MENTALLY DISTURBED

February 16, 2018

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,

101 Main Street #380

Huntington Beach, CA 92648

Dear Congressman,

Re: Mentally disturbed

I confess that I am weary and discouraged today, and not only because I am still suffering the aftereffects of what was billed as “very minor” surgery yesterday. I am weary and discouraged after viewing and reading news about the latest atrocity in America’s schools. Yesterday, in anger, I reposted that image of you mugging for the camera with heavy weaponry. It quite honestly disgusted me that you would choose to make sport of so dark a stain on our American culture.

I’ll be brief. I want to ask if you, too, are complicit in the latest Republican talking point about gun violence; it used to be clichés like “guns don’t kill…”; now the words “mentally disturbed” are on everyone’s lips, including the president’s. It is as though the repetition this shibboleth could absolve lawmakers like yourself from the responsibility to take even the most minimal of actions in the face of the daily slaughter on American streets and even in its schoolrooms. It also conveniently skips over the fact that it was your Donald Trump whose (first?) act in the Oval Office was to sign a reversal of the directive signed by President Obama to make it harder for the “mentally disturbed” to have access to lethal weapons.

I believe that Trump’s budget also slashes funds to benefit the “mentally disturbed.” Is that something you support?

Awaiting your words and, more significantly, your actions on behalf of simple sanity, I remain,

Respectfully,

Peter Clothier, Ph.D.