Murphy: Mental health bill won’t solve gun problems

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut leads a town hall meeting at the Norwalk Library on Sunday called "Fed Up" on current transportation issues in the Connecticut area, specifically in the southern Fairfield County area. less U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut leads a town hall meeting at the Norwalk Library on Sunday called "Fed Up" on current transportation issues in the Connecticut area, specifically in the southern Fairfield ... more Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Murphy: Mental health bill won’t solve gun problems 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

WASHINGTON — As co-author of major legislation to infuse life into the nation’s resource-starved mental health care system, Sen. Chris Murphy believes there’s an overlap between mental illness and the uptick of mass shootings, including Sandy Hook.

But he’s dead-set against any suggestion that putting mental health care on par with its physical health counterpart will automatically solve the epidemic of gun violence.

“I understand clearly there’s an intersection, but the failure of one system is not causal of the other crisis,’’ Murphy, D-Conn., said Thursday at the conclusion of his Senate Mental Health Summit, aimed at building support among mental health professionals and advocates for the Mental Health Reform Act that Murphy has written along with Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La.

“So I worry when people suggest that fixing the mental health problem will fix the gun violence problem,’’ Murphy said.

Advocacy of rebuilding the nation’s mental health system is something upon which Republicans and Democrats can find agreement. But GOP lawmakers and gun-rights advocacy groups like the national Rifle Association take it a step further and argue that mental illness — not the availability of large-capacity, semi-automatic rifles and other lethal weaponry — is the root of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre and other shootings like the one at the Aurora, Colo., movie theater the same year.

So even as he advocates for his bill to fix what he terms the “broken’’ mental health system in America, Murphy is careful to put some daylight between mental illness and gun violence.

On the Senate floor Wednesday, he said “conflating mental illness and gun violence . . . may serve the political ends of those’’ in the Senate who oppose background checks and other gun-control measures.

Murphy also argued the U.S. does not have a higher rate of mental illness than those of other developed nations. The difference he said, is that mass shooters with mental problems, like Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook, have access to “weapons of war.’’

The ability of such people to “instantly transform themselves into mass murderers is unique in this country,’’ Murphy said.

After the summit, Murphy said, the nexus is “not as big an intersection as some people would like to believe. So I’m trying to be responsible and tease out the subtleties of this debate.’’

He’s not alone in advocating an “all of the above’’ approach.

Lanza “of course had a mental health problem,’’ said Lauren Alfred, the policy director of Sandy Hook Promise, who attended the Thursday summit. “But we’re very strong proponents of background checks and commonsense (gun) laws . . . anything that makes our schools and communities healthier and safer.’’

At the summit, advocates displayed boxes of over 200,000 signatures calling on Congress to pass the Murphy-Cassidy bill. Murphy said he hoped it could come to a vote on the Senate floor in the coming months.

The measure’s general aim is to put mental health care on equal footing with physical health care. It also would establish grant programs for early intervention as well as biomedical research.