It looks like Petula needs some help herself. She completely ignores that both people were receiving mental health care.

WaPo Columnist: Obamacare, Gun Control Might've Prevented Yesterday's Police Shooting and Navy Yard Shooting

BY DANIEL HALPER

Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak uses her piece today to implicitly make the case that Obamacare and gun control might have been able to prevent yesterday's police shooting and last month's Navy Yard shooting.

"The latest incident occurred in the nation’s capital, a fortress of a city with 30 police forces, a blanket no-fly zone and barricades all over the place," she writes, talking of yesterday's police shooting of dental hygienist Miriam Carey on Capitol Hill.

Dvorak continues:

When Alexis walked into the Navy Yard last month, we quickly turned the conversation away from gun control and to the issue of mental illness and the access Americans may or may not have to treatment.

But within a couple of days, that conversation died and our leaders decided to shut down the government because of a fundamental disagreement on what? Oh yeah, health care. A handful of leaders — many of whom oppose tighter gun control — don’t like a plan that eventually makes access to mental health care more accessible and more affordable.

And so we come back to the incident in Washington on Thursday.

A woman with a kid in her car who rams the White House gates must be troubled in some way.

Finally, Dvorak concludes:

Our hypervigilance on security worked. No one else was hurt. But what about our hypervigilance when it comes to mental health? Were people coming out in force to help this woman before she acted?

We can do better. On so many fronts.