Mental Health Awareness in the Gun Community

I wanna talk to you for a minute about mental health awareness inside of the gun community. Now you may have seen this bracelet that I've been wearing or seen the Walk the Talk America logo on their arms or on the lapels or even on the websites of many industry leaders inside of the firearms community because we've been talking a lot about the importance of recognizing that mental health should be a concern of all responsible gun owners. Just like you wanna take care of yourself physically, you need to take care of yourself, your family, and your friends mentally as well. Now of course, one of the problems with mental health discussions inside of the gun community is that there is a fear that mental health professionals or the mental health community generally tend to lead towards the pro-gun control side of defense. That may be true but still we're all talking about gun responsibility. Walk the Talk America was founded by Mike Sodini, good friend and business partner of mine in 2018. And the mission really revolves around raising awareness about mental health issues and getting resources to the people inside of the gun community. One of the things that we're doing is offering free and anonymous screenings at wtta.org, wtta.org/love, or just go to wtta.org and click on the Screenings tab and you'll see a whole list of different types of mental health issues that you can take an online screen again, anonymously. And you can not only figure out where you may be on a scale whether you have no issues at all, you have a mild issue, or maybe you have a very serious issue for which you should seek treatment, you're also gonna get some resources both online and in your community, and that entire process is powered by our collaborator, Mental Health America. Now Mental Health America is the organization within the mental health community that we picked to work with because they are a rights organization. They are all about the rights of those people who are living with mental illnesses. They've been around for over 100 years fighting to defend the rights of people who are suffering or living with or seeking treatment or maybe recovered from mental illness issues. And what that means is, they're here to help protect the rights of you, if you're a gun owner, they recognize that gun ownership is a civil right and it needs to be protected just like any other right even if you are suffering from mental illness. Now that's not to say there aren't some people who absolutely don't need firearms in their lives. Certainly that's usually a temporary situation but it might be a long-term situation and that's important to acknowledge. All of us in the firearms community that are responsible gun owners acknowledge that suicide prevention and different issues inside of the mental health world like dementia, or maybe coming on or off different drugs that may affect your mood or affect your judgment, these are critical issues that we need to talk about. And the problem is, if we don't talk about them, then it will absolutely be the people who are anti-gun or pro-gun control, who will be talking about them and establishing policy and making laws that will work against us. They will weaponize mental health issues if we don't get involved in the conversation. So the first thing I want you to think about, is heading over to wtta.org and learning more about mental health issues and the way gun ownership is affected by them. I also want you to consider taking some of those online screenings, or maybe recommending them to friends that you think may need different types of assistance or help that will be available to them through our website and through our collaborators in the mental health community. Mental health and firearms is an important issue that gun owners need to be talking about.