I have watched, as an attorney, a graduate-level professor in health care, a longtime mental health advocate and an NRA-qualified marksman, the response to this massacre, the one before it, and the killings before that, all the way back to Columbine, with utter dismay.
Following Columbine, in the spring of 1999, I reminded people, through our Mental Health Association of New York State publication, that we lost those 12 school children that day, but also lost Eric Harris and Dylan Klebod, the Columbine gunmen.
Eric and Dylan were lost long before, just as we already had lost this gunman, Adam Lanza in Newtown, Conn. We must mourn the loss of all our children.
Adam Lanza's act of horror really sets the boundaries of this debate. He shot his mother with her own legally purchased guns, then went to a nearby elementary school, somehow gained entrance, and used her guns to kill innocent children before killing himself.
Her guns were legal, and his disorder was so great to drive him to do it.
What we need to face riles the political right wing no end, but they are the core issues that put our nation far behind the real civilized world — universal health care and gun control.
We are the only modernized nation in the world where our homes contain more guns than dogs. Think about that. Every time you see a dog — in a yard, in a car, in the window of a house — think "gun." Then throw in a few more for good measure.
How many dogs you encounter during any day is fewer than the number of guns you have unknowingly encountered.
Studies show that people living with mental illnesses occur at about the same percentage in all nations and populations. That means that per capita, the same percentage of people living with serious mental illnesses here in America will be found in nations with gun deaths that total a rounding error compared to the number in our country.
The difference between us and them is the number of guns in our streets, and the access that so many people have to them, combined with the inability to get help to those as they approach the breaking point.
In the absence of universal health care, and overcoming the stigma that prevents people from seeking the mental health help that they need, untreated mental illness among young people will continue unabated.
People in their late teens and early 20s are the age group most likely to suffer their first break when developing the most serious mental illnesses, and the combination of the manifestations of mental illness, the stigma that stops people from seeking care, the unavailability of care and the the plethora of guns in our community, and access to them, are the recipe of death that we are now seeing on an almost monthly basis.
The time has come for us to stiffen our spines, and force our elected officials to take control of access to weapons, access to health care, and access to treatment for people living with mental illnesses.
Joseph A. Glazer is a lawyer, college professor and advocate for the mentally ill. He lives in Guilderland. His email address is glazer@jaglazerlaw.com.