In reaction to yesterday’s shooting in Texas, Donald Trump stated that this was a mental health issue and not a gun access issue. Well yes it is actually a mental health issue. If you gave a loaded gun to most sane people, they can be trusted to use it responsibly.   It really is a small dangerous few that are causing all the problems. Given that there are new slaughters of innocent people at the hands of these mad men, it would be a good idea if we could act quickly to stop the carnage. Clearly restricting access to guns isn’t going to happen. The second amendment to the Constitution established the right to bear arms. Even if it were possible to change the Second Amendment, which I strongly doubt, it would take years to change.

This leaves us with Donald Trump’s assertion that this is a mental health issue. I know that this is a little outside the box but perhaps Trump is on to something. Honestly, I really don’t want to take guns away from law-abiding citizens, and, if it is as Trump says, a mental health issue, I wanted to protect Americans from the criminally insane. Let’s make mental health a civic responsibility. If you are prone to be criminally insane then it is best for everyone, including the criminally insane, if they were off the streets and under protective medical care. Of course, we would need to change some laws but as long as they didn’t infringe on the second amendment, I am sure Trump and the Republicans could muster the will to get them through Congress. For example, once a year every American adult over the age of 18 must get a certification of sanity. If the person passes, then the process ends until the following year. If the person fails, then he would have to go through further psychiatric evaluations up to and including incarceration if psychiatric professionals deemed the individual criminally insane.

The advantages of such a system are so great that I am almost giddy from thinking about them all. I mean the unintended consequences alone make this project worthy of consideration. You heard me the unintended consequences make this a great idea. I mean, since everyone must get a psychiatric check up, we might get ahead of other run of the mill mental health problems like depression. Instead of waiting for a complete mental breakdown, like we do now, we might catch some of these conditions before they get out of hand. Also imagine the new data we would have on mental health. We would have the full range of the sanity scale from completely sane to totally out of their fucking mind and all the variations in between. This again would give us more information about everyone and we would better act as a community in stopping both the criminally insane and preventing your standard every day breakdown.

And let’s not take our eye off of the ball here. What we really want to do is stop mass shootings. If the psychological professional can determine these dangerous propensities before hand, we hopefully could stop shootings from ever taking place in the first place. Instead of police shooting and killing the mentally ill man who acquired guns and is running amok in a crowded mall. We can just take them off the street before they snap.

I know you are going to say. This sounds good and though I agree that this is a much better alternate than taking away law-abiding citizens right to bear arms but can we really afford this? And here is the beauty it will practically pay for itself. First, once people start coming in for their yearly examinations, there should be less mental health issues as we would begin to treat them before they got out of hand. We should see a significant reduction of urgent health care costs and move to the less expansive managed health care costs. Since more of mental health issues will be managed, there also will be a drop in time taken from work for mental health days, so productivity will go up. There will be less damage to public buildings and private property because fewer people will be shooting up public spaces. Since more people will be managing their mental health through medication, the pharmaceutical companies will be booming. There would be a need for more pharmacists and more psychiatrists so those professions should see an increase in their ranks. Best of all, the economic boom would be evenly divided throughout the country as every person in every state would need their sanities verified. And don’t get me started about the trickle down effect. It is a win win idea.

I agree with Trump completely on this. Let’s address this as a mental health problem. If it is a mental health problem then we need to hold him to coming up with a mental health solution because gun violence is now a mental health crisis.