Children are led from Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., after a gunman killed 20 first-graders. /Image via AP
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the
right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
It's a monstrous leap from a well-regulated militia to a disturbed young man shooting 20 first-graders multiple times with an assault rifle. Since the 1999 Columbine High School attacks, U.S. school shootings have claimed the lives of more than 80 students in two dozen incidents from coast to coast. At what point will Americans be shocked into action?
Twenty first-graders dead.
Keeping guns, particularly assault weapons, out of the hands of young children and the mentally ill through gun safety, regulation and law enforcement could and should pass constitutional muster.
Newtown: Hidden cost in U.S. mental health system
Jared Loughner, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Cho Seung-Hui, James Holmes, now a disturbed Connecticut 20-year-old gunning down first-graders. All of them, and many other infamous U.S. mass killers, mentally ill and armed.
Americans can and will argue the merits of gun regulation ad infinitum after the slaughter of innocents in Newtown. But the time to argue the merits of improving mental health care in the United States has passed. The Mental Health Parity Act of 2008 called on doctors and insurance companies to treat mental health and medical health conditions on equal grounds. As many individuals and families who seek mental health services discover every day, getting good, affordable mental health care remains even harder than getting good, affordable medical health care.
We pay across the board for undervaluing mental health. Dozens of families paid the dearest prices at Sandy Hook Elementary.
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