Can we talk?

Last night, before bed, I watched an old episode of COPS. In this episode, paramedics had been called  to the trailer of an older woman who was in some sort of distress. The police arrived and were informed by rescue personnel that the woman was living in squalor and the smell was sickening. The police officer retrieved a respirator from the trunk of his car and entered the home. The trailer was wall-to-wall trash and cat poop. Part of the smell was a dead cat which, we would later learn, the woman wondered if placing the cat in the freezer wouldn't be a good idea. The officer noticed maggots crawling on his shoe as he interviewed the woman. It was an unbelievable, filthy mess. Who in their right mind would live like that?

Indeed. Who in their right mind?

After the horrific carnage in Newton, I'm glad to hear so many people are talking about mental health. The woman on TV was not a poor housekeeper. She knew- seemed to know- her home was beyond messy. Something wasn't right to her but, if you think putting a dead animal in your freezer is a solution to one problem, the rest of the problem is lost on you.

Well, it's COPS. There's no background on peoples lives in the reality series and no follow-ups on what became of them so, we don't know how she lived her life and how it brought her to live, at that moment, in such incredible filth. Who knows if she had once been normal and how she slipped into mental illness. That's clearly what it is- mental illness. I've never seen the show "Hoarders" and don't want to but, it seems that people living like that is quite common. It's not to be mocked or exploited to sell hair care products but, that's entertainment.

Let's remember that the killer in Connecticut was 20 years old. He wasn't a gang banger or a punk kid with an attitude. He was clearly mentally ill. He wasn't some asshole on the internet angry about taxes or a black president and willing to take up arms. He was somebody's kid. Somebody's very damaged kid.

Imagine your worst day. Multiply it by one thousand and maybe then you'll scratch the surface of the depth of the depravity it takes to take a rifle to a school and literally blow away young children whom you do not know. This must be what this kid's mind dealt with every fucking day. Maybe some meds helped. Perhaps some made things worse.  He's dead so, we'll never know. We might not have ever known even if he had not killed himself. Why would we expect that he could explain himself?

There's about 315 million people in this country. The odds are there are hundreds of thousands of them that are as bad off as he was. Maybe millions. How many people do you know who, properly medicated, are maybe just a little bit odd? You don't know. How many could go off similar to this if they went off their medication or took too many or weren't ever prescribed at all? There's no way of knowing and we need to address that.

We need to restrict access to guns, for sure. But, just as important, we need to make mental health access far less restrictive. It's for the good of society. It's one thing to try and keep firearms out of the hands of people like Adam Lanza and that is a good thing. I assume his folks were aware of his mental condition and addressed that. Tragically, they could not foresee his murderous rampage. Tragically, the mother at least, could not see that keeping weapons around the house was not a good idea. Whatever his day-to-day existence was like, this was not a child who should have been left alone with a pistol. He could easily have just taken his own life. Tragedy in itself but, no other people and families would have been harmed.

Weren't many of us thinking that? Reasonable people don't think of that as a viable solution on the front end. It's normal, I guess, to think about that after the fact. What if...

Right now I don't know the extent of the help Adam Lanza received. My mind keeps coming back to the mom foolishly keeping guns around the house knowing full well that her youngest was quite damaged. This compromised her safety as well as his. With guns out of the equation we don't know what does happen but, we now know what doesn't happen.

It's too late to undo that. But, it's not too late to do every reasonable thing we can think of to prevent some other sick child or adult from crossing that line into hell on earth.

Perhaps with Obamacare money won't be an impediment to folks with mentally ill children. That is one thing he can do as our president. Make it easy to get help.

Restrict assault weapons. Yada-fucking-yada there are already enough laws... Well, we need a few more and we need to get serious about them. We've already created an America that is more violent than any other first world nation and the fact is we do need guns to protect ourselves, from ourselves. We made that happen. Crime does pay. It pays the NRA and the gun manufacturers. They sell fear and business is good.

Well, that's for another day. Feel for the children and adults whom Adam Lanza slaughtered. But, feel for him too. It wasn't the way he wanted to go out in life. Speak his name. I don't think he was out to have his name live in infamy. I think he just wanted out, in the worst way possible. Think of him as your own child or sibling and treat him as such. Make sure they get all the help they need. Think, before it gets to that point with the next child.