Donald Trump’s High-Caliber Hypocrisy on Mental Health and Guns

When a white guy shoots up a church or a country music festival, Donald Trump says the problem is the person, not the weapon. “This isn’t a guns situation,” he said after the Sutherland Springs slaughter. “Mental health is your problem here.” But he’s done nothing as president to make it harder for the mentally ill to get guns—quite the contrary. “Seems to me, this is one thing we can all agree on, no guns for the mentally ill,” says DJ Jaffe, founder and executive director of Mental Illness Policy Organization. Jaffe was blogging for The Hill newspaper on the gun issue last year when the Trump campaign contacted him and asked for policy recommendations. He was thrilled when Sam Clovis, Trump’s policy director, told him the campaign had adopted some of his suggestions in the party’s platform. One had to do with guns and the mentally ill, the other with helping parents get around privacy regulations to help adult children. “And then within 90 days (of winning the election), they make it easier for the mentally ill to get a gun,” Jaffe told The Daily Beast.