The Los Angeles Times gets it

On October 6, 2015 the Los Angeles Times published an article titled: The issue isn't mental illness, it's too easy access to firearms.I decided to give a critique on this editorial.

I took a look at an editorial on how mass shootings are not due to the mental health of the shooters, but more due to how easily firearms are to get in this country. I personally agree with it, and have evidence on why the argument is sound.

For starters, the article is persuasive and simple enough for anyone to understand for the common man. The target audience appears to be liberals, anti-gun activists, and the mentally ill.

I couldn't find one specific author, so I went with the person that seemed to have written it. His name is Scott Martelle. He spent over 30 years in news rooms, and his work has appeared in The Washington Post, Sierra Magazine, and Esquire.com. Lastly, he has covered a wide range of topics, ranging from presidential elections, books and publishing, among many other topics.

The author was arguing that just because someone has a mental illness, doesn't slate them to be the next shooter. Evidence of this includes: "As President Obama noted in the wake of the Umpqua Community College mass killing in Oregon last week, this is not the only country with people suffering from mental illness..." If mental illness is world wide, the problem should be world wide, yet it is much more common for America, as the President himself pointed out. There is also:"...Vivek Murthy as surgeon general...that gun violence is a public health issue; he eventually promised not to use his office to press that point, a grotesque muzzling of a heathcare professional." The surgeon general (a type of office held by those very proficient in the medical field) said that this was a public health issue, not a mental health issue, like the title of the editorial. Finally, there is the number of guns in America:"There already are more than 300 million guns in the United States..." With so many guns, if it was mental health (which affects 18.2% of the population, according to Google), then there should be much more gun violence incidents. There are quite a few, but the number would be much higher if it was indeed mental illness.

The conclusion is that gun violence is not due to mental illness. Both the President of the United States, and the surgeon general agree that this has nothing to do with mental health. The conclusion is a logical one, as evidence in the form of quotes and statistics on the amount of guns.

The scapegoating of the mentally ill in order to avoid talking about gun control is one of the arguments the author is calling out. The author is saying that the mentally ill are not violent monsters about to shoot up a school, and it is more due to the ridiculous amount of guns available. Also being said is that there needs to be lobbying and research into the public health issue of gun control.