I am willing to bite. It doesn’t take a lot of effort for me to believe that anyone willing to go into a school (or store or movie theater or church or any place where large number of people congregate) and shoot strangers has a mental health issue. Republicans are keen on saying it isn’t the gun that is the problem but the person shooting the gun. OK. Fine. What is the mental health solution then?

It gets irritating to hear this response when that person is also unwilling to provide any details on how to make it easier for people to get mental health treatment. Speaking as someone who has been using mental health for some thirty years, I can tell you it isn’t easy. First you absolutely have to have insurance or money. If you don’t have either, you need to apply for some form of assistance — which, unless you are destitute, can be difficult to qualify for. Then, if you do have insurance, there is finding a health care professional that takes your insurance. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes if they do, they only take a limited number of patients who use your insurance. It takes a bit of an effort to come up with a mental health professional to treat you.

Now image yourself in a healthcare crisis having to jump through all these hoops before you can get help. A struggling person is given another struggle to deal with. So, then, how are you going to make make mental health easier to get and less expensive. Oh, and this will cost money. Who exactly is going to pay?

Then there is getting the young man to mental health care. Men are notoriously bad about seeking mental health. They see a stigma associated with it. This means someone is going to have to get scared enough to turn them in or try to convince them to get help. This is where things get hairy. How do you balance the rights of the man with the fears of parents or teachers or friends? Do we have laws that make it even possible? Laws will have to be looked at and changed. What do we do with the young men who are truly dangerous? Do we have institutions to house these young men? And, the all important question, who exactly is going to pay for the process of evaluation and institutionalization? Because you know all this is going to cost money.

When you say it is a mental health problem and offer no way to make mental health more accessible and cheaper, your response is unserious. You are letting yourself off the hook. Mad men are the problem, not guns. OK, so what are you going to do about the mad men? The present system has obviously failed us and needs to be improved in order to catch them. And, by the way, it is going to cost money.

Which, if you ask me, is the real problem here. Republicans can throw that out mental health as a solution after every mass shooting because they are betting that no one will ever call them on how this is done. Which says a lot about both the Republicans and what they think about the American public.