The danger of gun control policy is that it will limit Constitutional rights while making the most vulnerable in society less-protected and more stigmatized.
The emotional debate surrounding gun violence encourages fear-mongering. It becomes nonsensical and demands action — any action — over thought.
“Unfortunately, a consistent and dangerous narrative has emerged—an explanation all-too-readily at hand when a mass shooting or other violent tragedy occurs: The perpetrator must have been mentally ill,” Julie Beck wrote for The Atlantic.
Facts don’t support the narrative, yet gun control measures that target the mentally ill are embraced by liberal proponents. Federal and state laws limit gun ownership for the mentally ill; though some are directly tied to past violent behavior, many base the prohibition on institutionalization. Those who struggle with mental illness are presumed to have violent tendencies.
Yet the mentally ill are not mindlessly violent. In the demand for a cause, the sins of criminal and evil individuals are heaped on the mentally ill for political gain. Gun control advocates haven’t stopped to question the stigma they unfairly perpetuate.
President Obama has issued executive orders that prevent the mentally ill from owning firearms in response to gun violence. Federal laws have prevented the mentally ill from owning firearms for decades. Mass murderers get called “crazy” so often after mass shootings that it’s routine. Mentally ill people are violent, the narrative goes, so by restricting gun ownership, people are safer.
“Our review also suggests that the stigma linked to guns and mental illness is complex, multifaceted, and itself politicized, in as much as the decisions about which crimes US culture diagnoses as ‘crazy’ and which it deems ‘sane’ are driven as much by the politics and racial anxieties of particular cultural moments as by the workings of individual disturbed brains,” Drs. Jonathan M. Metzl and Kenneth T. MacLeish noted in the American Journal of Public Health.
Rather than admit the complexity of a tragic event, fear and anxiety drive people to declare someone “crazy.”
The focus on the mentally ill, while a convenient narrative to restrict individual rights, doesn’t mesh with reality.
“The overwhelming majority of people with mental illnesses are not violent, just like the overwhelming majority of all people are not violent. Only 4 percent of the violence—not just gun violence, but any kind—in the United States is attributable to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression,” Beck wrote.
The mentally ill should not be scapegoats who get blamed for gun violence and justify for government overreach. Doing so exacerbates the problems faced by the mentally ill in society.
“Other research shows that reading stories about mass shootings by people with mental illnesses makes people feel more negatively toward the mentally ill. This only heightens stigma, which could lead to more people going untreated,” Beck wrote.
The biggest threat concerning guns and the mentally ill, like the general population, isn’t a mass shooting. It’s suicide. The majority of gun deaths, 60 percent, result from suicide, yet liberals who call for gun control cite deaths without noting that fact.
Were Americans concerned about preventing death by gun, they’d focus policy agitation on suicide prevention, not the mentally ill or mass shootings.
Liberals who have a visceral hatred of guns would prefer to push gun control instead of addressing the underlying causes behind gun deaths. Unfortunately for the mentally ill, it means that they face the stigma of causing gun violence, even though the data can’t justify such a correlation.
Preventing violence in America is crucial to improving society. Ideally, that would drive policymakers and the public to demand evidence-based action, especially when proposals limit freedom. Unfortunately, the emotions stoked by mass shootings and gun violence override a level-headed approach.
