On Thursday, a day after another mass shooting resulting in multiple deaths of children and educators at yet another school in our country, the president responded that officials should “tackle the difficult issue of mental health.”

We would like to pause a moment to hold the phrase, “the difficult issue of mental health.” First, to state the obvious: mental health is much more than a political talking point to use every time there is a mass shooting in the United States. The mental health field is much more complex, under-supported and impactful than some politicians might be able to imagine: every day, thousands of mental health care professionals (552,000, as of 2010 — many of them underpaid) work with the vulnerable among us.

Second, we do not view our mentally ill and suffering citizens as innately “evil” or responsible for American gun violence.

“The attempt to turn the question of gun violence into a question of mental health is obscene….Every country contains mentally ill and potentially violent people. Only America arms them,” wrote Adam Gopnik in response to the Florida shooting. Mass shootings are a gun issue. We don’t need lawmakers who will “tackle” mental health. We need lawmakers who will “tackle” the accessibility and availability of guns — and support and sustain mental health care for all who need it.

In the New Republic, Sarah Jones writes: “There’s a McCarthyite impulse here, a drive to identify and scrutinize the deviant so as to purify society. Profiling the ‘off’ and the ‘weird’ won’t reduce the number of mass shootings any more than eliminating their care will. Meanwhile, the grim total of Americans who die at the end of a gun will continue to rise.”

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Read “The Mental Health Scapegoat” in the New Republic

Button from am image by Katie Zhu

Read our post “Moments of Silence” in response to the Las Vegas shooting.