By: Sabrina Feusi

With the one month anniversary of the Newtown shooting already behind us, it’s of no surprise that our society is up in arms about the issue of gun control.

As if our two political parties didn’t have enough reasons to fire at each other.

With the perfect opportunity to make of fool of themselves, the National Rifle Association came up with the brilliant idea that to end gun violence in schools, was to put more guns in schools.

At that moment, every person in this country who knows the alphabet may had scratched their heads.

The NRA must not have been up to date with their school shootings course, because in 1999, a school who did happen to have an armed officer on campus still resulted in a school shooting. It was called the Columbine High School massacre, and 12 people were killed on top of the 21 injured. Another tiny piece of information the NRA must have skipped over too was the Virginia Tech massacre where 32 people were killed on the same grounds where there was an armed police force.

When are people going to realize that the fewer guns we have in regulation, the less gun violence we are going to have?

Instead of screaming at each other about who should have a gun, our country should start looking at the root of the problem and start caring for our mentally ill.

Resources for mental health are a rare find. Too often are the sicknesses in the brain seen as a weakness, something a person can fix for themselves. Depression is seen as just being blue, not an actual medical condition that is often passed through genetics. Schizophrenia is coined for just being a freak. Bipolarity and Insomnia have turned into terms teenagers use for themselves when they want to seem edgy.

These things aren’t taken as seriously as they should be. James Holmes, the man behind the Aurora Theater shooting saw three mental health professionals, yet was able to purchase his guns legally. Adam Lanza was known around his town to be an obviously troubled teenager, yet his mother took him to gun ranges and left her guns where he could easily access them. She paid the ultimate price for her mistake- several bullets in her head.

Help comes too little and too late for many. According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, there is a suicide every 13.7 minutes in the United States, with 90% of the people who die by them having a treatable psychiatric disorder. What is so wrong with the mental health system that we are losing so many people to diseases that can be treated?

Gun control is going to stay a hot issue. Our country can afford to pull our fingers off the trigger for a while and stop shooting the rotting leaves off the tree, and start pulling it out from the roots.