I didn’t think I would be writing again so soon, but my sister-in-law and brother-in-law literally just dodged bullets.

Yes, they were at the country music festival in Las Vegas where a gunman opened fire.  I happened to turn on the news after I posted my last entry.  I’ve only slept a couple of hours since then.

Fortunately, other than currently being more than a little rattled, they are okay.  But I don’t know if anyone, including them, is yet aware of the long-term emotional and mental consequences of living through this kind of event.  It tends to bring on PTSD–Post Tramatic Stress Disorder–and it requires treatment.

This event, which 45 did not acknowledge publicly as a terrorist attack by yet another white male American citizen, which it was, reopens a huge can of worms for us as a nation.

  • If survivors didn’t have the ACA backing their health care, would they be financially ruined?
  • How do we address mental issues in this country, both for survivors and for nut jobs with weapons?  How do we make mental healthcare not just more readily available, but a priority?
  • Speaking of weapons, why is it so easy to obtain them?  Even in California?  I was honestly shocked at the simplicity of the process.  I’m a really good shot, but I wasn’t even required to range-qualify, and a friend’s third-grader easily passed the written test I had to take to obtain weapons.  Those facts, combined with the fact that there is a lot of documentation of my history with shrinks, but the government says, “Oh, go right ahead and give her a bunch of shit with which she is deadly,” really ought to concern everyone.

So let’s unpack this a little.  A fellow, originally from Florida (why is it always Florida?), living in a retirement community, with a pilot’s license and who is the owner of two aircraft, with no known affiliations to any religious groups or any militias or any other group that any of his family members are aware of, gets his hands on 42 weapons, 23 of which he brought in to The Mandalay, at least one of which he converted into a fully automatic weapon, is allowed to drag all of this hardware–which is quite heavy, mind you–into a hotel room in Vegas, and open fire on a huge crowd.

There were no warning signs that he was dangerous at all, according to his brother.  For now, we have to take his brother, who is obviously shocked, at face value on this.  Therefore, we have to assume, at present, that there was no mental illness involved.  (I’m not buying that either, but go with me on this for a second.)  Why, in the face of so much evidence to the contrary in other countries, do we insist in this country that what stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun?  Because what I, and most other civilized countries understand is that the way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to not let people have guns.  In fact, in countries like the U.K., you have to be a special kind of cop to carry a gun, and those units only get called out in dire emergencies, and their bobbies are far more relaxed as a result of being less threatened and less trigger-happy.  If you are curious about gun violence stats world-wide, here are a couple of places to take a look:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/how-u-s-gun-deaths-compare-to-other-countries/

Back to the mental illness portion of the story.  What the GOP is currently doing is deliberately tanking the ACA by not funding it because, you know, we need tax cuts for the wealthy, and because they’ve said over and over that it is a failing system.  Yes, it has problems.  I’m the first to admit that.  But it is the first time we have had medical care that won’t bankrupt those of us who do not otherwise have healthcare through a corporation if we get sick or injured.  It needs to be a single-payer system like so many other countries have sorted out.  And what our government really needs to address is the blatant price-gouging that the circle jerk of pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and out-of-network doctors engage in routinely in this country.  Again, other countries have figured this out.  Here, we have a severe special-interest and political problem, in that politicians are largely in the pockets of special interests.

That being said, mental health care is not readily available here.  In fact, largely because insurance companies are so damned difficult to deal with, mental health physicians won’t deal with them.  They generally do not take insurance anymore.  My doctor is wonderful and I only spend $150 per hour with him.  Some doctors, to my knowledge, go for $250 to $300 per hour.  Who do you know can afford that?  I know maybe three people who can.  I’m not one of them.

We absolutely must redress this situation, because I think if we make mental health care affordable to all, and we reduce the stigma of it being weird to seek out, we might be better off as a society.  Yes, I realize there is a lot of “if” coming off of that statement.  But after the latest bloodshed, what do we really have to lose?

Look, we say this every time a shooting happens here in the U.S.: How do we address this?  What are we going to do about this?

So far, the answer is: Nothing.

We can do better.  It would be wonderful if my family wasn’t put in harm’s way of a madman with wicked weaponry for no other reason than attending a concert.  It would be lovely if people without means had help readily available, both physically and mentally and that said help wasn’t threatened by government officials.

What we need is a platform.  I suspect we will be given one forthwith.  Get out and vote in 2018.  We are playing a deadly game, like it or not.  If you don’t vote, well, stay away from big venues.  Because we are dissolving into life-or-death issues here, and it will not get better unless we work to make it so.

Keep speaking out.  Keep marching.  And maybe not sleeping is sometimes a good thing.