EDITORIAL: We must improve mental health, but look at the guns too

May 12—IN a story as repetitive as it is tragic, an attacker murdered eight people — not including the shooter, who was killed by police — Saturday at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas.

Within hours of the shooting, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called mental health the root cause of a crisis that has seen about one mass killing a week and roughly three mass shootings every two days since the beginning of this year.

"There has been a dramatic increase in the amount of anger and violence that is taking place in America and what Texas is doing in a big time way we are working to address that anger and violence at its root cause, which is the mental health problems behind it," Abbott said, as quoted by KDFW, the Fox affiliate in Dallas-Fort Worth.

The Texas governor made similar statements after the May 24, 2022, shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where a shooter armed with a military-style rifle murdered 19 elementary school children and two teachers.

Abbott's assertion is, on some level, self evident — anyone who walks into a mall, a school or any other public space looking to kill and wound as many people as possible, clearly has some sort of problem, which doesn't excuse the crime.

But we can't just call "mental health problems" the "root cause" and let that lie there unexamined. When Abbott and other politicians cite mental illness as the cause of mass shootings, they stigmatize people who are already suffering.

People with mental illness are over 10 times more likely to be the victim of violence than they are to perpetrate violence, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

We need to invest time, money and expertise into addressing mental health care to help people, especially for those who were deprived of human interaction during pandemic isolation.

But that alone may not put a dent in mass shootings.

To have an impact on shootings, a mental health focus must connect the types of mental illness that lead to violence, follow it wherever it leads, and keep those people from getting weapons.

That means we need to keep guns out of the hands of people who have the unique types of disorders that lead to violence, more rules like Pennsylvania's law that allows local sheriffs to confiscate weapons from those issued protection from abuse orders.

There is a correlation, if not a conclusive causation, linking domestic violence and misogyny and gun violence.

In more than two of every three mass shootings between 2014 and 2019, the killer murdered family members or intimate partners, or had a history of domestic violence, according to a study by Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence.

Without determining which mentally ill people are dangerous and which are not, and so-called red flag laws to keep the dangerous people from arming themselves, the call for addressing mental health is little more than a distraction from examining the role guns play in violence.

For sources to the information used in this article and Gov. Abbott's comments, please read this article at sharonherald.com

___

(c)2023 The Herald (Sharon,Pa)

Visit The Herald (Sharon,Pa) at www.sharonherald.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.