SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – The tragic mass shooting at a Texas elementary school on Tuesday has the entire country in an uproar, leading to many – including President Joe Biden – to urgently call for new restrictions on firearms.
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But Mayor Don McLaughlin of Uvalde, Texas, where the shooting at Robb Elementary School took place, is taking a different approach.
Instead of seeing the shooting as a consequence of the country's loose gun control laws, he has instead blamed the lack of mental health care in rural America as the cause of the tragedy.
The community is broken, after 19 school children and two adults were murdered at their elementary school on Tuesday, said McLaughlin.
But he said the residents of Uvalde will support each other through this horrible tragedy. "We'll be there for each other, this is such a tragedy for these families – my heart’s broken for these families," he said. "I'm a grown man, I've cried more today than I have in a long time."
McLaughlin's sadness is mixed with anger, not only at the act of senseless violence but also at the lack of mental health services available in rural areas like Uvalde, which he believes is a factor in the tragedy.
According to McLaughlin, residents of his city have to travel 600 to 700 miles for access to a bed in a psychiatric facility.
"We need to quit kicking the can down the road and realize we've got a problem in America," he said. "Nobody wants to step up to the plate and address it."
While the lack of mental health services is an issue in parts of the United States, it does not factor into how common gun violence is in the country, where on an average day, more than 35 people are murdered with a gun, and only a fraction of these crimes are committed by people suffering from some form of mental illness.
And last year alone, guns killed about 45,000 Americans, a much higher homicide rate than any other developed country.
McLaughlin did acknowledge that the easy availability of guns is also part of the problem, adding that he is open to tougher background checks for purchasing firearms.
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