Evidence strongly suggests that mass shooters are often mentally ill and socially marginalized. (4) Because of the complex psychiatric histories of mass shooters, gun control “won’t prevent” another Tucson, Aurora, or Newtown.Įach of these statements is certainly true in particular instances. 15–17įrom this review we critically addressed 4 central assumptions that frequently arise in the aftermath of mass shootings: 12,13) Finally, we accessed our own primary source historical research on race/ethnicity, violence, and mental illness, 14 and US gun culture. (Though not peer-reviewed, investigative journalism and online archives proved important secondary sources that often functioned outside regulations limiting firearms research. Who made the art for the sufferer and the witness manual#We also conducted manual online searches for specific authors, organizations, and news outlets that produced relevant research on these topics. Search terms included keyword combinations of terms such as guns or firearms with terms such as mental illness or schizophrenia, with a time frame of 1980 through 2014. We obtained articles through comprehensive searches in online English-language psychiatric, public health, social science, and popular media databases including PsychINFO, PsychiatryOnline, PubMed, SCOPUS, and LexisNexis. We accessed key literatures from fields including psychiatry, psychology, public health, and sociology that address connections between mental illness and gun violence. However, notions that mental illness caused any particular shooting, or that advance psychiatric attention might prevent these crimes, are more complicated than they often seem. It is undeniable that persons who have shown violent tendencies should not have access to weapons that could be used to harm themselves or others. 9 Lanza “struggled with basic emotions” as a child and wrote a story “in which an old woman with a gun in her cane kills wantonly.” 10 Isla Vista, California, shooter Elliot Rodger suffered from Asperger’s disorder and took psychotropic medications. 8 Classmates felt unsafe around Jared Loughner because he would “laugh randomly and loudly at nonevents” in the weeks before he shot US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 6 other people at a rally in front of a supermarket in Tucson, Arizona. Who made the art for the sufferer and the witness movie#6,7 Aurora, Colorado, movie theater shooter James Holmes “was seeing a psychiatrist specializing in schizophrenia” before he opened fire in a crowded theater. Reports suggest that up to 60% of perpetrators of mass shootings in the United States since 1970 displayed symptoms including acute paranoia, delusions, and depression before committing their crimes. Crimes such as Newtown-where Lanza killed 20 children and 6 adults with a military-grade semiautomatic weapon-appear to fall outside the bounds of sanity: who but an insane person would do such horrifying things? And, of course, scripts linking guns and mental illness arise in the aftermath of many US mass shootings in no small part because of the psychiatric histories of the assailants. Such associations make sense on many levels. “They could hurt themselves, they could hurt other people.” 5 “People who have mental health issues should not have guns,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters after one such bill passed the New York Senate. 4 Meanwhile, in the months after the shooting, a number of states passed bills that required mental health professionals to report “dangerous patients” to local officials, who would then be authorized to confiscate any firearms that these persons might own. In a contentious press conference, National Rifle Association President Wayne LaPierre blamed “delusional killers” for violence in the United States, while calling for a “national registry” of persons with mental illness. Similar themes permeated political responses to Newtown as well. 2 Conservative commentator Anne Coulter provocatively proclaimed that “Guns don’t kill people-the mentally ill do.” 3 strongly suggest undiagnosed schizophrenia” added the New York Times. “Was Adam Lanza an undiagnosed schizophrenic?” asked Psychology Today. For instance, the US media diagnosed shooter Adam Lanza with schizophrenia in the days following the tragic school shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December 2012. In the United States, popular and political discourse frequently focuses on the causal impact of mental illness in the aftermath of mass shootings.
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