Every couple of months these days there is a deadly shooting that captivates the country and sparks the age-old debate on gun control.
I support the Second Amendment as I do the Constitution this country was founded upon. Every American should possess the right to protect themselves. Anybody who thinks taking away our right to bear arms would reduce the amount of gun-related deaths is kidding themselves.
It’s illegal to buy and sell drugs, drive drunk and steal, yet thousands upon thousands do it every day. How would making it illegal to possess a firearm stop people from obtaining them illegally? Well, it wouldn’t.
The only part of the debate that seems logical is raising the age limit for weapons like an AR-15 up from 18. Citizens can’t purchase a handgun until 21 but can buy an assault rifle as a teenager? That’s just common sense to make a change there.
However, what needs to be at the forefront of these discussions is mental illness, and we shouldn’t wait for people to show repeated signs of being mentally unstable to seek professional help.
What I think should be done is to handle mental illness testing just like vision and hearing screenings in school. According to a study by the Committee on Practice and Ambulatory Medicine, “Periodic vision and hearing screening is recognized as an integral part of preventive pediatric health care. Adverse effects on educational and social development are obvious consequences of poor visual and hearing acuity.”
Mental illness isn’t so different as it can have drastic negative influences on a child’s educational and social development.
A study done by BioMed Central Health Services Research states: “While the prevention of cardiovascular disease and cancers are common in the policy dialogue and in service delivery, the prevention of mental illness remains a neglected area. There is accumulating evidence that mental illness is at least partially preventable, with increasing recognition that its antecedents are often found in infancy, childhood, adolescence and youth, creating multiple opportunities into young adulthood for prevention.”
So why aren’t there mental health professionals traveling from school to school conducting tests for signs of mental illness like there is for vision and hearing? It doesn’t make a lick of sense to me.
I have friends who have battled mental illnesses who have had their lives drastically turned around when correctly diagnosed and treated. Their stories are just like that kid in the back of the class who never knows what’s going on because he can’t read what is on the chalkboard or he can’t hear what the teacher is saying. That kid has no idea his entire world could be so much different with the proper attention, and he gets it once vision and hearing professionals arrive at his school for screenings.
But why is the kid with a developing mental illness neglected?
Maybe it’s only a matter of time before more specialists trickle into the field and start making the rounds in their area schools. Maybe it’s a matter of resources. But what are resources compared to the lives of 17 Floridians whose only misstep was attending school on Valentine’s Day?
There are so many high-profile cases and where the consensus becomes “he’s just crazy.” But there’s a chance that craziness can be spotted at an early age, treated and managed for the rest of his life. It’s time for mental illness to step into the forefront, not gun control.
Joshua Campbell is sports editor of The Columbian-Progress. Reach him at joshuacampbell@columbianprogress.com.
