Unless you've been living under a rock you are aware there is a problem in the US of A where mass shootings happen with far more frequency than the rest of the world. Republican law-makers seem resigned to the supposition that "mental illness" is most at issue and there is very little that can be done which wouldn't infringe on the rights of others to arm themselves to their heart's content. Whatya say we raid that debate with some fresher rationale. The very notion of "mental illness" is a by-product of an assumption which underpins many an institution in America--i.e that we are a "created" being and that the creator doesn't make any mistakes.
How many families, however, have the one or two members in them who have some manner of developmental disadvantage? How many have persons with gender assignment irregularities? Since when do we roll out of a creation station--all perfectly male or female and 100% heterosexually oriented with language, reason and temperament installed and in tune where "society" gets to deem one as "normal" or "challenged"? The harm of such institutionalized assumptions is massive. In truth we are all born one at a time in a bag of guts and goo and are rather the results of a genetic compositing process drawing from two relatively unchecked gene sources which far more often get something wrong than would a manufacturer working from a set of specifications. We exist on foundation of denial and are branded and measured against and arbitrary standard of normality which has more to do with traditional beliefs and unwillingness to speak truth to power than rational, evidential and universal truth.
Thus let us end the phantom scapegoat we call "mental illness"--something we can't seem to prepare for until it acts out with a Bushmaster, hand guns with 30 round clips etc in our schools or malls--and supplant that very lacking concept with a "mental wellness" model.
When we retire the denial, its "normality artifice" and all that entails, and face the facts that every human is part of a mammalian nature which NEVER EVER attains perfection, every one of us is a creature of fluid and non-static "mental wellness" which can change at any time. In this light keeping weapons of mass killing in personal possession raises the question of self-safety, the ease at which one may blow one's own brains out. Or, like Adam Lanza, keep a secret and one day kill the provider of those weapons, his mother, and destroy the happiness and serenity of 26 families. You may not be mentally ill. But your level of mental wellness ebbs and flows--one day above your best, another day beneath your worst.
The genetic compositing process which makes us who we are leaves us a feral youth if not instilled with language and reason by family and society. Every one of us tires and can show signs of such so-called "mental illnesses" as schizophrenia where we can have auditory and visual hallucinations after 48 to 72 hours of sleep deprivation. None of us are capable of using the full range of our intellectual capacity at one, and indeed, intellectual capacity itself is not static and predetermined. It is in a dynamic flux called neuroplasticity. All told, no one should judge the world using him or herself as the standard--especially those given to paranoia--thus it is our view of ourselves and the world which has us in this seemingly unsolvable debate about access to means to kill. Getting right with the truth is a start. Mental illness, I urge, must yield to a more appropriate and less built-on-faith "mental wellness".