Republican Ohio Sen. Rob Portman asserted that “no law” can fix the fundamental mental and spiritual problems that lead people to murder.
During a Sunday press conference about the mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, in which nine people were killed and 27 injured, Portman urged Americans to look for the deeper reasons why life is increasingly not valued.
“We should also, of course, as we figure out what happened here, learn lessons from it, just as we need to learn lessons from others,” Portman said. “Are there more things that could be done? I’m sure there are.”
“But I will say there’s something deeper going on here,” Portman warned, pointing to the skyrocketing rates of suicide, drug addiction, and other symptoms of despair. He described Ohio as “ground zero” of the opioid epidemic.
“If you look at the mental health crisis in our country today, there aren’t enough laws, and in fact no law can correct some of the more fundamental cultural problems we face today as a country,” Portman continued. “And the shooting last night is an indication of that. So I look forward to working together with my colleagues to try to respond in the most effective way possible, but we also have to look deep into our hearts and figure out, ‘How could someone point a gun at someone he had never seen or known and pull the trigger?'”
According to numbers released in June by the National Center for Health Statistics, the suicide rate in the U.S. has jumped 33% in the past 20 years, hovering at its highest since World War II. Among deaths from drug overdoses, the so-called Rust Belt states face a crisis, with Ohio suffering 46.3 drug overdose deaths per 100,000 people, according to the Commonwealth Fund.
