Truth Or Dare on Mass Shootings
Don't Buy the Lies About Mental Illness
As the nation rushes headlong toward setting a new record for mass shootings, the usual responses and excuses muddle the picture when it comes to guns and their role in our society.
Most people not connected to gun lobby type groups would like to see more done along the lines of reducing gun violence. A very noisy minority has managed to forestall or sue to block implementation of just about every imaginable approach.
A huge part of the futility of common “solutions” stems from a lack of understanding of the causes and impacts of the mass shooting flavor of gun deaths.
More than ⅔ of all mass shooters had a past that included domestic violence.
A nation’s rate of gun ownership correlates with the odds of mass shooting events.
Mass shootings, while only accounting for less than 1% of all firearm deaths, have detrimental effects extending far beyond the harm to the victims and their families.
About 28% of people who have witnessed a mass shooting develop posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Mental illness is not common among the perpetrators of mass shootings.
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Today, I’ll run down what’s been happening with local governments, which are mostly good sounding promises that will prove difficult to keep.
More to the point, I’ll make the case why the usual excuses given in the wake of mass gun violence events are utter bullshit. If we are to change the present environment, which amounts to millions of people owning weapons because they envision using them to take somebody else’s life, it’s time to face the facts.
Our political system has been corrupted to its core by ideologues who trade in fear; fear of the “other” and fear of having something taken away from them. The swing right in this country has enabled the extremist belief that violence will be a necessity in the future. One of those “somethings” people are told to be afraid of losing is guns.
It’s gotten to the point where far right groups are openly threatening federal law enforcement personnel tasked with implementing regulations concerning the manufacturing and sales of weapons and parts with no traceable identification.
Huffington Post has published an investigation into these extremists:
In one instance, a ghost gun 3D-printing enthusiast under the name “Kneanderthal” posted a picture of a cartoon ghost (referring to ghost guns) standing in a classroom (where shootings frequently take place in the U.S.), in front of a blackboard that reads: “The second amendment is for shooting cops.” The ghost is holding what looks like a semi-automatic rifle, and wears a military-style helmet that says “Born to Print.”
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San Diego’s Board of Supervisors has hired a contractor to assess public sentiment concerning gun violence via a series of public hearings which will lead to a report suggesting plans of action. Earlier this year an ordinance went into effect requiring safe firearm storage and prohibiting the distribution or creation of untraceable “ghost guns” in the county.
San Diego’s City Council attracted nationwide attention for being an early adopter of an ordinance banning ghost guns. The bill supposedly fills a couple of loopholes in the myriad in State laws related to gun ownership.
From Voice of San Diego:
Building a finished weapon without a serial number and possessing that weapon outside of one’s home is already a crime in California, as is removing the serial number from a gun. Selling a gun in California without going through a dealer and background check is already a crime as is manufacturing one without applying for a serial number. It is also illegal for a felon to possess a weapon in California, and in July 2022, Assembly Bill 879 will begin to restrict the transfer and ownership of “firearm precursors” (or unfinished receivers).
A Supreme Court ruling in a New York gun case in June set a new standard for how judges should analyze firearm restrictions, giving so-called Second Amendment groups hope for court rulings reshaping California’s gun laws.
From the Union-Tribune:
This new legal framework — what lawyers are calling the “text and history” or “text, history and tradition” standard — could bring sweeping changes to local and state gun laws, including those that outlaw homemade firearms, those that ban assault weapons and large-capacity magazines, and those that restrict gun purchases based on a buyer’s age or the frequency of the buyer’s purchases. A law banning the possession of batons and billy clubs could also be upended, with all of these challenges happening in U.S. district court in San Diego, a favorite venue for gun-rights groups.
San Diego’s City Attorney has attracted a lot of attention for her willingness to pursue gun violence restraining orders (aka red flag laws). She recently passed the 1000 case mark for such orders, which remove weapons from the homes of domestic violence (and other criminal) suspects. In most instances it’s a temporary weapons seizure allowing legal proceedings to occur while protecting potential victims.
From Fox 5 News:
According to the City Attorney’s office, while working with the San Diego Police Department, they’ve reached a total of 1,011 gun violence restraining orders, 437 of those orders have become permanent, meaning someone is either a threat to themselves or others and could be issued a suspension from gun access ranging from one to five years. This is analyzed based on the severity of the threat — 50 of these cases threatened violence meeting the standard of what could be labeled as a mass casualty at either a school, workplace or public area.
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Number One on the list of excuses given by (especially Republican) politicians in the wake of a mass shooting is “the mental health crisis.” If they really believed this claim, they’d stop voting against programs funding mental health care.
I’ll repeat this truth: mental illness is not the primary cause of mass shootings.
From Aaron Rupar and Noah Berlatsky at Public Notice:
Recent research from Columbia University examining 82 mass murders throughout the world found no evidence that any of the shooters had severe mental illnesses, such as psychotic disorders or schizophrenia. Seth Norrholm, a professor of psychiatry at Wayne State University, pointed out that “executing murderous plots such as mass shootings at schools, grocery stores, places of worship, and public events requires a mind that is lucid and capable of producing rational thought, planning, and logical cognitive processing.”
As with mass shootings, so with violence in general. Researchers have found that only 3 to 5 percent of violent acts can be attributed to individuals with serious mental illness. That means that 95 percent or more of violent acts are committed by people who aren’t mentally ill.
In fact, people with mental illness are ten times more likely to be the victims of violence than they are to be perpetrators. And people with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely than those without to be killed by police. The myth that mentally ill people are dangerous doesn’t prevent violence. Instead, it leads to escalating violence against those who are mentally ill.
This isn’t to say there isn’t a connection between the fact that the country is awash in guns and people with mental health problems. All those guns provide easy access for suicidal people to carry through this sort of manifestation of their self-loathing. They’re killing themselves, not shooting up schools.
More than 45,000 people died from gun related incidents in 2020, and 54% of them aimed the gun at themselves and pulled the trigger. Men who own handguns are eight times more likely to commit suicide than those who do not, according to a Stanford University study; that ratio increases to thirty five times more likely when it comes to woman gun owners.
Here we have a couple of societal problems presented in a manner guaranteeing they’ll not be solved. When mass shootings make the evening news, Republicans are quick to scapegoat mentally ill people.
They’ve repeated this “mental health” angle so often that people think it’s true. And while I know it seems crazy that somebody would want to inflict mass suffering, 95% of shooters can pass a wellness exam.
Mass shootings are entirely enabled by the easy availability of guns. Other countries have mental health issues, alcoholism, drug use, etc, but without firearms, they don’t have mass shootings.
The United States has more than 120 firearms per 100 residents. We had 610 mass shootings in 2020; Canada had 1.
Statistics about mass shootings are controversial, in large part because different agencies and countries collect different kinds of data, and right wing groups have used hinky methodologies to come up with numbers that are easily refutable, but used often in policy debates nonetheless.
I think that gun safety / gun control advocates are being too polite when it comes to advocacy. When expanding background checks or banning ghost guns is supposedly controversial, it’s time to upgrade the starting bargaining position in political debates.
When some group comes out and says they want a constitutional amendment banning the private ownership of guns, then serious negotiating can begin.
Email me at: WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com