'BradCast' 10/3/2017 (Guest: Author, journalist Art Levine)
Some good news following the Sunday night massacre in Las Vegas, which killed 59 and wounded more than 550 others in a hail of automatic weapon fire rained down from a casino onto concert-goers on the streets below: the House GOP has postponed legislation to make silencers easier to purchase! For a while, anyway. Other than that, it's either 'premature' to discuss legislative changes to help curb America's 30,000+ gun deaths per year, or time to pull out the old 'mental health reform' ruse again, as House Speaker Paul Ryan did today when pressed for what action Congress might take after the latest 'worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.'\xa0 Toy guns are illegal to carry on the streets of Vegas, but real ones are legal - even fully automatic machine guns.\xa0 A statewide ballot measure passed by Nevadans last year to expand background checks has been declared unenforceable by the Republican, NRA-owned state Attorney General.\xa0 So, if the only thing that can prevent a man who has been lawfully allowed to amass 42 military-style assault weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition from committing mass murder is 'mental illness reform', do Republicans even mean it? We're joined by veteran journalist Art Levine, author of the new book 'Mental Health Inc: How Corruption, Lax Oversight and Failed Reforms Endanger Our Most Vulnerable Citizens' to discuss the Republican hypocrisy after Vegas, and how the hopes of forcing mandatory medication and hospitalization on the Right and concerns about stigmatizing the mentally ill on the Left have both helped to prevent real mental health reform. That, even as the American College of Physicians calls for an assault weapons ban in response to the 'public health crisis' of our gun death epidemic in the U.S., a mental health reform bill already passed by Congress and signed by President Obama last year, and existing laws to prevent gun use by the mentally infirmed that go unenforced or are being repealed altogether. Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest 'Green News Report' as Trump finally goes to Puerto Rico (to blame the victims of Hurricane Maria) and as China finally forces GM to get back into the electric car business.\xa0 Also today: Rock in Peace, Tom Petty...