Critique #1 "Talking about mental health after mass shootings is a cop-out"

  I will be critiquing a commentary on the Washington Post website called, "Talking about mental health after mass shootings is a cop-out" by Fareed Zakaria. This commentary was published in response to the mass shooting that unfolded in Las Vegas. The author argues how Mental Health is often used as a "cop-out" after a tragic event in order to avoid more important issues, such as gun violence. He makes the argument that the Government is focusing too much on mental health, when they should be focusing on stricter gun laws. I feel he is targeting politicians, maybe even the President, since he is critiquing the president's discussion of the shooter's sanity. Zakaria claims that discussion of the shooter's mental health is "a distortion of the facts and a cop-out as to the necessary response." I agree with Zakaria's logic due to evidence that was provided by the U.S. Government, evidence that the shooter had no history of mental illness. The shooter's mental health shouldn't play into consideration for a motive due to this fact. Zakaria makes a valid point that "evil is not crazy" and how the shooter was purely evil, not clinically insane. The author goes on to state how people with mental illnesses are "more often victims of violence than perpetrators." But he fails to provide evidence such as statistics or factual information that supports this claim. He only says that "Mental-health issues are correlated to suicides far more closely than they are to homicides." Zakaria goes on to state how the U.S. leads other countries in gun-related deaths. This claim is supported by evidence of Statistics and how "the gun-related death rate in the United States is 10 times that of other advanced industrial countries." Another main focal point in his commentary is how the U.S. should implement stronger restrictions on gun control. Zakaria speaks of gun control and how it is important to stop ongoing gun violence in America today. I feel that he is failing to address an important point throughout his argument. Although gun control restrictions may potentially stop gun violence, it won't stop overall violence in general. Stricter gun laws won't stop people from finding ways to obtain guns illegally and will never stop evil people from committing violent crimes. Zakaria says, "When you consider America's stubborn inaction in the face of this continuing and preventable epidemic of gun violence- I sometimes wonder if it is all of us Americans who are crazy." I think this statement is ironic considering how people truly are crazy and/or evil. With that, violent crimes are inevitable in the world. Gun control restrictions won't stop evil people from doing evil things. They will resort to other ways to harm people using other methods of violence. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Gun control is a minor fix to a major problem.