Guns Don't Kill People?

Flowers placed in honor of the 58 victims of the Las Vegas mass shooting in October 2017. (Wikimedia Commons)

Guns Don’t Kill People…

"It's not the gun that pulls the trigger, it's the people." If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s straight from the mouth of former President Donald Trump—right after the 2019 back-to-back mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. He went on to clarify that “mental illness and hatred pull[ed] the trigger, not the gun.” The National Rifle Association (NRA) later congratulated Trump on his “call to address the root causes of the horrific acts of violence that have occurred in our country.”

His statement was not new; we have probably heard that sentiment expressed hundreds of times. The U.S. boasts almost half of the world’s guns despite only having 4 percent of the world’s population. It has a rate of 12.2 gun violence deaths per 100,000 people, about 6 times the amount of Canada’s and more than 12 times that of the U.K. and Germany.

The recent shootings in Atlanta, Georgia and Boulder, Colorado only days apart have brought gun violence concerns to the forefront of national conversation once again. The spokesperson from the Atlanta sheriff's office described the shooter (who killed eight people, six of them Asian women) as having a “bad day.” The thoughtless comment drew widespread condemnation, but more socially palatable analyses still continue to name poor mental health as a causal factor. “The Atlanta shooting likely stemmed from a toxic stew of racism, misogyny, prejudice against sex workers, religious beliefs, and mental illness—despite cries to the contrary, mental health is a factor in a significant percentage of mass shootings,” writes Melissa Jeltsen for New York magazine. These narratives have real-world implications: the Boulder shooter’s defense attorney seems to be attempting to use poor mental health as a defense in court. 

People Kill People

The rhetoric that ‘America doesn’t have a gun problem, we have a mental health problem’—perpetuated recently by Representative Ken Buck (R-CO) and other lawmakers—is often criticized as feeding into infantilization of violent criminals and as a political deflection tactic. But on some level, it’s understandable. “When I talk to people about this issue, they'll say, ‘Well, if someone did this, they would have to be—and they'll use a colloquial term—out of their mind, crazy, insane,” said Dr. Arthur Evans, the CEO of the American Psychological Association. “It's hard for people to understand how someone could do such a horrific act who is not mentally ill. But the reality is that people do horrific acts for a variety of reasons.”

Indeed, researchers have found that even if major mental disorders were cured completely, overall gun violence in the U.S. would only go down by 4 percent. Results from academic surveys showed that cases of gun violence caused by only mental illness were only 4 percent of the total, implying that an estimated 96 percent of gun violence would occur with or without mental illness. In fact, the study found a stronger correlation among other demographic subgroups—“specifically, younger individuals, males, those of lower socioeconomic status, and those having problems involving alcohol or illicit drug use.”

“I don’t think anybody is saying these people are sane or well-adjusted,” said Dr. Jonathan Metzl, a professor at Vanderbilt University specializing in mass shootings. “But mental illness is just one of a million factors and very often it’s far down on the list when you tell the story of what happened.”

Simply put, “There's no psychotic illness whose symptom is shooting other people."

Moreover, "to see (mental illness) being equated with monstrous acts does an immense disservice to people who then become afraid to talk about self-harm," said Paul Gionfriddo, president and CEO of Mental Health America. Experts warn that ascribing mass shootings to mental illness dissuades people from seeking help at a time when mentally ill people are far more likely to be the victims of violence than to perpetrate it—more than 10 times more likely than the general population. This stigmatization of mental illness is also leading to an increase in coerced treatment and institutionalized violence for mentally ill people in the US. They face a disproportionate risk of homelessness and incarceration (even for the same offense).

Conversations about shooters’ mental health also often leave out survivors of those shootings, who lack access to support and mental healthcare. In a study of 300 women who were students at Virginia Tech during its 2007 shooting—none of whom were directly impacted by the shooting—almost 25 percent showed signs of PTSD a year later.

Gun Small Step For Man

After a tragedy, everyone wants to know why it happened. But the factors behind shootings are often complex and intertwined, so much so that “the offenders themselves might have a hard time articulating why they did what they did,” according to John Wyman, Behavioral Analysis Unit chief for the FBI. And more often than not, they are “planned, predatory acts.”

So how can we stop them? Experts like Metzl argue that instead of prioritizing examining the motivation behind mass shootings, we should focus on prevention. “If the goal is to prevent future shootings,’’ he said, “the most important question is not always why did somebody do this, but what kind of policies can we put in place to prevent somebody who’s intent on doing something like this from doing a future act.’’

As Angela Kimball, CEO of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, points out, “we know that mental illness occurs at roughly equal rates all around the world. But the incidence of gun violence is very different. It’s much higher in the U.S.” The reason, according to her, is clear: “access to guns.”