Mass Shootings: Another Conservative Talking-Point Debunked!

umpqua community college mass shooting
Photo Credit: Christopher Dombres/Flickr available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.


So, once again, here we are. Following yet another mass shooting, this time at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., we’re having our all too frequent “conversation” about gun violence, gun rights, and all things gun-related. While we’re taking to social media and detesting Chris Harper Mercer’s actions, some of us, like the President, are exasperated at the lack of cohesive action in an attempt to quell the violence, while others, like [insert almost any Republican Congressperson here], think the only way to stop the bloodshed is to turn the United States into a living O.K. Corral.

In sifting through our thoughts and feelings, we are treated to the newest scapegoat that “makes sense” of all of this violence. These shooters, a significant portion of us believe, are mentally ill, because, you know, there’s absolutely no way any sane person, any “good guy with a gun,” could do such a horrible thing. Right?

It’s rather interesting, I think, that we still seem to buy into the idea that there exists a strong correlation between the American pastime of randomly killing each other and being mentally ill. It’s a fascinating scapegoat, I guess, albeit not an unprecedented one. When Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris decided to make Columbine High School their personal hunting range, significant percentages of the population decided Marilyn Manson and id Software were to blame, not, you know, the people who actually committed the act or America’s cultural hard-on for phallic-shaped weapons that serve no other purpose than fatal money shots.

Guns are porn for us, but because it seems like the seasons can’t change without some deranged ammosexual skeeting all over an innocent populous, we have to find someone to be the fall guy.

Despite this scapegoat, there is little in the way of evidence to support the connection between mass shootings and the mentally ill. In an interview with ProPublica, Dr. Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University, had this to say:

“If we were able to magically cure schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression… overall violence would go down by only about 4 percent.”

Furthermore, efforts aimed at keeping firearms out of the hands of the mentally ill have done almost nothing to affect the overall crime rate. According to Newsweek:

“In 2001, Connecticut added patients who had been involuntarily committed to mental institutions to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The result? Violent crime among those persons dropped by over 50 percent, but since they constitute such a small percentage of the criminal population only 14 violent crimes were prevented — not 14 mass shootings, just 14 violent crimes.”

So that’s the rationale for spending $19.5 million and dumping American mental health records in the federal background check system? A drop in violent crimes committed among the mentally ill with no real impact on the overall crime rate? Then, I suppose Dr. Swanson was right on the money when he said:

“It’s like if you had a vaccine that was going to work against a particular public health epidemic, but only 7 percent of the people got the vaccine. It might work for them, but it’s not going to affect the epidemic.”

Culturally, we love guns, but guns are becoming increasingly controversial. It would make sense for the scores of “good guys with guns” to find some boogeyman to take the public attention off the thousands who are found dead each year with bullets lodged in their bodies. It’s an old talking point revamped for a modern problem. Blaming the mentally ill is no different than blaming musicians, movies, video games, or even Elvis Presley’s gyrating hips.

When are we going to hold ourselves accountable?

Robert could go on about how he was raised by honey badgers in the Texas Hill Country, or how he was elected to the Texas state legislature as a 19-year-old wunderkind, or how he won 219 consecutive games of Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots against Hugh Grant, but those would be lies. However, Robert does hail from Lewisville, Texas, having been transplanted from Fort Worth at a young age. Robert is a college student and focuses his studies on philosophical dilemmas involving morality, which he feels makes him very qualified to write about politicians. Reading the Bible turned Robert into an atheist, a combative disposition toward greed turned him into a humanist, and the fact he has not lost a game of Madden football in over a decade means you can call him "Zeus." If you would like to be his friend, you can send him a Facebook request or follow his ramblings on Twitter. For additional content that may not make it to Liberal America, Robert's internet tavern, The Zephyr Lounge, is always open