Tiffany Bond  🦞 🇺🇸Verified account

Solution set 1 - mental health. We have a real mental health issue in this country. We don't know how to handle it. Right now our solutions have been to mostly ignore it, self-medicate, and criminalize it. Those totally don't work. At all. Not even a bit.

Without figuring out how to improve this issue we have a whole lot of problems that aren't going away - from violence in society to those "lazy jerks" wanting food stamps who really have undiagnosed and untreated disabilities. Good news! We have a lot we can throw at this one.

We can... Expand healthcare access Remove barriers to treatment Add universal prek Increase IEP funding Examine how, why, and for how long we jail *insert literally at least dozens of other options here*

Solution set 2 - keeping the guns from the bad guys. We have some laws about this. We need to be examining them and figuring out where the cracks are and how to fill those cracks. We also need to have a long, hard conversation with ourselves about the people we cover for.

You've done it, haven't you? Covered for someone when you knew you shouldn't because you like them and/or need them. We don't need to become a society that taddles on everyone for everything, but we do *need* to stop covering for people we know will hurt others on purpose.

It's going to take a mix of removing barriers, making it ok to ask for help, and to stop thinking we are somehow being the jerks for stepping up. Who hasn't had a moment with a friend at some point in our lives where we realized that needed WAY MORE than an ear and a hug?

We do a lot of shrugging and saying hindsight is 20/20...we have pretty much all had moments where our in the moment vision didn't betray us, but our well-intentioned loyalties did. It's time to stop that.