In Milton’s Paradise Lost, when the fallen angels find themselves in Hell, Satan, as any good villain must, delivers a speech to his followers regarding what the political philosophy of rebellion will be. The Romantics in the late eighteenth-early nineteenth century saw Satan as the real hero of the story, and he certainly is given some of the best lines, including the one that Khan Noonien Singh refers to, but what I am interested here is Satan’s assertion that “the mind is its own place, and in it self / Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.”
This attributes a significant amount of power to the mind, and I am not going to attempt to settle the debates over free will, the soul, or the origin of consciousness here. Suffice it to say that the mind is a complex environment, one whose balance can go awry. That, by itself, may not seem all that controversial, but we live in an age in which there is a pill for everything, or so television advertising would have us believe. Unfortunately, when something is not functioning in an expected manner in the brain—that for sake of argument I am taking as the organ of the mind—identifying what, if anything, is wrong and then treating the disorder is no simple matter. Many infections can be prevented by a vaccine or, in the case of bacteria and the like, eliminated with antibiotics. A damaged artery can be stitched up if the patient gets care in time. More difficult illnesses such as diabetes or cancer require more detailed treatments that may have to continue for the rest of the patient’s life, but the causes and the relations with the rest of the body are these days generally well known. The mind, as our most complex organ whose nature, chemistry, and systems are even now not entirely understood, takes cautious intervention with various combinations of drugs and counseling to treat.
All of this preamble is to set the context for this article, one that was recommended to me by Jake Wiskerchen, a “licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a National Certified Counselor” with an interest in gun rights and the intersection of firearms ownership with mental health. He addresses this in the January 2023 edition of Concealed Carry Magazine, a publication of United States Concealed Carry Association, calling for a nuanced and active effort on the part of America’s gun owners in acknowledging the potential risks that disorders of the mind and the possession of firearms create together and in seeking solutions that do not involve the sort of ham-handed restrictions suggested by gun control advocates.
(In full disclosure, I pay for my USCCA membership, and Jake and I follow each other on Twitter. I am not being paid for this writing, and its content are solely my responsibility and under my control.)
Wiskerchen’s article strikes me as a needed message to the gun community. We often find ourselves under attack by supporters of gun control, and this adversarial relationship does not encourage either cooperation or a serious regard for the concerns of the other side. Many is the day that I see remarks to the effect that no number of deaths due to gunfire is high enough to justify any changes in gun laws or that distresses deriving from poverty or mental illness are not the commenter’s problem.
The first of those is phrased to shock, and I must point out that alarming people whose votes we need if we are to preserve the protection of gun rights is bad policy. The second is in keeping with the right-wing political ideology common to many in our community, but again, this deserves rethinking. As Wiskerchen says in his article, “Do something” is the demand on social media whenever a shooting incident gains the headlines, and it would be a predictable consequence were we to wash our hands of any responsibility and end up seeing anti-gun activists writing their solutions instead of ours into law.
So what should our solutions be? Wiskerchen is a trustee of Walk the Talk America, an organization of people knowledgeable about firearms and mental health—a sadly infrequent overlapping, if my observations of both groups are sound—who offer screening for a variety of illnesses, fliers on mental health and gun safety to include during sales, a directory of professionals who are friendly to the gun community, and courses to provide their colleagues in the field a cultural competence about those of us who own guns and care about gun rights.
That latter offering is particularly important, given the atmosphere of suspicion between the gun community and the mental health field. We gun owners are all too often treated as pariahs by psychologists and related professionals, and that attitude spills over into the popular stereotypes. One benefit of WTTA is the combination of anonymous screenings—some demographic information is requested, but not confirmed—and of counselors and the like who are aware of the concerns of the gun community—I am presuming here that this includes the need for privacy, given recent changes in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s rules related to gun ownership and mental health, but that would be something for each patient to discuss in advance of treatment.
Something I did not see addressed is cost, but that is one major endemic failing of America’s politics as a whole—our refusal to guarantee healthcare for everyone—and not the unique burden of any one organization. But I must note here that the U.S. suicide rate—a measure of one outcome of unresolved illness or debilitating life circumstances—is by no means an outlier among developed nations, nations that in many cases have universal care systems. I want to see Medicare for All enacted in the United States, but I have to admit that it would not itself be the single answer any more than strict gun control has been in the countries whose suicide rates match or exceed ours.
The hope I see here matches Wiskerchen’s view that while we cannot cure mental illness and eliminate suicide in one leap, we can take measured steps to reduce suffering and risk that do not involve the bludgeoning of restrictive laws. We can aid each other, and importantly, we can show gun control advocates that we are working on the problem.
A lot of us throw away the fliers that come with the guns we buy. If you get WTTA’s literature, keep it. Share it with others in the community, even if they show no signs of needing it. Pass the word about the website.
Many of us see gun ownership as a declaration of personal agency, of taking responsibility for our own safety and freedom. We shape the places that our minds will be. But sometimes, we need help to put things in order, and if we will not do it together, others will step in. We owe it to the community to find our own solutions.
Excellent article than lands exactly where WTTA wants guns owners to be:
“Many of us see gun ownership as a declaration of personal agency, of taking responsibility for our own safety and freedom. We shape the places that our minds will be. But sometimes, we need help to put things in order, and if we will not do it together, others will step in. We owe it to the community to find our own solutions.”