I may be too late and no one may be willing to listen, but I really need to say to the United States of America that mental illnesses or disorders do not kill people. In every mass shooting that has been reported in America, as far as good reasoning goes, it is guns that kill people.
This subject of gun violence is a highly politicised issue in America, and the reframing of the dialogue away from the issue of guns, gun control, and the number of assault rifles per capita, to that of mental illness and background checks is both infuriating and discouraging. It is a heightened and detrimental misinformation campaign.
My heart pains for every family and community that has experienced mass shootings and gun violence.
But after every mass shooting, leading voices in support of the rights of Americans to own and carry guns, mostly on the (ideological/political) right, parrot the new scapegoat of mental illness in their fierce defence of “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed”–the Second Amendment.
The problem I see, of course, is that American news often dominates global discourses. And, increasingly, those with the political megaphones who are vested in Second Amendment rights protection rush with overweening zeal to declare every mass-shooting perpetrator as “known to have some mental disorder.”
This brushes aside other sound reasoning on gun proliferation, creating a dangerous narrative that is bound to hurt America and the rest of the world in the long run.
The National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI) writes, “Research shows an increased risk of gun violence comes from a history of violence, including domestic violence; use of alcohol or illegal drugs; being young and male; and/or a personal history of physical or sexual abuse or trauma. Mental illness alone is not a predictor of violence.”
The Gun Violence Archive (GVA), a US not-for-profit research organisation, reports 11,631 gun incidents (all causes: murders, unintentional shootings, suicides, attempted suicides, assaults, and police intervention) with 147 mass shootings that have already occurred in 2023, in the US. The youth-led organisation Team Enough says that daily about 316 people are shot in America.
America’s epidemic of gun violence has seen over 600 mass shootings in the past three years 2020-2022. This amounts to approximately two mass shootings daily.
Mass shootings get heightened news coverage. With no consensus, the GVA’s definition of mass shootings is the most widely accepted. They define it as a shooting incident in which at least four people were killed or injured.
Mental Health America (MHA), the country’s leading non-profit for community-based mental health says, to say mental illness is a predictor of violence towards others is “misleading and wrongfully points a finger at tens of millions of people who have experienced or are living with mental health conditions.”
MHA contends that while mental illness is a predictor of suicide it is not a predictor of violence toward other people. It further states the “vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent: 95-97 per cent of homicidal gun violence is not carried out by individuals with a mental illness.”
In America’s fierce attempt to reframe the gun violence dialogue, it will ultimately do more harm in increasing stigma against mental illnesses and promoting discrimination against those so diagnosed. NAMI believes this can serve to discourage people from seeking interventions and needed treatment.
NAMI’s Kimball Angela, national director of advocacy and public policy says, “When people unfairly connect mass shooters with mental illness, it stigmatises the millions of people living with mental health struggles who are not violent.”
Worldwide, the majority of people living with mental illnesses have no violent tendencies and never become violent. The correlation between gun violence and mental illness remains very low as research shows that in America mental illnesses account for about four per cent of all violence and is even much lower when we account for gun violence (NAMI).
There is a guarantee though, that if vocal, leading Americans continue to demonise and hide behind mental illness each time there is a gun violence tragedy, not only will America not avert its gun and violence public health disaster, but it would also advertently increase stigma globally, and worsen its own mental health crisis.
It is so easy, and in America’s case, very convenient to stigmatise people living with mental illnesses as being violent, and to cast every evil, vicious, selfish gun violence act as resulting from some form of mental illness, but it is this very generalisation that could create major problems in improving mental health care globally.
NAMI writes, “Every time we experience a tragedy involving guns, people with mental illness are drawn into the conversation. The truth is that the vast majority of violence is not perpetrated by people with mental illness. Statements to the contrary only serve to perpetuate stigma and distract from the real issues.”
