Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who advocates the right of teenagers to buy weapons of war, says there are two ways to stop school shootings: better security and improved mental-health care. (The Uvalde school district had its own police plus elaborate security plans, and the shooter was never flagged for psychiatric care.) "Rep." Marjorie Taylor Greene proposes that groups of armed parents should patrol school grounds. Both pols, of course, are nuts. And there are plenty others.
I suggest we've been going about the mass-shootings problem all wrong. Rather than trying to pass gun laws for 330 million Americans in 50 separate states, we should try to pass only one law for a handful of people — a law designed to keep unhinged crackpots out of public office. It is from them that all other laws devastatingly descend on this already bullet-ridden republic.
The NY Times reports this morning that any responsible federal legislation on guns is D.O.A., although that's not really news. The only proposal that might have some life is one that "would offer incentives for states to pass 'red flag' laws aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of people who are mentally ill." As noted, what's actually needed is a red flag law aimed at keeping governance out of the hands of mentally ill politicians, such as those who believe that 18-year-olds should have AR-15 assault rifles and that armed, parental militias should patrol school zones.
The legislation would be socially beneficial in so many other ways, too. It would, for instance, prevent certifiable lunatics from passing laws that make recompensed vigilantes of anti-choice Americans or strangle the right to vote in a democracy. It would also have a ripple effect. Had a "psych test" been in effect in 2016, Donald Trump could not have been elected, thus he could not have appointed three other nutcases to the U.S. Supreme Court, which now upholds vigilante and antidemocratic laws.
How could a mental-health test for politicians ever be fairly, evenhandedly and scientifically applied, you ask? Simple. Anyone who files for any public office as an R would be automatically disqualified, since anyone who still wishes to identify with the Patricks, Greenes, Cruzes and Trumps is, by psychiatric definition, mad.