Most Americans, by far, see Congress and Trump as useless when it comes to doing anything to prevent mass shooting, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The polling, you won't be surprised, shows a strong partisan divide, and show Americans falling for the "mental health" excuse Republicans have been peddling for years.
More than 6 in 10 Americans fault Congress and President Trump for not doing enough to prevent mass shootings, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, with most Americans continuing to say these incidents are more reflective of problems identifying and addressing mental health issues than inadequate gun laws. […]
A 77 percent majority says Congress is not doing enough to prevent mass shootings and 62 percent say the same of Trump, according to the poll. At least half feel “strongly” that Congress and the president have not taken adequate action. Majorities across party lines express frustration with Congress, while views of Trump are more divided. More than 8 in 10 Democrats and two-thirds of independents say the president is not doing enough. More than 6 in 10 Republicans say Trump is taking sufficient action to prevent mass shootings, although more than one-quarter of fellow partisans, 28 percent, say he is not.
The polling questions create a binary for respondents—gun control versus mental health screening and treatment as the solution. The response is lopsided, with 77 percent saying "they think more effective mental health screening and treatment could have prevented the shooting" whereas 58 percent think it could "have been prevented by stricter gun control laws." When asked in general, not specific to Parkland, whether "mass shootings in this country are more a reflection of (problems identifying and treating people with mental health problems) or (inadequate gun control laws)" 57 percent say mental health, opposed to 28 percent saying inadequate laws.
That's what decades of NRA propaganda gets you—a populace that largely believes laws won't make a difference. It's also a result of a decades-old ban on research into gun violence. We can look to studies on the effectiveness of gun laws or mental health by looking at other countries (Australia, for example) but the government charged with protecting us can't do the research here because Congress won't let it.
Meanwhile, this is further stigmatizing mental illness, to the vast frustration of mental health—and public health—professionals. “The concept that mental illness is a precursor to violent behavior is nonsense,” said Dr. Louis Kraus, forensic psychiatry chief at Chicago’s Rush University Medical College. “The vast majority of gun violence is not attributable to mental illness.” Not that the Republican Congress or Trump would actually do anything to improve access to mental—or any—health care, anyway. They're too busy trying to take it away from people.
So the one thing that Americans are seeming to get right in all of this is that our political leadership is absolutely useless when it comes to saving our lives, and the lives of our children. They're not wrong.