Just Another Day in Government: "Hogg" Attention, Exploit Children, Ignore Mental Health Crisis

According to CNN, an undeniably left leaning news source, Kennesaw, GA has an ordinance stating, "every head of household residing in the city limits is required to maintain a firearm." CNN also confirms, as recent as 06 March 2018, “Today, Kennesaw, a town of about 33,000 people, has had one murder in the last six years and a violent crime rate of below 2%.” (CNN.com) Now having the weapons in these homes isn’t what keeps the crime down. This law keeps the topic of firearms and firearms safety relevant. This law keeps the thought that there is most likely a defensive firearm close by and in the hands of someone who will use it. Believe it or not, the violent offenders who I have had the opportunity to speak with, nearly always react the same way when I ask them if they are more or less likely to attack or victimize someone that they think might have a gun. The response is usually a confused expression and a chuckle followed by some variant of “Uh, duh. I’m not trying to get myself killed. Of course I’m not trying to confront somebody with a gun.” 

The media publicized response to the horrific event in Parkland has been to vilify the NRA and to restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens to own firearms. Despite one of the most left wing media outlets in operation documenting a strong example of how positive and supportive gun laws actually do contribute to drastically lowering the crime rate. 

In the midst of absolutely horrible and unimaginable grief, pain, and fear, young traumatized crime victims are screaming for real protection and they are mobilized and taken advantage of by a group of people with political views aimed at destroying our constitution and further controlling middle class America. “Anti-gun activists” are recruiting and exploiting the pain and tragedy that swells in this Florida community to push an absolutely ineffective agenda.  

“Angry Student Protester Demand Changes In Gun Laws.”

- nwfdailynews.com

These students certainly have a right to expect safety in their schools and they have the right to express that to the country but these students and their families are being fed inaccurate information. These young, angry, and misinformed people are incredibly vulnerable. Of course, we have self-serving political activists waiting to take advantage of them, and use them, with no real concern for the kid’s wellbeing.

I am also forced to ask why a student who admits to bullying another student and a politician Sheriff who failed miserably to conduct his duty are blaming the NRA. This bully and a failure of local law enforcement contributed far more to the cause of this tragedy but are being rallied around and made into the face of victimization. Just think for a moment, before he shot up a school, Cruz, was someone's son. He was a hurting mentally unhealthy at-risk, innocent boy. Anyone who thinks for a minute that bullying had nothing to do with this is simply refusing to see reality. Introduce yourself to Keaton Jones and just let what he endures sink in. Bullying is a mental health issue for the bully and the bullied.

Let me be clear. No one has yet to propose any law that would have stopped this act of terrorism. Why is that? Because existing laws, policies, and best practices were not adhered to. The local law enforcement, school system, and community resources failed. That is the glaring problem that is always ignored and avoided because it is not a hot-button and divisive issue. The people, the everyday citizens can all agree on that but look how nothing is being done. All the attention has been deflected and channeled into the fight to restrict gun rights from law-abiding citizens. 

What is established is a couple States are stopping law-abiding 18, 19, and 20 year olds from having rights protected by the Constitution. So this may not last if the Supreme Court gets involved. This is especially interesting because of all the student protests using court decisions that uphold children’s rights under the Constitution to justify children walking out of school in protest. Shouldn’t these same laws protect the rights of 18, 19, and 20-year-old citizens?

These laws, as they are, with no real action taken to address the root of the problem, are going to be further proof of how ineffective this approach is. But meanwhile, as the “gun control war” wages on people will still be dying.   

“16-Year-Old was Running for Kansas Governor Seat” –USNEWS.com

In Kansas at least three young adults, who are not old enough to purchase guns in Illinois and Florida are old enough to run for Governor of Kansas. They could sign their own bill saying only individuals between the ages of 16 and 20 can possess guns. That could result in them being the controlling official of a State’s budget, State Police Department, and the Kansas Army National Guard. Including its several armories and Units that include at least one Brigade, a Battalion, and a Division. That is a significant collection of soldiers equipped with actual assault weapons, and military vehicles, hardware, software and other serious resource. Lets not also forget that a large majority of those soldiers are approximately 18 to 20 year old law abiding citizens who society sort of just sacrificed up on the alter of liberalist lies.

The thought of a 16 year old being the Governor of a state, is scary for the same reason that it scares me to have policy-makers bow down to protesting high school students. We have a lazy, self-absorbed legislator problem not a gun problem.

Age is not the issue. Access to guns is not the issue. Early prevention and immediate defensive action are the answers. This article deals with early prevention through mental health initiatives.

Here are the real issues and addressing these issues actually WILL make a difference if they are addressed properly. 

Mental health needs must be identified, met, and treated. Mental health intervention would almost certainly have prevented these last few active shooter events. Tightening restrictions on currently law-abiding gun owners by placing them at risk of being labeled as unfit to posses a firearm if they continue with mental health treatment is going to do three things:

1              Empower black-market gun sales

2              Cause people to elect not to seek psychiatric help for even minor issues.

3              People with anxiety, stress, and depression that can be treated and remain competent will fear seeking help and turn to alternative treatments like self-medication and eventually fall into substance abuse.

“Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting 40 million adults in the United States.” -ADAA Can the police take 2nd amendment freedom away from 40 million citizens for having an anxiety disorder? When you throw “Mental Health” out as a reason to deprive a person of their rights, that is extremely broad. You really don’t have much experience with the law if you think broad sweeping actions are accidental and not done to facilitate exploitation. It is intentionally left that broad and lacks specifics so that it applies to almost any situation and can be used to impact millions of people not just a few. Ladies this should hit as close to home s it gets. “Olney was a teenager when she realized that there seemed to be a link between her period and the extremely dark moods she was experiencing.” –npr.org Let me be clear, I would in no way support something this insane but according to the description “Mental Health”, every woman that currently experiences PMS is afflicted with a “Mental Health Condition” regularly and could qualify as one who could have their right to bear arms suspended until the mental health condition is either cured or runs its natural course. Many women are likely screaming obscenities at me but see for yourself. Sever forms of PMS called PMDD appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the DSM-5. “Psychiatrists have been slow to formally recognize PMDD as a disorder, but that's changed under the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the DSM-5, which lists PMDD as a distinct mental disorder.” –npr.org People who suffer with anxiety, panic attacks, and social anxiety shouldn’t be allowed to own firearms? Soldiers, police officers, nurses, doctors, first responders, rescue workers, emergency managers, teachers, public speakers, crime victims and others that suffer with PTSD related conditions that were caused by their service and sacrifice to protect our rights should lose theirs even though they have done nothing wrong? Why not focus on getting these people resources and assistance to increase their health and quality of life?

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

·     6.8 million adults, or 3.1% of the U.S. population

·     43.2% are receiving treatment.

Women are twice as likely to be affected as men.

Panic Disorder (PD)

·     6 million adults, or 2.7% of the U.S. population.

Women are twice as likely to be affected as men.

Social Anxiety Disorder

·     15 million adults, or 6.8% of the U.S. population.

Equally common among men and women

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

·     7.7 million adults, or 3.5% of the U.S. population.

Women are more likely to be affected than men.

·     Rape is the most likely trigger of PTSD: 65% of men and 45.9% of women who are raped will develop the disorder.

·     Childhood sexual abuse is a strong predictor of lifetime likelihood for developing PTSD.

6.9% of adults in the U.S.—16 million—had at least one major depressive episode in the past year.

Among the 20.2 million adults in the U.S. who experienced a substance abuse disorder, 50.5%—10.2 million adults—had a co-occurring mental illness.

We already have access to these people and a way to communicate and administer services. They are staying in our homeless shelters, state prisons, local jails, and juvenile justice facilities. They are in special education classes.

Legislatures say they care about our children and the laws they are pushing will save our children. If they cared about the children, as much as they care about their party agenda, they would address mental health in schools and that would likely do more to reduce school violence as a whole to include school shootings.

Mental Health Illness:

1. An estimated 26% of homeless adults staying in shelters live with serious mental illness and an estimated 46% live with severe mental illness and/or substance use disorders.
2. Approximately 20% of state prisoners and 21% of local jail prisoners have “a recent history” of a mental health condition.
3. 70% of youth in juvenile justice systems have at least one mental health condition and at least 20% live with a serious mental illness.
4. African Americans and Hispanic Americans each use mental health services at about one-half the rate of Caucasian Americans and Asian Americans at about one-third the rate. 
5. Over one-third (37%) of students with a mental health condition age 14-–21 and older who are served by special education drop out—the highest dropout rate of any disability group.

Suicide:

1. 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. 
2. 3rd leading cause of death for people aged 10–14 
3. 2nd leading cause of death for people aged 15–24.
4. On average, there are 123 suicides per day and firearms account for 51% of all suicides in 2016. (afsp.org) If we addressed mental health in this country we could address 100 percent of these people by limiting our focus to guns we ignore 49% of those who chose different ways to end their lives.
5. “More than 90% of children who die by suicide have a mental health condition.”

My question is why are the students protesting for gun law reform and not mental health service reform? The answer is that the anti-gun lobbyists and the political agenda-pushing vultures smelled the blood of children and rather than work for real effective and meaningful changes, they exploited this tragedy for political gain. It was about “putting it to the evil NRA.” Look at the responses from the chief law enforcement officer in the jurisdiction: "I can only take responsibility for what I knew about. I exercised my due diligence. I've given amazing leadership to this agency," (BCSO Sheriff Isreal) After all the law enforcement errors that were made, that’s the response from the Sheriff? Why aren’t the students and media protesting and walking out demanding his dismissal? Gun law reform doesn’t address that and if that is the amazing leadership in law enforcement, I doubt new laws and procedures will be followed. 

The same federal law enforcement agency that has been repeatedly linked to anti-conservative, unethical, and criminal activities at its highest ranks also managed to mishandle this school shooter. Why aren’t the students protesting and demanding for accountability and explanations related to this issue? These are agents of the extreme left agendas, so they needs to remain protected and in place while they uses the sacred right of “freedom of speech” of the children to cover for an agenda of gutting the, somehow less sacred, second amendment rights. Watch what the left hand is doing while you try to cut of the right hand. The second amendment secures the first amendment and all other rights guaranteed by the constitution.

“In 2015, there were 25 child and teen deaths for every 100,000 children living in America. This rate, which represents close to 20,000 deaths annually.” (Annie E. Cassey Foundation) CNN recently reported that drug abuse deaths are on the rise and they attribute that to opioid abuse. “The new numbers involve teens ages 15 to 19 and were released by the National Center for Health Statistics. Most of the overdose deaths were unintentional and driven primarily by opioids, including both prescribed painkillers such as oxycodone and illicit drugs such as heroin and street fentanyl.” (CNN) Why aren’t students walking out and supporting Conservative agendas that are aiming to address this?

“While it often seems like there’s no rhyme or reason to mass shootings, there is at least one commonality among many of the perpetrators: a history of violence against the women in their lives.” (Fortune.com) Mass shootings are most often defined as having three or more victims even when one of those victims is the perpetrator. The majority of these situations involve domestic violence. In almost half of cases where a woman is killed, their intimate partner is the murderer. Homicide is the fifth leading cause of death for women between 18 and 44. Once again I ask, why aren’t students walking out and demanding domestic violence law reforms agendas that are aiming to address this?

According to gunviolence.org, approximately 4100 people were killed last year by gun violence. According to Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the National Institute for Mental Health who use data from the CDC, approximately 44,000 people die due to suicide annually. Clearly metal health care reform stands to impact 10 times the population that gun law reform would. If we focused on mental health care reform we could impact a much larger part of the population and by extension address gun violence. Limiting someone’s right to own a tool to defend their rights and their family is not going to address the conditions that turn a stable or even unstable person into a violent killer. Enhancing mental health care, education, outreach, and resources available to those suffering with mental health illnesses is a far more effective approach to significantly reducing gun violence, saving lives, and providing safer schools to meet our children’s needs.