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"BAND-AIDS FOR GUN VIOLENCE"

 1/13/16 The News-Dispatch & The Herald-Argus

President Obama recently took executive action to require background checks for online purchases and for transactions at gun shows, and to improve the FBI background checking process. I think these are well and good, but these only treat the symptoms and not the sickness, which goes well beyond guns. Our mental health system and laws are still in need of reforms. One used to be able to commit a mentally ill person without their consent, but since the Reagan era that was made illegal. Almost every famous incident of gun violence: San Bernadino, Sandy Hook, etc., the guns used came from legal owners or their families. These gun laws are reasonable, but just delay the acts of violence until deranged individuals find weapons through illegal means or use knives or other legally available weapons. There is a lot of wishful thinking involved in believing that guns, and not the people wielding them, are the primary problem to be solved. Another factor at work, which many people don't want to acknowledge, is the increased amount of violence in entertainment which, although a mentally balanced person can take in without imitating it, the violence serves as an inspiration to the mentally unbalanced.