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On the most recent episode of “Last Week Tonight,” John Oliver pointed out how foolish it is to blame gun violence on mental illness — and then deftly pivoted into a discussion on how desperately we need better mental healthcare in this country.
His most striking stat, which comes from a study that cited the National Center for Health Statistics, is that of the 120,000 gun-related deaths between 2001 to 2010 in the US, fewer than 5% were caused by people with mental illness.
Yet politicians consistently point to this country’s mental health problem as the driving cause behind gun violence and mass shootings.
Rebecca Harrington 