Daily Lessons from Life 18 February 2018 -Shanmugam again!!

Tomorrow all eyes n ears will be on Finance Minister Heng's FY2019 Speech. More on that later...

"Wrong to blame mass shootings on mental health: K Shanmugam

SINGAPORE: Mental health issues are not to be blamed for the proliferation of mass shootings in the United States, Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam said in a Facebook post on Sunday (Feb 18).

The US is "a great country that cannot protect its most innocent – young children in school", he wrote.

"It’s wrong to blame mental health. There are people with mental health issues in every country, including Singapore. America is not alone in having such people."

Mr Shanmugam was commenting days after 17 people at a Florida high school were killed in the deadliest shooting at a US high school. Alleged shooter Nikolas Cruz, 19, was armed with an assault rifle, reports said.

There have been eight school shootings and at least 30 mass shootings in the US within the seven weeks since the year started, he added.

The Member of Parliament for Nee Soon GRC said he has met mentally unstable people at meet-the-people sessions who were "full of anger, wanting to hit out at someone".

"If they had access to assault rifles, which can mow down dozens in a minute, I can imagine what might happen," he wrote.

While the majority of Americans want gun control, a strong lobby for those who want free access to guns have channelled money to congressmen and other influential persons, he said.

"They can block any legislation that seeks to control people from buying assault rifles," Mr Shanmugam wrote.

"It baffles me that people are freely allowed to buy submachine guns, in an urban environment.""

It probably is part of his assignment to be the FB of PAP cabinet n MPs as he seems to speak on a lot of issues.

Absolutely the mentally unhealthy peroson(s) who hv a violent inclination as determined or diagnosed by clinical psychologists or professionals having access to automatic assault weapons can do great harm for sure. So, it is obviously barking up the wrong tree to point the root cause as "mental health" issue in the USA!!

In Sgp, we did hv a few reported cases of mentally unwell persons who killed someone with a pair of scissors or a knife. Sad n u fortunate cases as some of the victims just happened to be around!!

In the USA, the right to bear arms has been twisted so much that "normal" persons can hv dozen of rapid fire assault weapons that theoretically should only be required in a war zone or battlefields where trained armed forces legitimately get to try to kill each other. 

The argument of civilians armed can deter democratically elected politicians from becoming "dictators" is too far fetched yet accepted!! In this aspect, it is hard to take USA people seriously! If such an argument can be accepted, they just hv to continue to deal with random periodical mass killing of the innocents in their own country. 

Yes. One cannot pin such senseless killing on mental health. The root cause is the assault weapons stupid!!