The left wants America to believe we're drowning in a “gun crisis,” but the grim truth is becoming inescapable: this is a mental health crisis—and the media and so-called experts are too afraid to confront it.
Mere weeks before Robert “Robin” Westman, the 23-year-old who identified as transgender, slaughtered two children during morning mass at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, CNN literally sought to downplay the connection between mass shootings and mental health issues.
“Suspects in several recent high-profile attacks were described as having mental health problems, but experts say that doesn’t mean their mental health issues are to blame for the killings,” wrote CNN’s Jen Christensen. “No mental health system is built to catch such rare and explosive crimes, experts said. But the potential solution is one that many politicians won’t have the stomach to address: limiting access to guns.”
I don’t need to tell you the absurdity of blaming guns for gun crime. It’s a tired old talking point from the left. But it is beyond disturbing to think that CNN was able to find experts who were so willing to dismiss the connections between mental health problems and mass violence.
“Often we tell the mental illness story because it’s the most obvious or fits into our stereotypes and if we focus only on that, then we’re missing all of these other factors which are much more predictive of mass shootings,” Dr. Jonathan Metzl, the director of the Department of Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt University, told Christensen.
“Having a mental health problem is not predictive of mass shootings,” he added. “Many have symptoms of mental illness, that’s definitely true, but that’s a different argument than saying that mental illness caused the mass shooting.”
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But that misses the point entirely. The real issue is that people battling serious mental illness often struggle with the most basic moral compass—understanding right from wrong. That’s an inconvenient truth for the left, which is why they dance around it. Yet as transgender mass shooters have become more frequent, the connection has grown too glaring to dismiss.
I’ve reported before on the disturbing correlation between being transgender and involvement in mass shootings. Westman’s case tragically fits the pattern. The manifesto left behind wasn’t just a rant; it was a window into a tortured psyche filled with self-loathing, confusion over gender identity, depression, violent fantasies, and even admiration for past mass shooters. Instead of getting treatment, his family “affirmed” his delusion. That didn’t make him better or happier. It just made his problems worse.
This wasn’t about easy access to firearms. It was about the mental illness that went unaddressed and unchecked, spiraling toward tragedy. The same thing happened with Audrey Hale, the Covenant school shooter.
Here’s the bottom line: Don’t let the media or the politicos gaslight the public. Robert Westman, Audrey Hale, and other mass shooters are stark reminders that America faces a mental health crisis, not a gun crisis. Until the focus shifts to treating the illness instead of affirming it, the trauma and loss will only continue. Innocent lives hang in the balance, and ignoring the root cause won’t make it go away.
