Poll: More voters want action on mental health than guns

Americans want something done in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn. last week, and a plurality favors emphasizing mental health issues according to a new Rasmussen poll. 

Forty-eight percent of the 1,000 respondents in Rasmussen’s telephone poll, conducted December 17-18, believe that more action on mental health issues would help prevent such mass murders in the future.

The alleged shooter, twenty-year-old Adam Lanza, may have had mental health issues. Fox News reported that his mother and first victim, Nancy Lanza, was making efforts to have her son committed to a psychiatric facility, and that this may have been a motive for the spree.

 In contrast, 27 percent of respondents favor tightening gun laws, with another 15 percent want to limit violent movies and video games. Ten percent were undecided on the issue.

The massacre in Newtown has sparked a national debate over firearms and mental health, and President Obama has formed a working group that will bring him recommendations on “real reforms” by the end of January.

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