August 16, 2019-Trump misses the blazingly obvious reason we know mental illness doesn’t cause mass shootings

Donald Trump has a cycle after a mass shooting: First he pretends he might embrace some new gun safety laws, and then he backs away. After El Paso and Dayton and Gilroy, we’ve now reached the backing-away stage, and it’s a doozy.

Sure, “We’re looking at the whole gun situation,” Trump told reporters Thursday, before pivoting quickly. “I do want people to remember the words ‘mental illness.’ These people are mentally ill. . . . I think we have to start building institutions again because, you know, if you look at the ’60s and ’70s, so many of these institutions were closed.” Read more