This shooting does not involve poverty or access to health care [View all]

[cthulu2016]

If one wants to hitch their issues to the tragedy de jour it helps if the tragedy has something to do with the issues.

This case has nothing to do with socio-economic factors or access to health care.

This young man is upper middle class, from a conservative suburban district. He is, at 24 and recently a student, quite likely to be on his parent's excellent health plan.

This young man could have gotten all kinds of mental health intervention, had he chosen to go to a psychiatrist. If he chose to not go to a psychiatrist that's the end of the story.

It is just a gun story.

That doesn't mean that it is a story that demands banning guns, but if one wants to make the case for gun rights please do so with some kind of integrity.

Say this:

"I think the right to own guns trumps the public security concerns that arise from it."

You can make that argument. That form of argument underlies all discussion of rights. All rights have a downside.

But pretending that periodic mass shootings are not somehow connected to, and spurred by, the ready availability of the tools necessary for mass shootings is grotesque.