CARLTON FLETCHER: Let the experts advocate for the mentally ill

That gun butt felt so smooth and warn cradled in your palm. Your childhood cried out in your head, “They mean to do you harm.”

— Elton John

We do like to grasp at straws when we know that the tide is turning against us.

What I’ve heard and read so many people say in the aftermath of the latest gun-related mass murder in Parkland, Fla., is that we as a country have to identify the mentally ill in our midst and make sure they don’t get guns. Which begs the question: How many among us would have to turn in our weapons given that criteria?

The call to crack down on gun ownership by the mentally ill started with wonderful groups like NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Since their reason for existing involves diagnosis and treatment of the mentally ill, NAMI officials know all too well the potential for danger that exists with some among the millions afflicted with mental illnesses in our country — the diagnosed and the undiagnosed — having access to weapons.

Theirs has been a voice of reason and genuine concern heard above the histrionics of groups that declare that the mere mention of gun control is a call to purchase and store even more weapons and others who say guns and gun violence would magically disappear if we outlawed them.

However, since the recent horrific shooting at a Florida high school seems to have awakened a growing number of people to the fact that gun violence has gotten out of hand in this country — the mass murder of a large group of 5-, 6- and 7-year-olds at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., in 2012 not quite doing the trick — everyone has jumped on the mental illness bandwagon, so to speak.

The PR arm of groups like the National Rifle Association, after quickly dispersing its “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and “I guess the left will want to outlaw cars now because someone ran over someone else and killed them” and “if only some of those school kids or their 98-pound English Lit teacher had been packing heat, they would have stopped that gunman” talking points, quickly tried to assimilate the mental illness argument into their propaganda.

Sorry, but having trained counselors talk about the importance of keeping mentally ill patients away from weapons of violence is going to have just a tad bit more credibility than some zealot who thinks pointing fingers at mentally ill individuals will keep the evil forces of “government” from swooping in with nuclear weapons and trying to take their Glock. (I say “trying” because, as we know, “Nobody will ever take my by god guns from me!”)

Why don’t we all just step back for a moment and take a breath. Two things:

1) Gun control and weapons confiscation are different things. Those of you talking up gun control with the mindset that it’s the first step in implementing a weapons ban are delusional. Weapons are encoded in America’s DNA, from the wild, wild West to the various underground militia movements to the gang-bangers who run drugs throughout the country to the hunters who enjoy matching wits with creatures of the wild. If guns were important enough to be listed among our constitutional rights, they ain’t going anywhere.

2) Authorizing some kind of governmental control on the number and kinds of weapons and ammunition that are allowed to be purchased and requiring a stringent background check on purchasers does not mean some secret cabal is going to come like a thief in the night and confiscate your armory. It only means there will be at least an attempt to keep people like the sick monsters who have killed scores of innocent people in recent years from getting their hands on the kinds of weapons that allow them to carry out their devastating deeds.

As for the mentally ill: By all means let’s make keeping them away from weapons a part of the process. But let’s let the experts advocate for them. Trying to use them as scapegoats to divert attention away from your personal agenda only shows how low groups and individuals are willing to sink to hang on to the status quo, no matter the consequences.