Last Sunday, tragedy struck once again at the hands of a man with a gun. What should have been a day for worship became a day of mourning when a man named Devin P. Kelley opened fire on a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, taking the lives of 26 people and injuring 20 more. This tragic massacre in Texas happened in the wake of another shooting in Las Vegas, when 58 people died and hundreds more were injured in the deadliest mass shooting in American history after a gunman opened fire on a crowd of concert goers. And these were not isolated events; these horrific acts were only two of the 307 mass shootings that have occurred in the United States in 2017 alone, according to the Gun Violence Archive. With so many acts of gun related violence taking place in such a short amount of time, blame must be placed somewhere. Many, including our President, place the blame for the Texas shooting and many others solely on mental health.
President Donald Trump dismissed guns as being the cause of this massacre, instead placing the blame entirely on Kelley’s mental health. To be fair, Kelley had shown signs of a troubled mind, having escaped from a behavioral health facility five years before the incident and been court martialed for abusing his wife and stepson. However, placing all of the blame for this incident solely on his mental health, which has been a common argument by many politicians and groups who oppose gun control instead advocating that mental illness is largely to blame for mass shootings, is misguided for two major reasons.
Studies that have been done on the correlation between mental illness and gun violence have shown that mental illness is not as prevalent in people who go on mass shooting sprees as the general public might think. In the study Gun Violence and Mental Illness, it was reported by Drs. James Knoll IV and George D. Annas that people with serious mental illnesses are responsible for less than 1% of all yearly gun-related homicides, and that mental illnesses contribute to only 3% of all violent crimes not even involving guns. Knoll and Annas also explain that “few perpetrators of mass shootings have had verified histories of being in psychiatric treatment for serious mental illness . . . in most cases, it cannot fairly be said that a perpetrator ‘fell through the cracks’ of the mental health system. Rather, these individuals typically plan their actions well outside the awareness of mental health professionals.” While poor mental health can certainly be a component in why people are led to commit these violent acts, it is wrong to assume that lack of psychiatric treatment for these individuals is the only reason behind these heinous actions. It is wrong to single out and vilify all individuals with mental illnesses and point fingers at them.This will only stigmatize illnesses that are already misunderstood and misrepresented in the popular media.
While it is important to not ignore these facts, it is even more important on moral levels to not blame mental health for gun violence because, in doing so, it attempts to in some way justify the perpetrator’s behavior and remove some of his responsibility for the action. When we try to explain away Kelley’s motivations for committing such a horrible, inhuman crime by justifying it through the argument that he wasn’t mentally sane, we eliminate the poignancy of the fact that, despite his mental state, Kelley was still 100% accountable for his actions. While he may not have been sane enough to realize that gunning down a whole church of adults and children was a despicable act, he still made the decision to pick up a gun and fire it at those churchgoers. It may be easier to rationalize and understand why someone could perform such an inhuman crime by blaming it on mental illness, but the price of doing so is taking away this man’s responsibility for his actions and thus, justifying his behavior.
Massacres such as the one in Texas are hard to grasp, and it is almost impossible to fathom just how depraved someone could be to unnecessarily take so many lives. But stigmatizing and blaming mental illness as being the root of gun violence is not the answer to why someone would do this. Being brave enough to not hide behind the simple answers and explanations for gun violence may not be easy, but it is a necessary step towards ending these unnecessary acts of hatred.