THE MADNESS OF ELLIOT RODGERS

  Here we go again. Another crazy person goes on a shooting rampage and the left targets guns as the culprit. I know a little something about mental illness. My father could have won an award for the best father in the world for the first nine years of my life. He took us fishing, swimming, and hunting. Daddy taught me how to play baseball and never missed one game or practice. We did everything together. Then he began to act weird and his drinking increased to the point that he stayed drunk a lot. I didn't want to be around him anymore. Because I wanted my old dad back I asked him to get help one night when he was drinking but still lucid enough to understand me. He agreed and checked himself into a local sanitarium and it seemed to help him for a while but soon he would relapse and check himself back into a sanitarium in order to dry out. This cycle lasted for several years until one day my mother and I returned home to find my father incoherent and close to death after taking an overdose of pills. We called an ambulance and his life was saved after having his stomach pumped. 

  He was committed to what was then called Madison sanitarium where he received electroshock treatments  Shortly after he was released my younger brother and I woke up to the sound of a struggle in my parents bedroom. My father was strangling my mother with one hand while trying to hit her with a nightstick. Our screams of terror seem to bring my father to his senses and he fell back on the bed holding his head in his hand. My mother realized something had to be done so she walked the streets of Nashville looking for two doctors who would sign the commitment papers to place my father in the state mental hospital. In the meantime we moved in with my grandparents. My father was a druggist and owned two drugstores but my mother had to work in his place to keep the store we operated going. On January 16, 1963 my mother woke me up for school and while I was getting ready I spotted my father who had a blank expression on his face and I remembered being kind of startled by it. I was upset with my mom that morning which was rare for me because I worshiped the ground she walked on, and I walked out without kissing her. Something I have regretted ever since. 

  My father took us to school without speaking the whole way. He returned home and about 10:05 that morning, while my mother was sleeping, placed a nine shot 22 caliber pistol just behind  her left ear and fired three shots killing her and the unborn baby she was carrying. He then placed the gun to his head and shot himself in the right temple. My grandmother heard the shots, and discovered their bodies. She suffered the first of five heart attacks two days after their funeral and would die after the fifth heart attack one year and ten days later on January 26, 1964. My brothers ninth birthday. In my mind daddy killed four people that day. I am not telling this story to shock, or to gain sympathy but to make the point that I have never once blamed that gun for what happened. In normal times daddy had to carry a lot of money for bank drops late at night and he owned several guns for protection and regularly carried them. As a society our focus is on the wrong thing. Daddy had been treated for mental illness for several years and he progressively grew worse. With all the red flags that my father sent up the last thing on my mind that morning or anybody's mind was murder-suicide.

  As Jesus said the poor will always be with us. I got news for you, that also goes for the mentally ill and just plain old bad guys. We need to declare war on gun free zones and eliminate them.. People like myself who are prior military and have had extensive law enforcement and firearms training and have had extensive background checks, firearms instructors, and retired law enforcement should be able to carry guns just about anywhere. We should promote firearms training in schools along with firearms safety courses. We can also teach kids and adults things they can do to defeat an active shooter when guns are not available.  Qualified teachers should be armed. If we reduce the number of soft targets with target rich environments then we will go a long way toward protecting people and the bad guys will experience the law of diminishing returns. 

  Another thing is that we need to take a hard look at the psycotropic drugs being prescribed to these people. Most if not all of these shootings are linked to these drugs. The influence of violent video games would be another thing to look at.  I know the things I suggest are probably not going to happen because the left will continue to milk this issue for everything it is worth. They will continue to coldly capitalize on the grief of others every time one of these shootings occur. I know something about what these loved ones are feeling right now who lost children and siblings. Nothing that the Democrats have proposed in the area of anti-gun legislation will ever stop this carnage. Ridding ourselves of gun free zones is a great step in the right direction.