Comments on Parkland shooting by Al Franken
(From Facebook)
Last week, a young man used an AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle to murder fourteen students and three members of the staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. As a father of two and a grandfather of three, I cannot imagine the heartache and the pain endured by the families who lost loved ones that day.
In the wake of this tragedy, President Trump announced that he would work “to help secure our schools, and tackle the difficult issue of mental health.” Regrettably, the president did not immediately acknowledge the American gun violence epidemic or commit to confronting just why we tolerate the proliferation of military-grade guns. He was, however, right to mention the issue of mental health – but I worry that here as well, his rhetoric does not match his actions.
As a senator, I spent a lot of my time and effort on mental health issues. There is no question that the shooter in Parkland is, like the perpetrators of all these mass killings, deeply troubled; and in this particular case, the shooter appears to have a history of mental illness. But we need to be very careful about stigmatizing mental illness in a way that is counterproductive and may ultimately prevent Americans from accessing the treatment they need.
The truth is – the vast majority of people suffering from mental illness are non-violent, and a very small portion of violence in America can be attributed to individuals who suffer from mental illness. In fact, people with mental illness are the victims of violence more often than those without mental illness. What we need more than anything in this country is to recognize that virtually every family in America is touched by a behavioral health issue – mental illness or addiction – and that we need to provide treatment in a smart, compassionate way to relieve suffering, save families and lives, and give us a more productive workforce.
Unfortunately, all too often, the urgency to address mental illness only appears in the fallout of a tragedy. After Sandy Hook, I heard some of my colleagues who had never seemed particularly interested in mental health say what we’re hearing a lot of today. “It’s not just guns. It’s mental health.” In some cases, it felt like they were checking off a box — saying the words “mental” and “health” and in the right order — and not paying much attention to the subject until the next mass shooting carried out with an assault weapon.
Like almost all of my Democratic colleagues, I supported a ban on assault weapons in 2013. As the students who survived the shooting at Parkland have said so powerfully, there is no reason to have a military-style weapon designed to kill human beings on our streets and in our schools. And despite a history of behavior and warning signs – signs that were repeatedly reported by his classmates – the nineteen-year-old shooter was permitted to legally purchase a weapon of war.
But the shooting WAS also about mental illness. And if we are to be serious about the subject, we need to acknowledge certain realities and develop a thoughtful and comprehensive approach to addressing them.
In the Senate I pushed for more mental health in schools and have seen the lives of kids and their families turned around by effective treatment. I have been to schools in Minnesota where mental health issues have been so successfully destigmatized that kids high-five their therapist in the school hallway. And the work of mental health professionals in schools also takes some of the burden off teachers to address behavioral issues in the classroom so they can focus on teaching.
The system that I’ve seen work effectively in schools involves every adult – teachers, the school bus drivers, the principal, the lunch ladies – who are trained to recognize what it looks like when a kid may be struggling. The adult asks one of the professionals in the school – a counselor, social worker, or, if possible, a therapist – who checks in with the student to determine if there is a serious issue, and if there is, makes sure that the student gets diagnosed and treated.
Mental health in schools was supported in the reform of No Child Left Behind, but at a woefully inadequate level. If the administration and Congress are serious about mental health, we need to devote more resources to treatment – not fewer resources, as we see in the administration’s latest budget.
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he's speaking from.
Jackie!
Cha! 
Luna!
Your voice is still both needed and heeded.
This "brilliance" sitting outside the US Senate while we have dolts "inside" whose contributions to our country are guided by the amount of $$$$$$$ the NRA puts in their pockets.
We miss you, Al!!!!
we lost him...,
and I think he's smart enough (well, there's no doubt about how smart he is) to put together a campaign that would answer any questions regarding why he left the senate (or was pushed out!) and again convince an electorate that he's the right person for the job!
Go, AL!!!! 
The audio book of this is as good as anything he’s written, and that’s saying something
