Let us separate apples from oranges, mental health from gun control. Each must be addressed, but they are not one and the same problem. Having lived with a family member whose life was cruelly blighted by schizophrenia, I know with excruciating immediacy the need for better mental health services. But it is a grave error to allow mental health issues to eclipse the problem of guns in our society. Doing so plays into the hands of the National Rifle Association, which wants no limitations to the availability of guns.

According to the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 30,000 people are shot and killed every year in the United States. Clearly, only a small percentage of these incidents are attributable to the mass shootings of a deranged mind. Such cases may capture attention, but what about the many others, such as ones in which the victim is killed by a spouse, a jealous lover, a drug dealer, a gang member, or by accident, sometimes by the hand of a child? Yes, let us adequately care for the mentally ill, but let’s not divert attention from the obvious: Gun violence is caused by guns. The Second Amendment must be revisited. Never was it meant as the justification for the promiscuous distribution of weapons in our society.