Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
While our Tea-Publican controled Arizona legislature is busy making idolatrous gun worship the official state religion of Arizona, it has refused to do anything to address mental health issues that are often at the heart of gun violence. The Tucson Weekly reported, Tucson Lawmakers' Bill to Boost Mental Health Services Dies:
A bill that aimed to give Tucson a sense of closure after the January 2011 shooting died last week . . .
HB 2570, by Rep. Ethan Orr (R-Tucson) and Rep. Victoria Steele (D-Tucson) aimed to increase community awareness of mental health issues by taking $250,000 from the general fund to expand the Arizona Department of Health Services’ Mental Health First Aid program.
The bill passed out of the House (54-4) smoothly, but it didn’t get on the agenda for the Senate Health and Human Services Committee in time because the committee's chair, Sen. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, didn't like the bill's cost. Orr said he met Barto, R-Phoenix, and chatted about her concerns. Orr said he was willing to amend the bill so that it was only a symbolic call to support for more mental health awareness in hopes of hammering out more funding for the program in coming budget talks.
The only trick was that there wasn’t enough time to get that amendment in, Orr said, so he offered to make changes by the time the bill got to the Senate Appropriations Committee. After talking with Barto, Orr and Steele got consent from everyone on the committee to add the bill to the agenda late. Because of the bill's tardiness to the agenda all committee members had to approve in order to hear the bill.
Everyone was on board until it came time to actually hear the bill.
In committee, Kimberly Yee, R-Phoenix, asked if the bill had been amended and since it hadn’t she asked if she could pull her consent. Sen. Judy Burges, R-Sun City West, followed suit, effectively killing the bill.
So the bill got "teabagged" by two teabaggers.
The setback hit Orr much harder than he expected. Orr was visibly shaken the day after the bill was sacked:
He was emotional when Tucson Weekly first spoke to him about what happened, noting that he needed to take time to compose himself, stating that it was “Gabby’s bill.”
And there it is . . . If Orr was telling his Tea-Publican colleagues that this was “Gabby’s bill,” that alone was reason enough for them to kill this bill out of spite because of Giffords' and her husband Mark Kelly's active role in Americans for Responsible Solutions public campaign for gun-safety laws in Congress. They will never say so publicly. You can bet the Tea Party and gun lobby were behind this. Orr is a naive young man.
“Many people from Southern Arizona, myself included, saw this as a way to help people get closure for what happened and to do our small part to make sure it never happens again,” Orr said.
“We all suffer from PTSD a little bit,” Orr said. “These were our friends. I didn’t start out emotionally attached to this bill, I thought it was good policy, bipartisan and I love it, but it became to me my way of honoring my friends that were dead.”
The people you choose to associate with in the Tea-Publican Party do not share your views, Mr. Orr. Maybe you should consider pulling a "Kozachik."