By Jonathan Riley
Many on the left have been quick to call the President a hypocrite for his newly discovered opinion that the mentally ill aren’t fit to own a gun, given that the first major piece of legislation Trump signed made it easier for people suffering from mental illness to buy a firearm..@POTUS: “I’ll tell you what: I don’t want mentally ill people to be having guns.” pic.twitter.com/2hUoHR2Zg1— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 28, 2018
Rachel Maddow was one of the first to levy this criticism. Maddow said of this White House, with her characteristic moral indignation, “They don't want to admit that the first materially significant legislation this president signed was specifically and only designed to get more guns into the hands of more seriously mentally ill people.” [*]
Wow. “Seriously mentally ill people.” Sounds awful scary.
The Obama-era regulation Trump repealed identified people who receive Social Security disability benefits due to a mental illness and also who have someone else cash those Social Security checks for them. The regulation that was repealed had made it illegal for those people of buy a firearm and included their names in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) database.Trump reversed that policy. [*]
But now the new woke Trump, the one who said, “I don’t want mentally ill people to be having guns” presumably wants to reverse his previous reversal of the previous regulation.
Well, I’m with Trump on this one. I mean ...well, er, hold on, it’s confusing with this guy, he won’t stick to a position -- I am with the Trump that repealed the law limiting the Second Amendment rights of people on Social Security for a mental health-related disability. I am against the new Trump’s scapegoating of people with mental health problems.
After every mass shooting, Republican politicians desperately try to get through the news cycle by using their classic dodge: they say the real problem is not guns but mental illness. Democrats change the subject back to gun reform of course, but they always seem to agree that mental health is a major part of the issue.
Indeed, if Republicans actually wanted to deal with mental illness, say by extending health coverage to the uninsured so they could afford therapy, rehabs, and psych meds, by all means, I would support it.
But that's not what either side is talking about. When people bring up mental illness in the context of the gun debate, it is to blame the imagined “crazies” for these mass shootings. It is to propose making some government list of all the crazies in the country so we can keep them away from guns, which we all know crazies are crazy about, but also to keep an eye on them. You never wanna let a crazy out of your sight, you see -- that’s the dehumanizing undertone of the conventional wisdom.
Listen, I support just about every gun control proposal that would result in fewer guns flooding into our country. Because the cause of gun violence is guns. But by proposing policies that connect mental illness to mass shootings, both Democrats and Republicans stigmatize folks with mental health issues, laying the groundwork for a slow encroachment on the civil liberties of people who seek mental health treatment, which ultimately deters people from seeking help from mental health professionals.
The “mentally ill” are not violent.
When Trump says with no qualifiers or limitations at all, “I don’t want mentally ill people to be having guns” does he mean all 43.8 million people in that category? Does he mean the one in five Americans who experience mental illness each year? [*] Surely not. But how will we decide which mentally ill people to include in the database? Just the ones with the dangerous kind of mental illness, right?
But which kind are those? Schizophrenia? Well according to the National Institute of Mental Health Director Dr. Thomas R. Insel, "Most people with schizophrenia are not violent." [*]
Okay so maybe more like autism? According to a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the link between autism and violent crime is statistically insignificant.[*]
Overall, people labeled “mentally ill” are no more dangerous than the general population. Mass shootings by people with serious mental illness represent 1 percent of all gun homicides each year. [*] According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness:
“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 (the three most-cited mental illnesses in conjunction with violence).” [*]
If the problem were mental illness, you’d expect America to be significantly more mentally ill than other countries that don’t face mass shootings on a regular basis. But that is not the case: America is not any sicker in the head than other countries of comparable size. [*] Obviously, say it with me, it’s the guns.
If restrictions on the mentally ill is a solution to mass shootings, this naturally implies that the cause of mass shootings must be the mentally ill. The public imagination conjures the image of gun-wielding crazies, breaking out of the psych ward to shoot up schools. But the “crazies” aren’t the ones doing the shootings. So these proposals will not stop them.
These proposals just add to the public’s fear of the vast population of regular ol’ humans just trying to make it through life like anyone else that happen to struggle with a diagnosable mental illness. That makes it more likely that other rights will be taken away from such people. You don’t want the crazies voting, right? Or teaching our kids, right? These are scary people, after all, we don’t let them have guns, and we wouldn’t do that unless they were dangerous.
This stigma keeps people from engaging with mental health resources. Only 44% of adults with diagnosable mental health problems seek treatment. [*] According to the Association for Psychological Science, “The desire to avoid public stigma causes individuals to drop out of treatment or avoid it entirely for fear of being associated with negative stereotypes.” [*]
So ironically the focus on mental health after each mass shooting and the discourse blaming mental illness for the violence is likely creating a stigma that makes mental illness harder to confront.
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