquely violent in every category — in fact, non-lethal crimes like assault or robbery can be as high or higher elsewhere (Canada sometimes reports higher overall violent crime rates).
What makes the U.S. look “uniquely violent” is the lethality of those acts. The same fights, disputes, or criminal acts that would end in bruises elsewhere often end in fatalities here because a gun is involved.
That means the root problem is why so many people are reaching for violence in the first place. Guns raise the body count, but they don’t create the conditions that make people violent — poverty, inequality, untreated trauma, social breakdown, and lack of trust in institutions do.
So yes, we need to be honest: regulating guns might change the tool, but it won’t fix the pipeline of violence unless we deal with those underlying drivers.
As you just stated, it would reduce the lethality.
But not the violence.
But focusing only on the tool misses the bigger driver. Poverty, inequality, untreated trauma, and social fragmentation fuel violence everywhere. Countries that reduce those conditions see less bloodshed — regardless of whether it’s knives, machetes, or guns being used.
Valid points. But - Perhaps access to and glorification of guns is the American equivalent to bread and circuses. Perhaps it’s easier to give people easy access to gun violence as a panacea to “solve” their problems of poverty, inequality, untreated trauma and social fragmentation.
Regulating guns without addressing the root causes is like mopping up water while ignoring the broken pipe. The violence will just find another outlet.
I have dealt with "mental illness" all my life. Depression and anxiety mostly. I'm also a conscientious objector. I don't believe guns solve problems. There HAVE been brief moments in my life where a gun in my possession would have become a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Guns suck. 🔫
Believing a gun keeps you safe or will solve your other problems is a sign of mental illness. repeal2a.net
Giving guns to everyone, including the mentally ill, is the problem. Also, America's innate paranoia.
Having been a mental health nurse half of my nursing career. There seemed to be funding in the 80's but by the mid 90's it was sparse. After several mass shootings in the 21st century there were rumblings of renewed funding but it never trickled down to the institutions.
Until the U.S. fixes their gun epidemic and their healthcare crisis, not a place I want anything to do with.
We’ve lost our way
We also have a culture problem when it comes to guns and how they are presented, especially to children.
Now, they are blaming antidepressants to answer for a shooting. WTF get the mentally ill medical care and put in place background check when buying guns. It works for every other countries why wouldn't it in yours 🤔🙄
Republicans can claim whatever BS they want. The issue is guns, and the issue has been solved in basically every country that cares to, by removing access to guns
Whenever they say that, I ask “Then why allow guns to be given to people with mental illness?!” They make them so easily accessible because they don’t want to lose their money from the NRA
Perhaps if they didn't constantly cut funds for mental health initiatives we'd see fewer casualties! Wishful thinking 🤔
Potus mental health 🫤
. Mental illness or sane, a gun is an EASY TOOL to use for murder. Take that away and it's harder to kill. Guns are made for one thing, and one thing only, . . . to kill.
. PROOF. NO 2nd amendment . . . Australia, in 1996, buys back 650,000 guns, shootings dropped. www.vox.com/2015/8/27/92...
youtu.be/4dVcaWyNN-Q?...
. WE are the only country with a 2nd amendment that legalizes guns. Other countries suppress guns.
MAGA is a mental illness.
We need a DSM code for MAGA.
And the GOP has gone mental !!!
but why is always right wing extremists with the guns
Both sides are correct, so let's do a little of both solutions. Let's get some sensible gun laws, and fund mental healthcare!
So true
My health insurance covers mental health stuff 100%. Guess how far it is to the nearest therapist? 45 min to the closest, but she isn't taking new patients. It's over an hour to the next closest.
Reagan closed all the mental asylums back in the 80s. The lack of seriousness that Americans take with regard to mental illness is directly attributable to Reagan. V
Other countries are addressing social media & how tech giants manipulate algorithms too. U.S. is stuck in 20C.
Take for example your northern neighbors - we in 🇨🇦 have gun laws
To quote the greatest American humanist: "a few gun deaths a year is unfortunate but worth it, because of our #God given right to own AK-47s" -Charlie Kirk
bsky.app/profile/slap...
This is Amerikkkas malignancy racism Nazism and hate is not mental illness and white people should stop saying that shit. bsky.app/profile/iwil...
They don’t have republicans
It's not the GUNS!! I'm sure he could have been killed by a knife at that distance, too...!
Why not try as an experiment, cracking down on guns, instead of pretending to know the connection between guns and violence? To me and many of those commenting here, the connection is obvious. Of course, this will never happen. Why bother experimenting when the truth is so OBVIOUS. Idiots.
It's possible that both guns and mental illness are the problem: the mentally ill can easily obtain guns.
Mental health would improve if material conditions improved. Overall everything is connected.
Guns are a lot easier to control than fentanyl, and you don't have to tariff-tax your entrepreneurs, drive the cost of living up, and call in the National Guard costing millions. And mental illness is certainly the problem in this decision-making scenario!
It is because mental illness exists that widespread gun ownership should be tightly controlled.
If there wasn’t a fetishized gun culture & easy access to guns, mentally ill people wouldn’t be able to carry out such extreme murders so frequently.
Studies have shown that most shooters do not have an underlying mental health problem. I pretty much wrote one student's Law Enforcement and Criminology term paper. Other people offering "typing services" jusr typed what they were handed. I brought it up to college level, discussing it with them.
Maybe start with gun control for people struggling with their mental health.
TRUMP MAGA HAS EXPOSED AMERICA’S MENTAL HEALTH CRISES
The Republicans also say children should be raised by a married hetero gun-totin' couple that takes the kids to church every Sunday. Look how that turned out.
Japan holds on to wale hunt, Germany to the combustion car, USA to ubiquitous guns
Robert, Skip to the end, read the last bit. Then go back, read the whole thing. Then review Patel's condolences, and comment on how dangerous "accidental" coded messaging is to a certain very messed up group of people. blogs.shu.edu/thediplomati...
The most mentally ill people in America are running our government. And they were elected by other mentally ill people. Our politics is poisoning everyone and making them crazy. The only sane people in America suffer from depression knowing they have to wake up and live in this shit every day.
Mental illness is a small part of the problem. A gun is the whole problem.
The problem is once again lack of access to affordable healthcare.
If they can’t get guns they can’t shoot and kill people with the guns. Feels pretty simple.
Call me crazy but wouldn’t getting cryptic engravings on your bullets raise some sort of a red flag somewhere?
Jim Jeffries covered this pretty well… youtu.be/0rR9IaXH1M0
This is stating the bleeding obvious. Yet half of Americans can’t understand it.
So why are they against treating mental illness then?
❓
nice little equation that some Northern EU countries provide... Low access to guns + quality mental health care equals to less than 10 deaths per 100k.
Bottom line...the problem isn't the guns on their own, it's America's culture of love and admiration of guns that's the issue. Gun culture teaches people who don't have a sense of empowerment or ability to fight or have a voice in other ways that having guns makes them powerful and commands respect.
Other countries passed gun laws after mass shootings and saw a huge decline. I feel like we live in a some weird universe in America where facts don't matter.
It’s parents worshipping guns and teaching their children to worship guns.
He's a Mormon? ROTFLMAO!
Right?!
When did mormans decide to have “bases”. These are preppers of the worst type.
It’s a military base.
When did they let civilians in civilian clothing carry around rifles?
Military bases have family days and open house events. The weapons are unloaded and safetied. They can’t fire. Just like you can sit in the cockpit of a C-17 at an airshow, and it won’t suddenly fire up and take off.
I doubt all those photos were not taken at a military base. All those kids with rifles? Give a brake.
Maybe you should go back to X
Please stop. Tyler is STILL a conservative Mormon. And we still don't know if he's involved in the shooting. Remember the Fourth Amendment?
Some day a courageous parent will allow the public to see the photos of their slain child. Only then will the shock and disgust of the act traumatize enough people to demand action. The split second image of Kirk being shot is just a small taste of what will eventually turn the tide! Pathetic!
"militia,"
But it’s Republicans who are the problem, isn’t it? Can’t address any other problem with them in power.
And it can be both, right? Nobody says it’s one or the other.
The mental illness of cultism. There was a PARADE of 10-15 20 yr old cars plastered with MAGA/Trump stickers and more flags that could be counted, in my small town. I thought it was for 9/11 until I saw they had spray painted THIS IS FOR CHARLIE on the sides of their cars 😳
How many times do we have to repeat this? We say this after almost every mass shooting and yet so many don't understand the logic.
And the GOP doesn't want to spend a dime on 'mental health.'
Yes, guns don't kill people, but very many people suffer mental health issues at different stages in their lives. Many others get uncontrollably angry on occasions, or become inflamed by strident and divisive rhetoric and ideology. Guns simply shouldn't be so readily available.
Conservatism in our politicians is a different kind of mental illness categorised as sociopathy. They do not represent anyone but themselves.
Why is it that when the shooter is white it's a mental health issue but if it's a person of color it's an act of terrorism?
Trump could help solve high crime rates by providing MORE funding for state and local law enforcement AND mental health services rather than calling in the National Guard - to ultimately pick up trash, do some gardening, and chase homeless people around town. Trump is certainly funding ICE bigly!!
But we’re letting the “problem” have easy access to firearms
It is also notable that republicans have consistently cut funding for mental health services...
This is such a ridiculous whatabout argument! If there's a mental health epidemic in the USA, IT'S PROBABLY NOT A GREAT IDEA TO HAVE GUNS SO FREELY FUCKING AVAILABLE THEN IS IT!!!
The reason the maga party (they're not even Republicans anymore) promotes the mental illness angle is because they intend to define any disagreement with Project 2025 policies as mental illness, so they can disarm their political opponents.
Lest we forget: One of the very first things Trump did was roll back the law restricting the sale of guns to the violently mentally ill.
Yes it’s the proliferation of guns stupid.
the gigantic cuts to public mental health over the last several decades is a partial cause too!
Another bullet casing read “if your hand is smaller than your face you’re in the Epstein files”
🤭
Correct! Baffles me that they think the answer is more guns and armed guards outside schools. Hardly call that a peaceful nation.
Only someone with a mental illness would want or own a gun. Any gun.
Other countries also do not cast their mentally ill into the streets like we do here.
And it was the GOP under Reagan that killed any help for the mental illness issues in the US. He shut down all of the insane asylum and cut the funding. So again it is the GOP to blame and yet they are again playing the victim. Wake up America. Grow a brain cell!
GOP is right, its mental illness. Mental illness in the Capitol, from a corrupt gang of pedophile protectors that call themselves Republican. Hallelujah !
We have a hate issue in this country. We need universal background checks and restrictions on those that should not have access to weapons including firearms. We need to fund mental health services fully, not cut their budgets every year by 10-20%. You know who doesn’t shoot people? Happy people.
If mental health is the issue, why isn’t there a mandatory psychiatric evaluation for gun ownership?
The mental illness is the American obsession with guns.
The mental illness is Americans keep voting for the pro-gun death party, again and again, even through the same pro-gun death party is also bad with the economy, always makes things worse for everyone except the super rich.
The other countries have universal health care and didn’t dump all their mental health care patients in the streets 50 years though either… just to be fair.
Maybe if there were less guns than people in this country?
Yeah, like nobody has more mental illness than the president
Most other Western countries with high gun ownership per capita don't have our issues either... It's mostly mental health and economic stress causing people to snap... We don't blame cars for driving drunk...Pencils for misspelling words...Or spoons for making people fat...
Because we largely don’t allow people to have guns unless they farm or hunt. It’s, you know, what I would recommend. The mental health thing. 13 weeks of talking to a counsellor and they won’t if your problems are too deep-seated.
"The problem is mental illness"--so how about background checks and waiting periods. No? Not even those? Everything out of the Greedy Old Pedophiles is a lie.
Imagine asking a citizenry to disarm while a fascist rapist is running the nation, attacking opposing party States, disappearing people to foreign camps, & ignoring the Rule of Law as we know it. Sounds like a fruitloop. Or are there really that many heads in the sand out there? Time for change.
That’s because the gun manufacturers and the people who invest in them benefit from any purchase of guns, whether they are competent or not. Whether they are going to use those guns for abuse or not. More violence means more guns get bought.
Exactly. Other countries also have strong gun laws. We can’t even mention gun restrictions here.
5% of violent crimes have anything to do with mental illness. People with mental illness are more likely to be victims of violent crimes. Tacking mental illness for the reason for all this is only making it more difficult for those with mental illness, as it adds to the stigma that we're dangerous.
They gave gun control laws. What they don’t have are gun lobbyists who pay their politicians millions of dollars to keep gun control out of the government.
Because of the, ya know, easy availability is guns. More guns in America than men, women, and children, including every undocumented person you can find.
They blame mental illness then they vote to defund programs to help people with mental illness. They don’t want to fix any problems except how to make more money for themselves and their largest campaign contributors.
It's all the guns
The mentally ill have easy access to GUNS, that’s the problem. Solution: gun laws most countries apply.
Exactly this.
It's the guns.
I had this conversation with a family member recently. He said it was due to mental health, not guns and I was like great, let's dump funding into mental health initiatives. After a long talk I realized that "mental health" to him means everyone being "Nice Christians who are right with God".
I have been saying this forever. As I was told years ago. “ We have a mental health system in this country. It called the prison system.”
Thoughts don't kill ... unless you're an evil mutant.
Rosalynn Carter when Jimmy was in office promoted mental health care and got a bill passed for it. Reagan rescinded it because Republicans believe mental health care was not necessary. Now look. Who was right?
Also, maybe don't give the mentally ill unfettered access to military-grade weapons and large capacity magazines.
Appreciate i am an outsider but why does anyone other than armed forces need access to military weapons
Speaking as someone with #CPTSD, i made the conscience decision not to purchase a firearm. I fear I might panic and make an error in judgement. So, knowing the symptoms of my mental illness, which include severe anxiety and panic attacks, I choose to operate with an abundance of caution.
The other countries don't sell politicians to gun makers.
If mental illness is the reason so many people get shot (nearly 41,000 in 2024), then stop giving people with mental issues access to guns. 🤷♂️ But I think the real mental illness is within Congress: it’s full of people that allow themselves to be bought by the NRA.
Wasn't it Ronald Reagan who shut down all of the mental hospitals in America?
MALE MAGA WACKO'S with mental illness called trump syndrome seems to be the problem.
Mental illness seems to be running rampant in white maga males. Don't drink the kool-aid.
Except yes they do. If u actually take time 2 scour international news. I'm called a liberal leftist, like some kind of building addition. I support my 2nd amendment. If we give up our guns now, we have no way forward when both the 2026 midterms & 2028 general elections go horribly wrong.
Unfortunately the fetishization of guns *is* a key part of the mental illness. And when Repubs say that the problem is mental illness, but are actively doing everything they can to worsen people's mental health, you've got to say they aren't serious about addressing the problem.
The same people who decry mental illness as the sole cause of gun violence are the same ones who defund treatments for said illness, refuse to make therapy affordable, and even stigmatize it.
And let's answer this question: If the U.S. has a major mental health problem, why would it allow unfettered access to firearms of all kinds?
Pointing to mental illness as the sole culprit ignores the uniquely permissive gun laws in the U.S. Other countries manage mental health without the same level of lethal consequences.
Mental illness plus access to guns = deaths. Do the math..
Systemic issue. Lack of resources, opportunity, education. Capitalism is at the root of every problem we have now.
That’s true. Australia here. We don’t. 🇺🇸 scares us.
Exactly! Canada 🇨🇦 has strict gun rules and I was NEVER afraid to send my children to school, nor did they have to do drills for shooters or worry about getting shot at school. I have no idea how parents and children deal with this daily stress. How utterly outrageous it is and nothing is ever done😡
I had to do a drill once in school.. for tornadoes. It’s like the US is a different world.
That's because we largely stopped treating mental illness back in the '80s because it was easier to just lock them up. Also it fed the private prison industry
That IS the mental health program of this country. They don’t get help there either.
My voices all agree.
Wasn’t one of the felon wannabe dictator’s first EOs to reverse the rule to prohibit gun ownership by someone with documented mental health issues?
It _is_ the mental illness... of congress and NRA lobbyist!!!!!!!!
So idiotic : putting guns into the hands of those that are mentally ill with violent tendencies & struggle with reality is recipe for disaster.
No, we dealt with guns by banning them. Guns banned in UK in 1997.
Having so much mental illness in our country is the absolute best argument for gun control.
And if super genius RFK Jr has his way with SSRI’s we’re going to have a much bigger problem with mental illness in the country.
Absofrickinlutely!
If only🥺
Did you hear Trump state that he "doesn't care if the country comes together or not"? That's who we have as our president.
Sadly yes, and this is one time he was telling the truth.
A lot of homeless people are on som mental illness spectrum. Instead of puting them in care you let them cure them self on the street. Cruel
Guns and mental illness are a toxic combination. The only way to end the domestic slaughter is to remove one of the components.
Cowboy Culture. 98% of mass shooters are male. Gee, do you think it could have something to do with masculinity? Scratching my head. 🤷🏻♀️ The overwhelming majority of mass shooters are white, though black Americans suffer from gun violence disproportionately.
Don't even have to look very far. Just compare to Canada, for example, right next door.
Thank you for saying this!!!!
If mental health weren't so stigmatized. If mental health was more easily accessible and affordable. If we had universal comprehensive single payer healthcare that included mental, optical, and dental. ... the ruling class wouldn't have nearly as many levers to control us with.
If mentally ill people are the problem, then why make it easy for them to get guns? I keep getting baffled over US gun 'logic'.
The domination of the many by the few is mental illness. Why else is America so fucked up?
Gop is the mental illness
*And they don’t want to fund mental healthcare either
This line of thinking is EXACTLY WHY I’ve laid blame to the pens and pencils I’ve used in failing my exams over the years. 🤔
Other countries also have gun control And DO NOT HAVE THE NRA buying presidents.
“… it’s not ‘the language’ that causes the violence! It’s the Second Amendment! Anybody can get a gun and kill anyone. Duh. Time to REINTERPRET or REWRITE the 2nd Amendment… stop looking for causes or blame: 236 years since ratification, guns have changed a bit, so should the Second…”
Guns are merely an instrumentality. They do not supply themselves with bullets, they do not point themselves at targets, they do not pull their own triggers. We must not allow the NRA to frame this discussion. We must instead address the question of why people need to use guns against one another.
Oh, I see! mental illness is alive only in America? The rest of the world countries never heard of it? Right? Or maybe the other countries don’t worship the Gun!
Gun violence can also cause mental illness, so it creates a pervasive cycle if not interrupted. It's impt to note that students are unable to learn in unsafe environments.
We need to replace the common term "gun violence" it normalizes these murderers. I'm open to ideas...
