Missouri Constituent Proposes a Mental Health Solution to the Second Amendment Debate – An Open Letter

9 November 2025

Senator Josh Hawley (MO-R)
381 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington DC 20510
(202) 224-6154

Honorable Senator Josh Hawley,

Thank you for your time. I am a Missouri voter and a supporter of the US Constitution's Second Amendment rights. In this letter, I suggest a major solution to the on-going threats to our right to bear arms. As a legislator from Missouri and as a member of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, this suggested solution is pertinent to your platform.

As a mother who deeply believes in everyone's right to self-defense, I have seen and heard many sides of the arguments surrounding our right to bear arms. I have seen and read dozens of news reports in my lifetime of mass shootings in public spaces, particularly gun-free zones. Opponents to the Second Amendment argue that a lack of guns would remove these threats, therefore we should give up the right to bear arms. Supporters of the Second Amendment have offered various solutions to protect our rights, such as eliminating gun-free zones, arming teachers, deploying drones, etc. The majority of gun rights supporters acknowledge that by and large, perpetrators of mass shootings and attempted mass shootings are mentally unwell, and that if they had no access to firearms they would still find a way to hurt a large number of people by some means. I believe that many people who aren't supportive of gun rights would also acknowledge that this is the case - that mental health is at the center of the issue. We've all either heard or said for ourselves that "it's not a gun problem, it's a mental health problem."

Yet the majority of politicians and voters who make that statement or similar are also against universal healthcare. I am aware that on the Right-leaning side, we tend to believe universal healthcare would be a government over-step, a tax burden, and perhaps socialism/communism. I feel that this is not only untrue but also hurts the Right far more than the Left - this thinking is counterintuitive to our communities' health, longevity, birth rates, and rights. I hope you may read my thoughts and at least understand my point. Furthermore, I hope you can see an opportunity for you to bring forth a proposal of policy that could improve the lives of the citizens of the USA, rebalance the economics involved in the medical and pharmaceutical industry, and protect the rights of law-abiding citizens from being threatened in an attempt to stop law-breaking citizens.

First, a universal healthcare system would not be a government over-step if both public and private health insurance is allowed. Those who feel they are better off with private health insurance could still obtain it. In fact, I believe we can all agree that the implementation of the Affordable Care Act did as much damage as the benefits it created. That was government over-reach at its finest.

Second, the idea of universal healthcare being a tax burden is only a technicality. Our elected officials are also technically a tax burden, as well as the roads we take to our jobs, and our law enforcement - all things that we need to avoid chaos and failure. Some taxes are universally necessary, and we as citizens, voters, and politicians will have to open our minds to see the benefits over the costs. We already have government-sponsored medical insurance for our most vulnerable populations; below I will suggest how we can redirect existing taxes expenditures to cover all Americans.

Third, it is high time for Americans to understand the very real differences between “socialism”, “communism”, and “socialized programs”. In socialist countries, the citizens own the means of production. In communist countries, the government owns the means of production. In countries with socialized programs, neither of those statements are universal - businesses can be owned by private citizens or be open publicly to ownership by citizens; the means of production is more openly flowing, which has little or nothing to do with the socialized programs. The USA is neither socialist nor communist - it is a constitutional republic with several socialized programs already in place to ensure the best quality of living for our citizens. Those programs utilize federal tax dollars to support our citizens, each in a specific way. This includes our military, our Social Security program, the Department of Transportation, NASA, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, and the salaries of our elected officials. Socialized programs have somehow been demonized as socialist or communist ideas, however we utilize these programs in incredibly positive ways to support, educate, and protect our citizens.

Personally, my biggest concern with enacting a universal healthcare system has been the fear that it might lead to long wait times for seeing providers or getting procedures, or worse yet, denials for care based on an individual’s expected value for paying into the system. Many Conservative voters, politicians, and talk show hosts have mentioned this same concern. We see examples of this problem in  some of the countries that already use a universal healthcare system, such as Canada and the United Kingdom. I believe that if we leverage the existing private healthcare providers and facilities, we can have a system in which privately owned practices provide health services to the public with health insurance provided by the federal government for each citizen. This would allow the existing businesses to continue to thrive, and it would allow citizens who choose to either pay out-of-pocket or to use private health insurance to use the medical facilities they already know of. Currently, our Medicare and Medicaid systems allow citizens who have them to use private doctors, so I see no reason to transition to a system like the other countries use in which the medical providers are government employees. This will also continue to encourage competition since providers will not be protected by a veil of government entitlement when patients are displeased with, neglected by, or incur damages from these providers.

Republicans can agree across the board that we have been granted the right to life, liberty, and property as United States citizens. A universal healthcare system in the USA would properly support those rights.

What is life if we are expected to either pay half a million dollars for a life-saving surgery or die unable to pay? Yes, doctors must be paid, and they do deserve to be paid well. However, voters and their children should not have to die due to a lack of funds. It should not be acceptable that in these cases, those with no health insurance and too little money only have a chance at life if they can successfully secure funds through a crowd funding campaign or a charity organization. The lives of American citizens should never have a dollar amount to compare to.

Now more than ever, we are seeing a serious decline in our nation’s birth rate. The medical expenses and childcare expenses are at the center of this decline. While many happily married couples would absolutely love to have the liberty to grow a family, the financial challenge is far too heavy. Health insurance through a father's employer costs hundreds of dollars per family member each month, coming directly out of his paycheck. Private insurance companies are getting rich off of our families, and still have the audacity to deny coverage for serious and life-saving procedures and medications. Families will only continue to be smaller on average if we can't afford to cover healthcare costs and can't save up money for emergencies when the bread-winner’s income is reduced so much by employer-provided insurance.

We can also agree that our firearms are our personal property, and they serve us for sport, for hunting, for self-defense, and for opposing tyranny. Without a universal healthcare system ensuring that ALL American citizens have access to healthcare and mental health care, our public safety will continue to be in peril, and our right to bear arms will be constantly challenged.

My suggestion here is that as a Senator of Missouri, you should propose a system that would cover all US citizens’ healthcare by funding medical facilities and providers directly with federal tax dollars. This system could potentially absorb the Medicare and Medicaid systems as a base. The income tax deductions that go to Medicare and Medicaid can be the base funds for a universal healthcare system, and there may even be ways to limit the costs to that funding. Currently, medical providers use highly inflated pricing with the assumption that consumers and insurance companies will negotiate the costs. Most consumers are unaware of this, and health insurance companies pass these costs on to their paying customers. If there were regulations at the federal level on the costs for each medical billing code item and each prescription drug, the tax dollars for a universal healthcare system could be better budgeted. 

Instead of asking citizens to provide proof of a need for public medical assistance, we should accept that all citizens have a need for healthcare. The vast majority of Medicaid recipients is already Republican voters in rural areas throughout the country. These rural areas tend to have too few jobs for the residents and we see high unemployment and/or high underemployment, leading to the need for public assistance. Somehow the Republican rhetoric around government medical coverage has often been negative and reductive, despite the fact that Republican voters need it more often.

I challenge you, Senator Hawley, to help your contemporaries see the benefits to the Party as well as to the constituents and the safety of the public as a whole to enact a universal healthcare system for Americans. Not because other countries do it. Not because the Left has requested it again and again. Because mentally health is not being addressed due to a widespread lack of access to healthcare and healthcare funds, leading to mass tragedies quite frequently in our country. When we say “it's not a gun problem, it's a mental health problem”, we need to prove it and support mental health at all costs.

Sincerely,

Savannah Moulder

Newburg, Missouri 65550