On Gun Control

It is amazing how the rhetoric of the NRA President in a recent TV interview can pass the reasonable test for most Americans. The 2nd amendment is being prostituted by the NRA by using it as a reason to continue their anarchic attitudes towards regulation. The 2nd amendment was formulated during the country's revolutionary days. We have evolved since then into a working democracy and a civilized society where differences and dissent are settled through laws and process that is applied to all,  a society where we can move about with freedom and safety, and pursue our own happiness. We have laws that govern use of violence in the service of self-defense, why would people need military assault weapons to protect themselves? And this laying of the blame on the mentally ill and tasking the mental health system to somehow solve the problem is totally prejudicial, emphasizes the age-old stigma, and maintains the ignorance of the politicians and the public about mental illness. Truth be told, we have no mental health system to blame for failure. What we have is a disorganized, disjointed conglomeration of programs. These programs have no coherence and continuity and are underfunded. They have no universal access due to lack of parity of mental health insurance coverage and treatment philosophies that fail to understand the nature of mental illness. They are instead driven by political rhetoric and goody two-shoes social philosophies. Mental illness is a chronic disease, and its treatment is medical. It still has no cure and, just like most chronic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension, it has acute exacerbations, and can deteriorate over time with deficits in function. Any chronic disease requires lifelong management, functional rehabilitation and supportive treatments; but the "mental health system" does not recognize this. It has de-medicalized mental illness while paradoxically relying unrealistically on drugs, which has low efficacy and many side effects. It had relegated psychiatrists to prescription writing roles, with some sectors even implying that many non-MD's can write these prescriptions as well, since writing the drugs just requires what drug companies dictate in their brochures. The human mind is difficult to read, and human action is difficult to predict, and this is true for mentally ill individuals as well. The best predictor to prevent violence is to know each other well, and to take responsibility and act when there are signs that someone may be a danger to self or others. We have the laws and the process to do this now. The politicians and the public need to be educated about how to use this We don't need new mandates, or new rules. And the most effective way to prevent death and minimize casualties when violence erupts is to remove highly lethal weapons. I support guns for civilians for traditional sporting purposes, for protection in high crime or isolated and wilderness areas; but possession must be regulated with background checks, gun safety education, and registration. We have tougher laws regarding registration of automobiles than we do on possession of mass-killing weapons. There is simply no place in American society for assault-like weapons. The 2nd amendment was necessary in the survival of the USA after the revolution, during the ratification of the constitution, to ensure support of the Union by the slave-owning Southern states. The Federal government had to give assurance to these states that they can maintain and arm a militia, supposedly to be on call to serve the Union if invaded or threatened, but actually used by the Southern states to police slaves, and to demonstrate military power should the slaves rebel. It is irrelevant today, and should be repealed. Also, it referred to muskets, not rapid-firing assault weapons. Our forefathers never imagined this kind of killing machines.