Men, guns and mental health: We can address at least two of the three

On Sunday, a man with apparent mental health issues was found with a semiautomatic rifle in what authorities are calling an attempt to kill former President Donald Trump.

Court papers detailed how law enforcement found a loaded SKS-style rifle, two backpacks with ceramic tile and a GoPro camera in the bushes at the scene, according to The New York Times.

Two months before, a young man with apparent mental health problems used an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle to try to assassinate Trump, and got much closer to doing so.

In between those two attempts, a boy with apparent mental health problems shot up his school in Georgia with an AR-15-style rifle, and in Kentucky, a man with apparent mental health problems shot at numerous cars on Interstate 75 with an AR-15-style rifle, wounding five people. Miraculously, none of them died.

Now I’m not a psychiatrist, but I think it’s fair to say that anyone who uses political assassination to get attention or shoots teachers or tries to kills random people in cars, is pretty unstable.

So now we can isolate three problems that keep causing mayhem and death — men, mental health and guns.

I’m not sure what to do about the first one. But on the second two, there are plenty of good solutions that federal and state lawmakers could do something about, such as reinstating a ban on assault weapons, better background checks, longer waiting periods, and better access to mental health resources.

These changes could be pushed forward by someone with political courage. Or not and we can wait for the next mass shooting.

According to Pew Research, about a third of us own guns, but 51% of us favor stricter gun laws.

How much longer do we want to live under the terror of our children being killed and political candidates being shot at? Forever, I guess.

There’s no other country in the developed world that lives this way.

Worst of all, it’s a problem with solutions. Our politicians just don’t want to adopt them.

Linda Blackford is a columnist for the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader.