The Gun Violence Three-Card Monte

Allow me the opportunity to preface this by saying that politically I have no affiliation. Until America puts a president in front of me that I can support, I simply refuse to vote. Some consider that indecisive or indicative of not standing up for your beliefs, but I can argue the opposite and I'm sure I will another day, on another blog post.

With the attacks in Paris and California further feeding into the media's propaganda on gun control, I find myself like the majority of you, asking where all of this misinformation began. For me it seems that instead of facing the truth, that mass shootings are a direct consequence to deinstitutionalization and maintaining poor mental health outlets for decades, we're doubling down on the fact that guns were used in these crimes. On a side note: I'm not linking deinstitutionalization and terrorism. I only used those examples because they're in the recent news.

Recently the Daily News has been feeding into this idea that if you don't agree with gun control, you must not think there's any problem in our country. Repeatedly I hear Obama or the media speaking out against the tools used in these horrific situations, but never are they focused on the people themselves and how we can better serve those individuals in order to make sure we don't get to these scenarios. ABC News has even announced that Obama will make an announcement about what to do with gun control this Tuesday.

Meanwhile, this seems to be an obvious game of Three-Card Monte. Focus firmly on what the people are using to murder innocent civilians and not what the actual ailment is. When President Ronald Reagan signed in the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act that shut down 30% of mental health spending in 1981, there were an estimated 650 facilities serving 1.9 million patients per year. 

Studies suggested in 2004 that there were 320,000 people in prison with mental illness and 100,000 psychiatric beds in America. Meaning that there were roughly three times the amount of mentally ill in prison than in hospitals.. not accounting for those that were free or on the streets. In 2010 there were 43,000 psychiatric beds in the US. Which is about 14 beds for every 100,000 people. However, while mass shootings continued to occur in the news, between 2009 and 2012 we cut funding by another $5 billion and eliminated 4,500 more beds.. or roughly 10% of what we had. 

So literally we're speaking up against mental health issues and gun control publicly, and while more horrific mass shootings are happening in the news on a semi-regular basis, we're refocusing on taking away guns all while simultaneously eliminating sanctuaries to benefit those of us with mental illness. That is the definition of a sleight of hand -- where the magician makes you look at the distraction while he's pulling the rug out from under you with his other hand.

The problem isn't in these people, it's in our treatment of these people. Formerly we looked to better them or make them one of us. We wanted to be on the cutting edge of neurosciences and do whatever we could to fix mental health issues. Now our mental health system is essentially a fast food pharmacy. Take your pill and hit the streets. See ya when you need a refill. The error in that is, when they start to feel better, they start thinking they don't need the medication anymore. Instead of realizing the medication is what makes them better, a lot of times they assume the medication completed it's job. However, if they go to the hospital, we don't have the beds to treat them.. so we give them their pill and the cycle restarts. Just patch the problem and ignore it.