Editorial:

Changes In Mental Health

Laws Are Overdue

Virginia Tech Student Received

Little If Any Help For Problems

by Johnny Gunn

As Bob Bennett has written about so many times since joining the columnists that write for The Nevada Observer, the mental health laws in this country are not adequate to the job.  This little "great truth" was brought home in spades at Virginia Tech University with the deaths of 32 students and teachers.  So many questions had been asked about the shooter's mental stability, but nothing was done, no one came forward and offered the young man help, no law exists that could have stopped his rampage that came from severe mental anguish.  Some are placing blame today on many things, but when the smoke clears, when the radical pundits take a breath, it will come down to a lack of practical mental health laws and rules.

An example of a radical pundit is Adam Gopnik's lead article in The New Yorker, April 30, 2007 issue.  Gopnik spends several hundred words blaming a lack of gun laws on the shooting, never once mentioning the fact that there is that little thing called the Second Amendment to the Constitution.  He even tried to relate gun laws to tobacco laws in that tobacco kills people.  He barely recognized the fact that the young man in question had serious mental disabilities that were not attended to.

It's the constitution that allowed Mr. Gopnik to carry on in such a fashion, but we won't bring that up and humiliate the man.  If any one thing might be blamed for the lack of mental health recognition on campuses across the country, it is probably the concept of political correctness.  There are times when it is necessary to tell someone in no uncertain terms that they need help.  It has come to light in Virginia that several people seemed to know that this young man needed help, but did not create a situation where he could receive that help.

To blame this on the fact that the man used guns is evading the question in a way that tells others, if you are mentally unstable, blame your actions on some inanimate object.  If that young man had jumped off a tall building instead of killing so many innocent people maybe the discussion over mental health would be deeper, but the results would be the same; there would be no overt activity to adjust our laws regarding mental health.

Too often when one is suffering from mental health issues, the first call is to the police who generally respond with strength that often leads to violence.  "It isn't against the law to be crazy," Bennett said once, but the laws are written in such a manner that even those that are just mildly erratic mentally suffer from becoming criminals simply because that's the law.  The young Virginia college student suffered the dragons and fire of a mind out of control, and few cared, fewer still attempted to do something.  If he had been suffering from a broken arm, bleeding, bone end sticking out of his skin, he would have been swarmed with do gooders.

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Cartoon by Thomas Nast, April 12, 1874