RFK Won’t Take Guns, Just Your Antidepressants

In Trump's America assault riffles are safe, but your zoloft might not be.

If you’ve ever felt anxious, overwhelmed, or even slightly bummed out, RFK Jr. has some news for you: it’s not the guns, it’s you.

According to RFK Jr., the solution to mass shootings isn’t taking military-grade weapons out of the hands of unhinged men, it’s taking your Zoloft. Your Prozac. Your Lexapro. Your tiny, life-saving pill that keeps you from screaming at your boss or crying in the Trader Joe’s parking lot. That’s the real problem. Not the AR-15s. Nope. It’s your meds!!

Credit: Jesse Duquette

As part of his new Make America Healthy Again agenda, the Health and Human Services secretary has ordered a report to “evaluate the prevalence and risks associated with prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), antipsychotic medications, and mood stabilizers.” He also claimed, without evidence, that people have a “much worse time getting off of SSRIs than they have getting off of heroin,” which is a great time to remind everyone that RFK Jr. himself used to be addicted to heroin!

And because merely demonizing people who need psychiatric medication isn’t enough, RFK Jr. has also proposed putting them into camps. Yes, if you’re one of the 40 million Americans taking an SSRI to keep your brain chemistry in check, RFK Jr. thinks you should be shipped off to a government-approved detox farm to get clean. Picture a remote, rural compound where instead of therapy and evidence-based treatment, you can reconnect with nature, drink bone broth, and meditate your way out of your clinical diagnosis.

Meanwhile, RFK Jr. does not consider gun violence to be a public health crisis. That’s not my interpretation, that’s his actual stance. It directly contradicts the 2024 declaration by the Surgeon General, who officially recognized gun violence as a significant public health issue. But RFK Jr. would rather investigate SSRIs than the actual leading cause of death for American children.

And here’s where it gets even more ridiculous: while RFK Jr. is pushing the myth that antidepressants cause mass shootings, actual research says the opposite. Studies from Stanford, Yale, and Northwestern found that youth antidepressant use increases by 21% in communities affected by school shootings. Not because antidepressants cause violence, but because living through a mass shooting makes young people more likely to develop depression, PTSD, and anxiety—conditions that often require long-term treatment.

In other words, SSRIs aren’t the reason mass shootings happen, they’re a response to them. The real culprit isn’t Prozac, it’s trauma. And what’s causing that trauma? Oh, right. The guns RFK Jr. refuses to regulate. And again, I cannot stress this enough: guns are the leading cause of death for children. That fear isn’t paranoia, it’s reality. But instead of protecting kids from being shot, RFK Jr. is telling them it’s all in their heads, taking away their meds, and shipping them off to a government-run labor camp.

Strong leaders protect people. Weak ones gaslight them.

And if you’re wondering why so many of us are on antidepressants in the first place, maybe it’s because we live in a country where mass shootings are so routine they barely make headlines. Maybe it’s because an entire generation has been practicing active shooter drills since kindergarten instead of learning how to do long division. Maybe it’s because “thoughts and prayers” has become the official national response to gun violence. Maybe it’s because someone who claims to be all about “making America healthy again” thinks military-grade weapons shouldn’t be regulated, but your medication should.

It’s a spectacular failure of logic. Guns don’t kill people, but Lexapro apparently does. Bulletproof backpacks are a reasonable solution to school shootings, but antidepressants? Too dangerous. Every other developed country has people on SSRIs, but only America has mass shootings. Clearly, the problem is the pills, not the firearms. It’s like blaming car accidents on airbags.

To make matters even more bananas, during his confirmation hearing, RFK Jr. tried to sell the very dangerous idea that antidepressants turn people into mass shooters. He’s wrong, and the data proves it. Study after study shows no direct link between SSRIs and mass shootings. The vast majority of people on antidepressants are out here living their lives, drinking oat milk lattes, and replying “no worries!!” to things that absolutely did worry them.

Do you know what mass shooters actually do have in common? Guns. The same guns RFK Jr. refuses to regulate because, apparently, your Lexapro is more of a national security threat than an AR-15.

RFK Jr.’s plan to “fix” mass shootings is simple: take away your antidepressants, send you to a government camp, leave all the guns exactly where they are, and hope for the best.

And if that sounds unhinged, congratulations. You’re already making better decisions than a man who thought he could be president.