Glenn Beck: Manhattan and Reno killing sprees are proof that we’re in the throes of a mental health crisis

Yesterday, in yet another act of mass violence, a gunman identified as Shane Tamura killed four people, including an NYPD officer, and critically wounded another in a shooting at 345 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan before taking his own life.

“You’re going to hear all kinds of things,” says Glenn Beck. “You’re going to hear ‘more gun control,’ yada yada yada. But will we ever talk about the real issues here?”

The real issue, he explains, is not guns but mental illness, which Tamura had a “history of.”

According to a handwritten note found in his pocket, Tamura targeted the office building on Park Avenue specifically because the National Football League headquarters are located there.

“He wanted to express his grievance with the NFL,” says Glenn.

Tamura claimed to suffer from chronic traumatic encephalopathy — a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head trauma.

Thus far, police have found no evidence to confirm whether Tamura had CTE, but it was confirmed that he played football in high school.

In his suicide note, Tamura requested that his brain be studied.

“This is a tale of insanity,” sighs Glenn. It’s “a tale of evil, a tale of broken minds, a tale of innocence destroyed in the place where it was least expected, a skyscraper in New York turned slaughterhouse and a Monday night that turned to mourning.”

And it’s no isolated tale. Around the same time as Tamura’s murderous rampage, another gunman killed three people and injured three others in the valet area and parking lot of the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno, Nevada. The suspect was shot by police and taken into custody in critical condition.

While “no motive has been determined so far,” it’s clear that “we have an epidemic of mental illness in this country,” says Glenn.

Just a couple of months ago, Glenn experienced this personally when he and his wife were in Manhattan.

“A black guy on a bike rides towards us, and he begins to circle us on his bike on the sidewalk … all the while looking me right directly in the eye and pointing with one hand, the other on the handlebars, saying, ‘I’m going to kill me a white man today,”’ Glenn recalls.

“Luckily, he noticed that I had two armed security people behind us. He recognized maybe they might kill a black man on a bike today. He rode away. The man was clearly unstable.”

“We have become a society that has gone into madness. … How much more madness will it take before we stand up and say enough is enough?”

To hear more of Glenn’s commentary and analysis, watch the episode above.

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