This Tuesday, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders once again linked the recent mass shooting at Umqua Community College to mental illness. This wasn’t the first time Sanders has conflated the two issues and that makes me nervous. Mental health policy based on the assumption that mentally ill people are more likely to murder others is not only untrue, but heaps stigma onto an already vulnerable population. The day of the massacre, Bernie Sanders appeared on MSNBC. One of the first policy positions he took on the subject was that people who are mentally ill should not be able to own guns. Personally, I don’t have any desire to own a gun, but it’s utterly fallacious to lump disabled people and violent criminals together without even a pause. In the … Continue Reading ››