I was distraught reading about the Apalachee High School shooting in northern Georgia that took the lives of two teachers and two students and injured nine others. This incident happened when classes were in session. What made the whole matter worse was the shooter being only 14 years old, and at that young age, he used an AR-15 to kill his fellow schoolmates, according to investigators.

The usual speeches about prayers for the victims and the injured have followed. Pure evil has been identified and condemned. Wreaths have been laid at the school. Vigils will happen. Law enforcement and politicians will say that love will triumph, and everyone involved will overcome. I say such expedient healing, importuned in prayers during vigils and through platitudinous speeches will not happen.

The wounds, like war wounds, will remain raw for a long time in that community and others like it, subjected to mass casualties across the United States. The trauma and the fear will persist in children exposed to these killings. Their faith in humanity will be eroded. They will become hypervigilant, have nightmares, fear going to school and be suspicious of their own peers. How can children who experience school shootings trust the adults who allow these events to happen regularly, who seem helpless to prevent the shootings and safeguard them?

In January, before the Iowa Caucuses, there was a school shooting in that state. A 17-year-old gunman, Dylan Butler, shot and killed a sixth grader in his school and injured five others. After that incident Donald Trump said, “It is just horrible. So surprising to see it here. But have to get over it, we have to move forward.” It was the callous and idiotic statement of a man in the pockets of the gun lobby and the National Rifle Association. After that incident, Nikki Haley said on X, formerly Twitter, that her heart aches for the victims, and Vivek Ramaswamy called for prayers on the same medium. That sickened me.

With this latest incident in Georgia, the mental health of the shooter will be blamed, and evil will be invoked by Republican politicians to explain what came to pass in Apalachee High School. But voters, come November, should remember that most Republican politicians oppose strong red flag laws, safe gun storage laws, universal background checks, banning of assault weapons and they stand with the NRA against firearms regulation. This has remained true even after Trump was the victim of an assassination attempt by a shooter.

Republicans readily say mass shooters are mentally ill and yet they do not support community mental health programs. Psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors and other mental health professionals have overwhelming caseloads following the pandemic, and they are often paid poorly by insurance companies. The country urgently needs an expansion of community mental health programs, and insurance companies must cover the cost of ongoing, long-term care for mental illnesses placing them on par with physical ailments.

It is also important to recognize that most mentally ill people are not violent. They are decent people struggling in an environment that does not understand them, favor them or support them. Republicans conveniently scapegoating the mentally ill for America’s school shootings and mass shootings is reprehensible.

— Usha Nellore, Bel Air