Peggy Noonan: ‘I never think it’s the wrong time to talk about gun control’

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan said she never thinks “it’s the wrong time to talk about gun control” while pleading for more mental health services in the wake of Sunday’s mass shooting in Las Vegas that killed at least 59 people.

“I have complete sympathy for everybody who is extremely upset, everybody who is coming forward with ideas, I never think it’s the wrong time to talk about gun control. I always think it’s a fine time,” said Noonan on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“If not now, when?” co-host Mika Brzezinski asked.

{mosads}“That having been said, we’ve all been through this so many times,” Noonan continued. “I’m starting to think that there are some problems that cannot be solved. They can be managed. And I think what we’ve been going through with all of this gun violence the past few decades is something we can manage better.”

Noonan, a Pulitzer Prize winner, pivoted to a need for more mental health services in the country. 

“My own thing, very much on my heart the past few years is, ‘Please, we need more mental health services,’ ” she continued. “The man who did the shooting in Vegas doesn’t fit the normal demographic. Normally it is young men who are unstable who have been veering toward violence and who have been acting odd for a long time. 

“Neighbors always say, ‘Oh, he stuck pretty much to himself, he was this, he was that.’ There are untreated mentally ill people in America who need more intervention, especially young men about whom nothing can be done until they hurt someone. That’s my contribution for today.”

Noonan signed on as an MSNBC contributor in August. 

President Trump will visit first responders, local and state officials and victims of the shooting on Wednesday after touring hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico on Tuesday.