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Showing Original Post only (View all)I have a brother with schizophrenia and I am sick of the bigotry against the mentally ill [View all]
The vast majority of mentally ill people are not violent, and the vast majority of violent crimes are committed by people who are not mentally ill. Yet it seems that every time a mentally ill person does commit an act of violence people like my brother take the blame even though they would never do something like what the shooter did.
It seems that people are desperate to find something to blame besides guns and so they scapegoat a minority group and ask us what to do with that minority group. I have heard many people call for the mentally ill to be locked up even when they have not committed a single crime, it is disgusting to call for people who have done nothing wrong to be locked away because of their disability.
The problem is not mental illness, the problem is that there are a lot of people who are totally incompetent to own guns that are being allowed to purchase them and most of these people are not mentally ill. I have seen far too many people who seem to think it is acceptable to use guns to solve their problems and insist that people like George Zimmerman should be allowed to follow people in the dark and then shoot them, I see far too many people defending those who leave their guns unsecured before a child grabs them, I see far too many people who believe they are allowed to shoot someone over minor property crimes and call it self defense, most of these people are not mentally ill but they are people who should not own deadly weapons.
It is these very people whose tough talk about how they need to be heavily armed that are the very first to attack the mentally ill when a mass shooting happens. I don't ever hear these people advocate to help people with mental illness to get access to health care or social services, it is always about blaming the mental illness and then going back to advocating for their guns. If the NRA really cared about helping the mentally ill they would be lobbying to ensure that the mentally ill are able to get free access to health care, instead they just cast the blame on the mentally ill and then leave them to fend for themselves. They do work to ensure that their members have the right to shoot any mentally ill person who gets confused and walks onto their property even if that person was not threatening violence in any way however.
Those who are honestly working to help the mentally ill and advocating for better health care and social services, I salute them. Those who use the mentally ill as scapegoats to turn attention away from the problem of gun violence on the other hand are bigots, and as the brother of a person with a severe mental illness I would like to kindly ask the bigots who blame people like my brother to fuck off.