Saturday, April 21, 2007

Virginia Tech

I didn't have time to comment about this earlier this week due to a hectic work week. I've been listening to the talk shows tout gun control and more laws to try and prevent future events of this nature. I believe that the focus of this is all wrong. This is not a gun issue, but a mental health issue. Some time back in the mid 80's Reagan cut funding for social programs. By doing so he created an onslaught of homeless people 30% of whom had mental health issues. Additionally Reagan made cuts in mental health. By doing so he effectively eliminated most of the public mental health hospitals which created a surge of private hospitals. Patients with no insurance or money to pay for private care were left untreated or marginally treated through some of the C.A.P. programs that were available at the time, but even the C.A.P. programs were eliminated.
The following article gives a complete summary of what occured. It is a bit long, but worth the read.
Compassionate Conservatives?

1 comment:

pygalgia said...

A very good article. Thanks.