1. Its Mental Health, Not Guns

Many conservatives claim that Americas high gun violence and mass shooting incidents are a result of us “ignoring mental health issues” This often takes the form of very vague statements such as “kids these days need more Jesus in their life” or “mental health needs more funding”. Nations like Japan, the UK, Singapore and Germany all have their own mentally ill people, yet have almost non-existent gun crime.

The other gaping hole in this argument is that most shooters, even most mass shooters were not mentally ill, there’s this false narrative that floats around that mental illness somehow makes you more inherently violent, this isn’t true. Many of America’s shooters were average Joes who none of us would’ve ever expected to commit such a heinous crime. However they do all have ONE thing in common, and that is easy access to firearms that can cause incredible amounts of harm in short periods of time.

This is not to say America can’t do much better at focusing on our happiness and mental health, of course we could, but it’s a red-herring, a distraction from the glaring issue of our nation being awash in guns.

For you science nerds here’s a source to a major study on just this