It blows me away that after the Las Vegas massacre of over 500 people wounded and 58 dead that there are those who don’t want to try and stop this madness. Curtail is a better word. We’ll never ‘stop’ this insanity, but we should try to slow it. It’s time to try. It also blows me away that immediately the focus is on the gun, when the shooter is the problem. The background checks have the gaping holes.

 It hit me after Columbine that something was amiss in the realm of public safety. That was 18 years ago in April of 1999. The Sandy Hook murders in Newtown, Connecticut put an exclamation point on the situation. How can you watch all these acts of evil and insist on doing the same thing, nothing?

 Mass shooting after mass shooting after mass shooting and say, “No, we don’t need to do anything differently.” That’s insane! Why would you keep doing the same thing and expect the situation to improve? The 2 major weaknesses in background checks are on mental health and substance abuse.  

For some absurd reason the form you fill out relies on the self reporting of the individual! Let’s see, the drunk is going to admit he has a problem with alcohol?? The insane person is going to admit he’s insane?? Maybe not…

Nitwits like those on Twitter believe nothing should change. They act like any change is permanent and for all time. They have this incredible “can’t do” attitude. This won’t work, that won’t work, bullshit! I noticed the day after this carnage that no one at work talked about it or even mentioned it! Have we become that numb to all this?

A 10 question mental health test seems easy enough to institute. A couple of hundred versions randomly sequenced and constantly changing would seem to foot the bill. The tougher “test” would be on substance abuse. DUI’s need to start to count against the gun applicant. Along with domestic abuse calls. Drunk and disorderly citations. But beyond that it becomes tough to identify en masse the obvious lush like Stephen Paddock. But it is time to try.

Jim Roach