Apparently, the Republican Party wants the mentally ill to have the right to purchase firearms.
While having a clinical mental illness is not always debilitating, at this point in the game, it isn’t the point.
This is the point.
The man doing his ups and downs behind President Trump’s address to Congress has always been a proponent of the mythological link between mental illness and gun violence.
But he, as well as the rest of his party, are just fine with repealing a law that President Obama put into place in order to screen those with mental illnesses more carefully.
Let’s take a closer look: The National Instant Criminal Background Check system was established in 1993 under the Brady Bill. This bill is what mandated federal background checks on firearms purchasers. Okay, fine. That’s a very good thing.
What Obama tacked on is that it was now required that the Social Security Administration submit records to that database of those who fit two requirements: 1) had an officially recorded mental disability, and 2) who had applied for Social Security benefits. This write-in to the bill wasn’t targeting all mentally ill, just those who fit a basic structure as someone who was mentally ill and having problems conducting themselves in regular society.
But, even so, he still wrote in a process that someone could use that fit both of those requirements to appeal the process and purchase a firearm anyway.
Republicans argued this when it was first being passed as unfairly stigmatizing those with mental illnesses and strip them of their Second Amendment Constitutional rights.
Hm…sound like stripping of Constitutional rights sounds familiar.
No matter the side you sit on, here is the point: Pick. A. Side. You don’t get to use mental illness as an excuse for something when it’s convenient for you. These are people’s lives, rights, reputations, and self-confidence on the line. Quit using someone’s imperfections as your temporary battleground so you can bolster your pathetic reputation in the limelight of perverse politics.
It makes you look like you’re nothing but people-pleasers.
And that, too, is a lie.
Nevertheless, watch Trump attempt to “people please” with his flip-flopped stance on gun rights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ri_6zJBssFU
Featured image courtesy of Pixabay/Public Domain.
