Roy Blunt Right on Direction After Sandy Hook, but...

I was impressed that Senator Roy Blunt decided to look away from the issue of guns after the Sandy Hook tragedy. Blunt told the Springfield News-Leader:

“I intend to spend most of my personal energy on looking at the real gaps in the mental health system,” Blunt told reporters in his weekly conference call. He noted that other recent mass shootings involved gunmen who had been identified as mentally or emotionally troubled, but warning flags were never communicated to law enforcement officials.

There’s a “common thread” in these massacres involving “people who are known to be a threat or believed to be a threat (and) who have been banned from places, but no one appears to be notified of that,” Blunt said.

Earlier in the week, Blunt made it clear that he did not think curbing access to guns was the way to prevent mass shootings. Nor, he suggested, could any such measures win support in Congress.

“I’m sure I would vote against anything that impacts, in a negative way, the Second Amendment,” Blunt said Monday during an event in Missouri. “These laws are not going to change in the near future.”

Blunt is definitely in the right direction; however, I am left to wonder if Senator Blunt will head far enough in that direction or if this is just a soundbite. Yes, it is true these mass murderers suffer from mental illness. They as well have a history of using legal psychotropic drugs which Time Magazine noted are often make their users more aggressive and violent. Is Roy Blunt ready to open that can of worms?

To speculate on that issue, I thought it would be best to look at Senator Blunt's relationship with Big Pharma. I mean it's easy to point the finger at mental illness, but Big Pharmaceutical is a multi-billion dollar industry with lots of influence in Washington, DC, and an army of attorneys. What is Blunt's past relationships with Big Pharma lobbyists and insiders been like in the past?

It didn't take long to find a key connection to Blunt and Big Pharma. Roy Blunt's son Andy is a BigPharma lobbyists. Andrew has lobbied in the past for Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Blunt's House career shows millions of dollars in donations from Big Pharma, while his brief two-yearSenate career shows over $640,000 in campaign donations from pharmaceutical companies, which makes the list of top industries giving money to Blunt.

These two examples are probably enough evidence little will change in Blunt's mind when it comes to researching the aggressive nature of patients taking psychotropic drugs.