John Oliver On Mental Health & The Oregon Massacre

Mediaite recaps last night’s show:

“Perhaps the clearest sign of how little we want to talk about mental health is that one of the only times it’s brought up is, as we’ve seen yet again this week, in the aftermath of a mass shooting, as a means of steering the conversation away from gun control,” Oliver said. After playing clips of Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Mike Huckabee blaming a broken mental health system, and not guns, for the constant gun massacres in this country, he added, “It seems there is nothing like a mass shooting to suddenly spark political interest mental health.” But, as Oliver proceeded to explain, the aftermath of a shooting may be the “worst time” to talk about this complex issue, because “the vast majority of mentally ill people are non-violent and the vast majority of gun violence is committed by non-mentally ill people.”