NEW IDEA FOR GUN CONTROL

"Forget mental illness. The overall contribution of people with serious mental illness to mass shootings is about 1%. And of the 96 mass shootings committed since 1982, all but two were committed by men. Men are also responsible for the vast majority of gun-associated deaths in the country. Most of them were white men.

So, new idea for gun control. Just let adult women buy guns. And require them to be accountable as to who can have access. (I had this idea before I found an article in Politico by Laura Kiesel, January 17, 2018.)"

OK. I posted this on Facebook to get some people thinking, not seriously meaning to use gender discrimination in crafting gun legislation.  One reason I posted was because I keep hearing politicians and others keep parroting focus on keeping guns out of the hands of the "mentally ill". This is in fact ridiculous.  Why? Science. (An answer you will hear from me often). 

My by-no-means comprehensive internet research findings:

"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). In other words, 96 percent of the violence in America has nothing to do with mental illness."(Untangling Gun Violence From Mental Illness - Julie Beck, The Atlantic, 2016).

And Serious mental illness has been found to be conclusively present in a minority of mass shootings—only 14.8 percent of all of the mass shootings committed in the U.S., defined as a shooting which injures or kills four or more people, between 1966 and 2015. 

So, there is clearly something wrong with someone who kills someone else in a mass shooting scenario or otherwise.  But that does not mean they have a clinical diagnosis and therefore a treatable mental illness. There could be emotional and behavioral regulation issues related to anger, for example, which are a separate phenomenon. There could be underlying substance use issues. There could be environmental issues that impacted the development of the shooter.  There could be severe life distress. There could be a whole host of other risk factors for violence going on.

AND, we are not addressing the elephant in the room - what do mass shooters in particular have in common by and large?  The main thing mass shooters have in common is that they are men. And mostly white men.  Yes, I said it! (I'm a lame Chris Rock poser.)

What we do know is that when there is a mass shooting, the good money is that the shooter will be male, white, and to a lesser degree between the ages of 24-49. They will likely have a troubled history, one that probably included past violent acts.  How does this help us?  It doesn't.  Unless we have better studies (which the Center for Disease Control is unable to study due to lack of funding under the Dickey Amendment passed during the Clinton Administration), we are not able to reliably predict who will be a mass shooter.  

Of course my faithful Facebook commentators - who tend to lose their minds when I challenge prevailing, often conservative paradigms with some facts (and some intentional instigating) - rang in with some fun responses.  "Why blame Whitey?" (totally missing the point(s); and this gem from the woman who said we needed "more prayer, not woman power":  "Are you a feminist? This will just further divide humanity." - err...maybe someone should have clued the good Lord in on this when he made the two sexes in the Old Testament. 

What I would want people to take away here are several points:

♦︎ Any account of gun violence in the United States must be able to explain both why males are perpetrators of the vast majority of gun violence and why the vast majority of males never perpetrate gun violence.  It isn't that men are bad, or about shaming them.  There is something very wrong with our culture and masculinity that is intimately tied into mass shootings and gun violence in general.  Culturally masculinity is too often defined and characterized as something that can be performed or ‘proven’ through acts of aggression and even violence. Too often with horrifying consequences for men and women. We need to look long and hard at this issue not only with mass shooters, but gun violence overall, and even perhaps extend it to include global warfare.

♦︎ Stop trying to explain away mass shootings with some vague, ill-informed or demeaning notion of "mental illness" (see Trump's tweets).

♦︎ "Although it is important to recognize that most people suffering from a mental illness are not dangerous, for those persons at risk for violence due to mental illness, suicidal thoughts, or feelings of desperation, mental health treatment can often prevent gun violence. Policies and programs that identify and provide treatment for all persons suffering from a mental illness should be a national priority. Urgent attention must be paid to the current level of access to mental health services in the United States; such access is woefully insufficient." (American Psychological Association - of which I am a proud member).

♦︎ Again, Science. The Center for Disease Control cannot receive any funding that that "might promote gun control legislation" - for what they term a major public health crisis.  Ignorance is not the road to preventing these tragedies.  Let's raise a ruckus and change this. A little objective, nonpartisan, scientific daylight is a whole lot better than talking heads on TV parroting the same misleading and ultimately useless sound bytes.