In a gleeful flurry of undoing Obama-era regulations on Feb. 2, congressional Republicans voted to remove a gun control measure that prevented guns from falling into the hands of people who get disability benefits due to severe mental illness. They drew fierce criticism from Democrats — understandably, since keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill has been a Democratic talking point on gun control since we started having the debate. From there, prominent liberals and liberal organizations in the base took their opposition to its logical conclusion: Republicans are trying to take away the fragile barriers between us and the crazies with guns.
I've written on the subject of gun control measures that exclusively target the mentally ill before. In short, they're discriminatory, fear-mongering and reflect lawmakers' disturbing reliance on popular misconception over research. People with the sort of severe mental illness that the bill covered — people who could not hold a job or manage their own finances due to their illness — are not very likely to be buying a gun, but more importantly, they aren't any more likely than anyone else to be hurting anyone with one.
This is not just an easy vehicle for gun control for Democrats, either — many of them are pretty firm in their belief that discussing the mentally ill should only come in the context of threatening people with them. For example, Democrats from Bernie Sanders to Arizona representative Ruben Gallego to California Representative Ted Lieu, among others, have come at Donald Trump with the damning accusation of mental illness, as if the biggest problem with him is really that he might be "one of the crazies" rather than that he's bigoted and incompetent. Uber-liberal Bernie was also responsible for the statement that "[Americans] who are suicidal or homicidal" are the reason we need mental health reform, earning himself the unlikely distinction on this issue of "less liberal than Marco Rubio," who highlighted the need for ending stigma rather than discussing mental illness only in the context of harm to yourself or others.
When Democrats are not paying lip service to the popular and wrong-footed idea that mentally ill people are a danger to society, they are staying silent on issues that affect them. Out of the two parties, Democrats are the more likely source of mental healthcare reform, but it's not really a priority for them unless a shooting has recently taken place. Democrats can lay claim to the ACA, which pushed the fight for mental health reform forwards, but other than that, there hasn't been much in the last decade in the way of concrete assistance to mentally ill people. For a party that likes to pat itself on the back for being champions of the downtrodden and oppressed, inaction on issues of mental illness is inexcusable.
With that said, I do not believe congressional Republicans for a second when they claim that the repeal was because the measure was discriminatory. I believe they like to keep the NRA as happy as possible. They have proved that they don't care by using empty promises of mental health reform to distract from their opposition to any reasonable gun control. They have proved that by their opposition to the ACA and their state-level pushes to strip out mental health coverage from any insurance policy they can get their hands on. They have also opposed progress on LGBT issues, unemployment and disability benefits, and policing reform — all issues that directly and majorly affect the mentally ill.
The impact Republicans are having is much more negative than the impact Democrats are having. But mentally ill people deserve better from the Democratic party than being mocked and demonized in the news and ignored unless they can be used to push an agenda. Not passing bad legislation isn't the same as doing something good.
In a given year, 20 percent of adults will suffer from some kind of mental illness. That's a massive percentage of the constituency, and neither party is doing them justice — either because they don't care or because they're not doing their homework.
Either way, from either side, it's unacceptable.