Argument: The real problem with gun violence/mass
shootings in America is mental health, not a lack of gun control.
Example: "This isn't a guns situation. This is a mental health problem at the highest level."
Example: "This isn't a guns situation. This is a mental health problem at the highest level."
Response:
This claim is directly at odds with reality. To quote a recent review by Rozel & Mulvey (2017), "Mental illness is a weak risk factor for violence despite popular misconceptions reflected in the media and policy." For one thing, most mental disorders are not associated with an increased risk of violence (Ahonen, Loeber & Brent 2017). The vast majority of violence and/or crime in the United States is not committed by mentally ill people. Metzl and MacLeish (2015), for instance, noted that "...only about 4% of violence in the United States can be attributed to people diagnosed with mental illness." Further, not only are the vast majority of violent people not mentally ill, but "Epidemiologic studies show that the large majority of people with serious mental illnesses are never violent" (Swanson et al. 2015) For example, a 2015 study of 951 patients recently discharged from a mental hospital found that "Two percent of patients committed a violent act involving a gun, 6% committed a violent act involving a stranger, and 1% committed a violent act involving both a gun and a stranger" (Steadman et al. 2015).
In short, to again quote Rozel & Mulvey (2017)'s summary of epidemiologic evidence on this topic, "The most basic lesson of this epidemiological literature is that the overwhelming majority of people with mental illness are not violent and the majority of people who are violent do not have identifiable mental illness." For this reason, it is not recommended that access to guns be restricted simply because someone has been diagnosed with a mental illness (McGinty et al. 2014).
Sources:
No comments:
Post a Comment