Mental Illness and Gun Violence
Metzl, Jonathan, M., and Kenneth, T. MacLeish. "Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, And The
Politics Of American Firearms." American Journal Of Public Health 105.2 (2015):
240-249. CINAHL Complete. Web. 17 Sept. 2015. Over the past years media has been overwhelmed with news about mass shootings happening around America and if mental illness is the primary cause of the violent act. On February 2014, Jonathan M. Metzl and Kenneth T. MacLeish published their article “Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms” in the American Journal of Public Health that addresses the issue that mental illness has very little to do mass shootings which is commonly used on the aftermath of the shooting
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The authors state their stance on the issue that mental illness has very little to do with gun violence. Throughout the article the authors use information from other sources such as PsycINFO and PsychiatryOnline and their findings from their own study in order to support their position. They state four claims that followed by their own investigation they did by collecting data and information from previous research that addresses connections between gun violence and mental illness. Metzel gives examples of mass shootings that happened in America that shows if the shooter to had some sort of mental health issues. One of the examples is the recent school shooting, Sandy Hook Elementary, caused a big debate about gun control and if people should have screenings for any mental health problems. The authors later say that the screenings would not reduce the chance of having another mass shooting later on and would add a lot of pressure to therapists. What caused a big issue was that the media diagnosing the shooter due to this many questions arise if the media has been using mental illness as a scapegoat since majority of the mass shooters tend to be white men and if race also played a role in this issue. This has misdirected people on the bigger issues on what we can …show more content…
Many of the citations provided are from experts, governors, and news reports. They state the four common assumptions they have found in their study, number one being that mental illness causes gun violence, number two is that psychiatric diagnosis predicts gun crime before it happens, number three is that U.S. mass shootings “prove” that we should fear mentally ill loners, and number four is because of the complex psychiatric histories of mass shooters, gun control “won’t prevent” mass shootings. Each assumption has their own sections providing information to disprove them.
Majority of the information that they provide are current, along with providing sources from a couple years back. The authors state both sides of the issue and they are able to reason with each one even if they disagree. Anyone can read this article since the authors do not use any uncommon terminology and one doesn't need to rely on context clues or dictionaries. Each new subtopic is titled about what the next section is going to be about. Because of this it flows good and the information is not all over the
have shown the firearm homicide and suicide rates in the US are several times higher than that of any other industrialized country” (Towers 2). The automatic reaction people have to mass shooting is talking about gun control and mental illness policies. Every time a mass shooting occurs both the people and the government go crazy trying to find a solution yet there is no solution. The United States needs to set up mental illness awareness programs to decrease the number of mass shootings.
Luzer, Daniel. "The Gun Rights Crowd Might Be Right About Mental Health." Pacific Standard. n. page. Web. 2 Mar. 2014.
Mental illness gets more negative attention when these school shootings happen, because all it does is add to the already deep-rooted idea that people with mental illness are dangerous. However, the truth is that if society had paid more attention to the kids who exhibited these symptoms earlier, then they might not have acted out in such an extremely violent
The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms, but only in cases of self-defense and hunting for food. However, the use of guns has drastically changed since 1791 when the amendment was implemented. Today, guns are not solely used in their intended ways. Since 2010, over eighty-seven school shootings have occurred within American grade schools, high schools, and universities, resulting in approximately 107 injuries and 109 murders of innocent students. The two most deadly shootings in the world occurred in the United States: the Virginia Tech University Massacre which left thirty-two dead and Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting which left twenty-eight dead. Each new shooting prompts a debate about gun control laws and leaves citizens wondering about the accessibility of guns; any United States citizen over the age of twenty-one that does not have any previous felonies is able to easily receive a gun license. Forty-nine out of the sixty-one school shootings that occurred between 1982 and 2012 legally obtained firearms. The statistics become even more outstanding: seventy nine percent of all shooters have been diagnosed with a mental illness or disability, including the Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook shooters, Seung-Hui Cho and Adam Lanza. Cho and Lanza were diagnosed with mental illnesses and disabilities, depression and autism, respectively. Even so, they were still able to acquire the guns they needed because extensive mental health background checks did not and still do not exist; Cho purchased his own weapon and Lanza stole his mother’s guns. Although the case studies of Lanza and Cho are only two out of the many school shootings, they should be considered prime examples to illustrate the necessity to add stri...
The United States will not soon forget the rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut that came just two weeks before Christmas last year. This tragic event resulted in the death of twenty students and eight adults. Although the event shocked the nation, rampage shootings are nothing new. Over the years, many families have lost loved ones to these horrific events. As a result, these mass shootings such as the one that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary caught public attention leading to a push to find the cause of these events. Out of this research a variety of possible causes came to light consisting of arguments stating that high school bullying, availability of guns, mental illness, violent movies and video games are the cause of mass shootings. However, these researchers and debaters tend to ignore the role of massive media coverage in the increase of copycat shootings in the United States.
Lankford also states that in paragraph 4: They are felt like they have been given false hope as they were told that success and wealth comes from hard work. Not really seeing the the true success they thought could be succeed when failing making them turn on other people. I think people should understand these people with these kind of certain mental problem than to study which can help reduce mass killers, “The vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent and never will be.” ( Swanson ) Meaning a few people are, but it's hard to identify these types of people as Jonathan Metzl said in the last paragraph: “So there’s no psychiatric test that can prevent a mass shooting mass. They are hard to predict.” We, ourselves have to remind one another that we are all humans and not everyone think the same way or the way you predicted them
Paul Mountjoy, “Gun Control and Mental Health,” The Washington Times, March 28, 2013, sec Communities.
A series of shots being fired in the near distance can be heard. A crew of ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks are seen speeding down the streets while blaring their sirens to warn people to move out of the way rapidly. Then, crowds of people are seen running down the street franticly. Sounds of earsplitting yells fill the air. Their eyes are filled with tears of fear and terror. They look as if they were running for their lives. There is a wave of worry and curiosity that washes over everyone’s face as they stand there from a distance watching it take place. There was a sense of wanting to run towards the chaos to see what was going on. But the panic of the people running gave off the feeling of “Warning! Do NOT come this way!” What was happening? Later that night, the news reports that another mass shooting took place earlier on in the day. In the 21st century, many crimes involving mass shootings are the main focus of the public eye in the media. With the technology of the 21st century, investigators are able to look more into depth of the criminal’s background to see if they have a history of mental illness.
On December 14, 2012 Adam Lanza, a 20 year old with asperger’s syndrome, shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut . According to the final report by the states attorney’s office he got in the school at 9:30 AM in the morning and shot the principal and the school’s psychologist that went out to the hallway to check loud bangs they heard. He then moved on to class rooms where innocent children were learning and started shooting and by 9:40 AM, just ten minutes later, he took the lives of twenty six people, including twenty children age twelve and below and six adults, before taking his own life (State Report on Sandy Hook Elementary shooting).
In recent years the school shooting activity shows alarming rates. As reported by Duplechain and Morris (2014), more than 350 documented school shootings happened from 1760 until 2014, from those 190 happened from 1990-2014 alone. The numbers are staggering and even more staggering is to find out some of the details of those shootings. School shootings perpetrated by underage people even a student from the school that completed their killing rampage committing suicide. Although, it might seem that the problem comes from the accessibility to guns people could have, the reality is different. In most cases mental instability can play as a key element, while bullying and media coverage can also act as important factors. This paper will explore some of reasons behind school shooters from the past, and it will demonstrate how accessibility to guns had nothing to do with the outcome of their behavior, by responding to the following questions.
Emma E. McGinty, Daniel W. Webster, Marian Jarlenski, and Colleen L. Barry. "News Media Framing of Serious Mental Illness and Gun Violence in the United States, 1997-2012." American Journal of Public Health. Mar 2003: Vol 104, No. 3. Nursing/Academic Edition. Web. 01 Apr 2014.
The rate of suicide with a firearm is much more high than the actual murder rate and this can be lower down by passing the physical and mental tests conducted by physician. These tests will prove that rather the person is getting the gun is mentally strong or he has no mental illness history. As the article Guns and Suicides showed that , “In 2010 in the U.S., 19,392 people committed suicide with guns, compared with 11,078 who were killed by others (Guns & Suicide The Hidden Toll) . The mental illness can be caused due to the alcoholism, abuse and family history but, a medical check can help lower down the number to a certain limits. Moreover, the Administration is proposing a new $500 million investment to increase access to mental health care (The Fact Sheet). This investment will cause a huge change in the healthcare system and treat the people with medical illness to lower the rate of gun related suicides.
Reliable data based on gun use is a hard thing to come by. Reliable data is hard to come by because it is not really known how often a person points a gun at someone who turns out to be harmless. Also these types of research are questionable because people do not know if the data is reliable. Since reliable data is hard to come by researchers have just avoided studying things related to gun violence. There are so many studies about gun violence and they all seem to prove one thing and that is that gun control does not reduce violence. Gun control is so often spoken about that research has been easy for those studying or researching the topic.
As are acts of terrorism. But equally prominent is the discussion of mental illness. People with mental illness can do some very dangerous things because they let their symptoms get to them. Prevention efforts can also reduce the relatively rare occasions when severe mental illness contributes to homicide or the more common circumstances when depression or other mental illness contributes to suicide. There are 10 time as many individuals with serious mental illness behind bars as they are in state and hospitals. For example, President Donald Trump responded to the deadliest mass shooting in Texas history by saying the attack was a result of “a mental health problem” and not due to lax gun control laws. Trump said “This isn’t a guns situation,” Trump said, noting that a person in the crowd with a gun shot at the attacker and caused him to flee. “This is a mental health problem at the highest level. It’s a very, very sad event.”
The stereotype that goes hand in hand with mental illness that though seems to have improved over the years is still pervasive. Teplin, Abram & McClelland (1994) state that people in general, believe that people with mental illness are more likely to commit violent crime with those without mental illness. In their study they seek to find evidence to that statement – to learn if having a mental illness increases the likeliness of violent crime and recidivism after release from prison. This author seeks to discover the same using similar data to learn if there is a connection between violent crime and mental illness.