Uvalde mayor vows to stand by families who lost children: 'We'll be here for you'
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin discusses how he is comforting the community and parents who lost loved ones on 'America Reports.'
Emotional Uvalde, Texas Mayor Don McLaughlin sounded off Friday on the mental health problems plaguing the nation, telling "America Reports" politicians need to take action and quit just talking about the issue.
UVALDE MAYOR DON MCLAUGHLIN: How many times do we hear that a shooter had mental health problems? He never got the help that he needed. They dropped off the face of the Earth. Nobody wants to pick up the tab to treat mental health. Mental health is real, and like I said, that’s not the only factor. The gun played a role in it, too, but what if we would have been able to help this child? What if some incident would have triggered somebody and we could have got him help? We might have avoided this, but the problem is we don’t do anything.
When we have a mental health deal here, they evaluate you, ok, gone. We don’t have any services in rural Texas. You have to go to San Antonio or Austin. They are two and a half hours away and a lot of the families don't have the ability to get there. We keep talking about mental health, treating the issue, and we need to quit talking about it. We give billions of dollars away to countries that don’t even like us. We ought to take that money and invest in our own country and build facilities. Look at the homeless people in Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and all over the United States on the street that have problems, and they are not getting any help from anybody.
WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW HERE:
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