Category: Mental health

U.S. Surgeon General calls gun violence “an urgent public health crisis in America”

For the first time the U.S. Surgeon General of the United States has issued an urgent warning about gun violence in America, calling it a public health crisis.

Dr. Vivek Murthy says that in 2020, firearm‑related injuries became the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the U.S., surpassing motor vehicle crashes, cancer, and drug overdose and poisoning.  He further says that almost 6 in 10 U.S. adults say that they worry “sometimes,” “almost every day,” or “every day,” about a loved one being a victim of firearm violence, and that such high levels of exposure to firearm violence for both children and adults in the U.S. “give rise to a cycle of trauma and fear within our communities, contributing to the nation’s mental health crisis.”

The Mesa County Public Health Department says “is it worth noting that Mesa County has one of the highest rates of gun deaths in Colorado and, per capita, even the United States.” There were 95 recorded deaths by firearms in Mesa County from 2020 to 2022.

People are living in fear in the U.S.

Nationwide, sales of bullet proof backpacks for children soar at the beginning of the school year. In 2019, the American Psychological Association reported that one third of U.S. adults say fear of mass shootings is keeping them from going to certain places and events, and it’s clear that the increase in public gun massacres is taking a toll on our collective mental health in America and affecting the way many people are living their daily lives. To understand why people fear the now massive prevalence of guns in the U.S., you need only look at this groundbreaking November, 2023 report by Washington Post on the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas in 2022.

Elected officials who feel the weight of this moral crisis of inaction on the issue of firearm violence in the U.S. and want to know what policies actually work to reduce firearm injuries and deaths, and which don’t, can access this report by the Rand Corporation, updated in 2023, that analyzes the scientific evidence on the effectiveness of a wide range of gun policies, and makes recommendations for the most effective policies to implement.

If you know of someone who possesses firearms and is posing a risk to themselves or others, you can access instructions on how to access Colorado’s Red Flag law in Mesa County here.

Buell Theater surveillance video shows Boebert vaping & giving an usher the finger as she walked out

House Rep. Lauren Boebert’s campaign manager, Drew Sexton, told the Washington Post in a September 13 article that Boebert wasn’t vaping inside the Buell Theater at a performance of the musical Beetlejuice, as theatergoers around her had told security, but that the appearance of smoke came from “heavy fog machines and electronic cigarettes” used during the show, “so there might have been ‘a misunderstanding from someone sitting near her’.”

But video shows there was no “misunderstanding.”

Sexton lied to the Post.

Vape “smoke” coming out of Boebert’s mouth at the Buell Theater in Denver last Sunday

The video also shows Rep. Boebert giving ushers the middle finger as she was escorted out of the theater:

Boebert flips the bird to theater employees on her way out.

Even the disgraced and indicted former Trump attorney from Colorado, Jenna Ellis, wrote on Twitter that Boebert’s behavior at the theater was “embarrassing and disrespectful behavior from a sitting Congresswoman,” adding, “Good grief, Republicans. Do better.”

The complaint against Mesa County employee Lisa Mills that led the Social Work Board to sanction her

Lisa Rickerd Mills, Behavioral Health Strategies Manager for Mesa County, who reports directly to Commissioner Janet Rowland and who appears to have been the person who prompted Rowland to start attacking Dr. Jeff Kuhr, longtime Director of the Mesa County Public Health Department (Photo: Facebook)

Lisa Rickard Mills is Behavioral Health Strategies Manager for Mesa County, reports to Mesa County Commissioner Janet Rowland and is administering programs funded with $1 million in combined grants from the Colorado Department of Human Services Office of Behavioral Health, St. Mary’s Hospital and the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office.

According to text messages (pdf) obtained between Janet Rowland and Mills, Mills also appears to have been instrumental in prompting Mesa County Commissioner Janet Rowland to start her recent attacks Mesa County Public Health Department Director Dr. Jeff Kuhr.

Mills is a Licensed Social Worker (LSW) with the State of Colorado. Public records show that in 2020 she was sanctioned by the state Board of Social Work Examiners.

How to implement Colorado’s Red Flag law in Mesa County

Are you aware of someone who owns firearms and is presenting a danger to themselves or others?

Colorado’s new Red Flag law was passed in 2019 and went into effect in January of 2020.

A Red Flag law is an “if-you-see-something-say-something” law put in place by the Colorado Legislature to give Coloradans a way to alert law enforcement to people who have guns and are posing a threat to themselves or others.

Red Flag laws, also called Extreme Risk Protection Orders or ERPOs, give judges the ability to seize the firearms of people who are posing a danger to themselves or others, to protect public safety.

The law was created to give people a way to try to head off incidents of lethal domestic violence, suicides and mass shootings like those currently proliferating across the U.S. in schools, shopping malls, theaters, grocery stores, universities, in parking lots, at parades, in offices and other places Americans go in the course of their everyday lives. As of May 8, 2023, there have been more mass shootings than there have been days in America, so the threat of mass killings being committed by people who own or possess firearms is very real and happening more frequently now than ever before in our history.

The law was used 73 times in the first 7 months after it was enacted and as of the end of 2022, it has been used more than 350 times.

D-51 School Board President’s transphobic social media posts draw condemnation

District 51 School Board President posted this photo to social media recently on her personal account

Recent social media posts by District 51 School Board President Andrea Haitz, and one in particular that she posted on Mother’s Day, are drawing condemnation, disgust and shock from many Mesa County residents who saw them.

Tina Peters claims she was “framed” with the ballots left in the ballot box from the 2019 election


Speaking to members of the Jefferson County Republican Men’s Club on February 21, 2022 (video), Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters claimed that she was “framed” when election workers found “429 ballots” uncollected in a ballot box from the 2019 election.

The ballots were discovered when election workers went to empty the box for the 2020 election, but Peters refused to petition a judge to open and count them and include them in the final vote tally from the 2019 election. In her talk, Peters also got the number of uncounted ballots wrong. 574 ballots were discovered left in the ballot box, not 429.

Peters claimed without evidence that “they stuffed the ballot box with 479 ballots” in order to “take over my office” and said it was part of an effort to “take over the western slope.”

It’s time to admit something’s wrong with Tina

Embattled election conspiracy theorist Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters grins proudly for her mug shot taken upon her arrest on 2/10/2022

Lots of people have been saying it under their breath, but no one has come out and said it publicly. Mostly people have just gotten angry at Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters for her increasingly strange behavior, but maybe it’s time to start pitying Tina.

We can all agree that Tina’s behavior has been very far outside what is considered normal for an elected county clerk:

Normal clerks don’t compromise their own election equipment. They don’t flee the state on private jets, spend weeks hiding in safe houses in secret locations around the country or accept largesse from multi-millionaires to promote wacky election conspiracy theories. Normal clerks don’t blow off their obligation as clerks (pdf) to get certified to run elections as the state requires. Normal clerks don’t proclaim that the candidates who won an election shouldn’t have won because they were the wrong people to win. Normal county clerks don’t get their homes raided by the FBI.