While talking about gun control, Coach Walz talked about how other countries handle it.
“I’ve spent time in Finland and seen some Finnish schools. They don’t have this happen even though they have a high gun ownership rate in the country. There are reasonable things that we can do to make a difference. It’s not infringing on your Second Amendment,” he said.
Vance used the opportunity to use one of the more insidious right wing talking points — namely, that nice white countries just don’t have our problems.
“Okay, first of all, we have way higher rates of mental health abuse or mental health substance abuse. We have way higher rates of depression, way higher rates of anxiety. We, unfortunately, have a mental health crisis in this country that I really do think that we need to get to the root causes of because I don’t think it’s the whole reason why we have such a bad gun violence problem. But I do think it’s a big piece of it.
“Another driver of the gun violence epidemic, especially that affecting our kids. It doesn’t earn as many headlines, but is the terrible gun violence problem in a lot of our big cities.“
