Another shooting, another speech, another prayer, another call for justice. The cycle runs through and then repeats. We spout words about gun law reform but do nothing to change the obviously broken system. Lacking a scapegoat, we blame mental illness.
Yes, you are crazy if you decide to shoot up a school out of the blue. But it’s another thing entirely for people to jump the gun and assume that school shooters have a mental illness and that it’s the mental illness — and not the lack of proper law enforcement and firearm regulation — that is to blame.
There are plenty of what we call “crazy” people who don’t kill people. In 1988, a Department of Justice study found that out of 2,655 homicides in the 33 largest counties in the U.S., just 4.3 percent of the perpetrators had a history of mental illness. Another study, which was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, looked at Indiana prisoners from 1990 to 2002 and found that among 518 randomly selected individuals, 10 percent were diagnosed with a psychotic disorders not associated with drug use. These individuals’ illnesses went untreated.
Yet no serious studies have been conducted to further investigate this issue. So if mental health is to blame for the recent surge in school shootings and massacres, why aren’t people calling for more research to be done to actively stop the problem at its supposed source? But even if 10 percent, or even 5 percent, of homicides are committed by people who are mentally ill — and a smaller percentage of that are those who have access to firearms — to blame the minority doesn’t even make sense.
Dismissing mass shooters as mentally ill functions as a method of victimizing the perpetrator, totally ignoring the lives that were lost and the pain and heartbreak of family and loved ones. Because of the sensationalizing of killers in the media as “psychotic,” “troubled” and “mentally ill,” society associates these extreme acts of violence with mental illness, which is often used as a façade to cover up larger issues like racism and poor gun law enforcement.
The portrayal of sadistic and extremely violent characters in the entertainment industry as individuals who suffer from illnesses like schizophrenia and psychosis, as in movies like “American Psycho” and “The Silence of the Lambs,” franchises like “SAW” and TV series like “American Horror Story,” further reinforce the extremely negative image of mentally ill individuals as unfathomably cruel, ruthless and bloodthirsty. Thus, we are quicker to call mass shooters “mentally ill” than we are to admit that there is a fundamental problem with the way guns are handled in this country.
Having a mental illness and developing homicidal tendencies are not mutually exclusive, but blaming a psychological disorder for the terrible misdeeds of a few individuals disrespects those who suffer from such diseases. Not all mentally ill people have murderous intent; I would say very few have time to think about killing someone. And to say that we have a “mental illness problem” and not a gun problem is to ignore the bigger, more pressing issue: the often unregulated sale and distribution of firearms, which results in ubiquitous access to these deadly weapons.
According to the Institute for Legislative Action of the National Rifle Association, in Florida, there is no requirement of a permit to purchase rifles, shotguns and handguns, there is no requirement to register purchased rifles, shotguns and handguns, owners of rifles, shotguns and handguns are not required to be licensed, and there is no requirement of a permit to carry for rifles and shotguns.
The only restrictions, as per the Institute for Legislative Action, are as follows: an individual must have a permit to carry a handgun, which must be concealed; there is a partial ban on the right to carry firearms in restaurants; the only people who cannot purchase or possess a firearm are convicted felons; and it is unlawful to openly carry any firearm. Antique and replica guns made before 1918 and those with ammunition manufactured prior to 1918 or ammunition that is no longer available in the U.S. do not count.
Quite frankly, I don’t feel safe in public, whether I’m at the beach, the mall, the supermarket, school or the library, because basically any Tom, Dick or Harry, or Mary, Sue or Louise, can walk into a gun shop and purchase a firearm. Any individual who attends one of Florida’s infamous gun shows can walk out with an arsenal chock-full of military-grade weaponry. And it’s the “crazies” who are the problem.
So, yes, we need gun law reform. For those who oppose reform, you’re misguided if you think “reform” means that everyone’s guns are going to get taken away. It’s quite the opposite, and I encourage law-abiding citizens to carry for self-defense purposes.
What needs to be put into place is a system in which those who wish to purchase a gun go through a series of evaluations like background checks and overall mental stability assessments ― to comfort those who blame mental illness, since only the mentally ill go on rampages ― to weed out those with nefarious intent and those who are unstable.
Lawful citizens should not have a problem going through this process. In a sense, lawfully obtaining a gun should become easier, while unlawfully owning a gun should be more difficult. And if lawful carriers outnumber those who want to do harm to others, there’s less incentive for killers to cock, aim and fire.
To make the argument that you can go down the street and purchase a firearm from a guy who wants to make a quick dollar also overlooks the issue of access. Guns should not be accessible to those who are immoral, which includes those who will sell firearms to anyone with a pulse. In general, lawful people will obtain firearms in a lawful manner, and criminals will continue to get their weapons in a less-than-legal fashion. It’s just a matter of who outnumbers who.
It’s not enough to pin the blame on mental illness, which is already stigmatized to no end in sight. Speeches, prayers, calls for justice and blame are just words. We need action. If school shootings were taken seriously — if lawmakers would just for one second take some sort of accountability and reform gun laws — there wouldn’t be almost one mass shooting for every day in this year so far.
