my congresswoman was shot today

[lunacycles]

The information is out there, Google is your friend.

Yes. And if you keep googling you will find many studies and articles that show exactly the opposite. One article on the web doesn't say much. I asked the question because while I was attending graduate school we were given loads of evidence to the contrary: guns cause crime much more often than prevent it. The U.S. has the highest rate of violent crime of any country in the first world, that lack of gun control means "x" times as much people die violent deaths in our country. Our lax gun laws mean our guns can and do easily go south of the border to support drug cartels and the heinous crimes they commit... etc etc. Most of this info came to me a decade ago, but as nothing has changed wrt gun control (if anything, access to guns has become even easier), I doubt those stats have changed much. But I honestly don't know and am not interested in proving my point enough to do so in this instance.

Anyway, I agree responsible gun owners exist, but I think too many guns get into the hands of the wrong people as a result of poor regulation and/or enforcement, and it would behoove us all to do whatever we can to change that.

[KnottedYet]

It would behoove us all to vote in ways that assure full mental health care for the most needy.

People with extreme mental illness cannot hold jobs. They can't get insurance through their work. They can't afford to buy it on the open market. And they certainly can't afford to pay cash for their mental health care.

Expecting them to self-diagnose, self-direct, and self-pay is cruel and deeply ignorant.

There is hefty mental illness in every generation of my family, but luckily the family knows and catches the cousins who begin to show signs of schizophrenia or bipolar. One of my cousins is institutionalized right now. If not for the family, where would he be? Where would WE be?

What about those whose parents are also untreated mentally ill, and so no-one catches anyone at all? (Loughner's family sounds like an example)

If Loughner hadn't had a gun handy, he would have used something else. A bottle of Chlorox. A sword. A crossbow. A bomb.

I don't see the weapon as the issue. I see the environment as the issue. Loughner showed clear signs of losing his grip, but nothing existed to catch him before he fell into madness and, surrounded by images of violence, saw violence as the way to go.

Sure, cutting publicly funded mental health care and closing the public institutions in the 1980's saved a ton of money.

But we still have to pay the price.

And it's a lot higher now.