May 01, 2025 12:47 PM UTC

Once Again: Republicans Aren't Serious About Gun Violence and Mental Health

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• by: Colorado Pols

Republicans have long used “mental health” as a bogeyman whenever the issue of gun violence prevention enters the discussion. But whenever they have an opportunity to do something to improve mental health resources…they refuse.

From The Washington Post:

The Education Department this week began cutting about $1 billion in mental health-related grants created in response to mass school shootings, claiming that schools that want to diversify their pool of psychologists are misusing the funds.

School psychology professionals across the country are scrambling to figure out how to move forward after being told funding for their multiyear programs will expire at the end of December if they don’t decide to appeal. The two grants affected received an additional $1 billion after President Joe Biden signed a sweeping bipartisan gun safety bill into law in 2022, a month after the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

The cuts that started Tuesday are in line with President Donald Trump’s executive order that seeks to eliminate programs that foster diversity, equity and inclusion in schools. Last month the administration canceled grants funding gun-violence prevention programs and crime-victim advocacy.

Republicans over the past decade have sought to blame mass shootings, especially ones in schools, on mental health issues of the killers — as opposed to America having more guns per civilian than any other country. [Pols emphasis]

[Sigh]

President Trump himself dismissed gun violence prevention (GVP) strategies after a mass shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas in 2017 that killed 26 people and injured many others. From The New York Times:

“I think that mental health is your problem here,” Mr. Trump told reporters at a news conference in Japan, the first stop on his 12-day overseas trip. Based on preliminary reports, the gunman in Sutherland Springs, Tex., was a “very deranged individual,” he said. “We have a lot of mental health problems in our country, as do other countries.”

“But this isn’t a guns situation,” Mr. Trump added. “I mean, we could go into it, but it’s a little bit soon to go into it. But fortunately, somebody else had a gun that was shooting in the opposite direction, otherwise it would have been — as bad it was — it would have been much worse. But this is a mental health problem at the highest level. It’s a very, very sad event.”

Republicans aren’t going to do anything about GVP, and they’re not going to do anything about mental health, either.

Colorado Republicans have long been beholden to nutball gun rights groups like Rocky Mountain Gun Owners (RMGO). Sometimes Republicans freely admit that opposing GVP policies is an instinctive reaction for a Republican (we’re looking at you, Rep. Mary Bradfield), but more often they play the “mental health” card and then later refuse to support making more resources available for mental health programs.

Meanwhile, Colorado Democrats have increasingly worked around Republicans and their insincere attempts at doing anything about gun violence. Earlier this month, Democrats passed legislation that — among other things — establishes new education requirements for the purchase of certain semiautomatic firearms like the AR-15 class of “assault weapons” used in some of the deadliest mass shootings in recent American history.

There’s really no debating this subject anymore: Republicans will do anything to avoid dealing with gun violence prevention or increasing resources for mental health services.

It’s almost like they just don’t care at all.