Ben Jackson, anti-NRA activist, writes that Trump and the NRA are lying when they say that mental illness is the primary cause of mass shootings. Easy access to deadly weapons is the main cause of mass shootings.

He writes in the Boston Globe that Trump is just echoing the NRA line, at the same time that he is restricting access to treatment for mental illness!

Depending on your definition of “mass shooting,” there have been between 250 and 300 mass shootings in the United States in 2019. We know some of their names: El Paso, Gilroy, Dayton, Virginia Beach. Others pass in relative silence, part of the susurrus of gunfire, sirens, and funeral bells of the American soundscape. They disappear, and government moves on to its next failure.

And once again the National Rifle Association and the politicians it supports are trying to drive the narrative that mental health is the root cause of these shootings. On Aug. 9, in a typically breathtaking spray of self-aggrandizement on the White House lawn, Donald Trump said, “A gun doesn’t pull the trigger — a sick mind pulls the trigger” and “I don’t want crazy people to have guns.” But mental health isn’t an issue in most mass shootings, and this tired trope is the pinnacle of deadly hypocrisy from those intent on avoiding the true causes of preventable gun violence in America.

Studies of mass shooters tell the true story: Only between 20 and 25 percent of mass shooters have a diagnosed mental illness. The data simply do not back up the new twist on the NRA’s old cliché: “Guns don’t kill people; crazy people kill people.” And falling for this narrative is deadly.

While it’s true that people with severe mental illness are slightly more likely to have violent tendencies, they are far, far more likely to be the victims of violent attacks . And the rhetoric from the president, his NRA masters, and those who do not want to address the core cause of gun violence — namely the easy availability of guns in America — further stigmatizes and victimizes those with these terrible diseases.

But let’s try, for a moment, to think like the president and disregard the overwhelming evidence disproving his basic thesis. Instead, let’s incorrectly presume that mental health problems are the cause of mass shootings and that the mentally ill are a danger to those of us lucky enough not to be afflicted with serious mental illness.

Why then would you work so hard to remove access to effective, affordable mental health?