Paul Ryan is blaming mental illness for mass shootings. Do you agree?

[caketastydelish]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/05/opinions/paul-ryan-mental-health-guns-sham-david-perry/index.html

CNN has been peeing the bed for as long as I can remember, but finally, they wrote something good.

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(CNN)On Tuesday morning, House Speaker Paul Ryan made his first remarks about the mass shooting in Las Vegas.

He said nothing about guns, but traded easily in false stereotypes linking mental illness with mass murder. He said that "one of the things we've learned from these shootings is often underneath this is a diagnosis of mental illness." He touted the 21st Century Cures Act, which passed with wide bipartisan support in the waning days of the Obama administration.

Let's be clear. Only 3% to 5% of all violent crimes involve people with psychiatric disabilities, including conditions such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. People with such conditions make up more than 18% of the American population. These individuals are 10 times more likely to be victims of violence than those without mental illness.

Talking about mental illness, whether it's relevant or not in a given case -- and it is often not -- is an attempt to dodge talking about guns.
It's long since time to separate conversations about mental health and gun violence.
But there is no sign that Ryan or his fellow Republicans are ready to actually work on issues of either mental health or gun proliferation. Ryan has been singing the same song linking mental illness to mass shootings for years. In 2015, for example, after the murders in San Bernardino, he warned about "home-grown jihadists," and then added, "We have seen, in a common theme, among many of these mass shootings, is a theme of mental illness."
At the time, Ryan was touting a bill, the "Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act," which emphasized taking rights away from individuals with disabilities and giving them to families. That legislation, some of which made its way into the 21st Century Cures Act, promoted institutionalization and coercive drug use. It passed. Meanwhile, guns keep proliferating, gun deaths keep rising, and the National Rifle Association keeps donating heavily to GOP officials.


Since President Donald Trump took office, every Republican attempt to replace Obamacare has proposed stripping away community and medical supports from people with mental health needs. If the GOP has its way on health care, insurance companies would have the right to raise premiums and potentially even deny care based on pre-existing conditions. People with mental health needs would either have to hide their conditions or go broke trying to pay for care.
In other words, Speaker Ryan and his party seem to be imagining a world in which individuals with mental illness cannot get care, are blamed for mass violence and risk being locked up in mental hospitals.
Democrats aren't always so great on mental health and gun control, either. The stigmas and ignorance are sadly bipartisan. After Las Vegas, some left-wing pundits were far too quick to pounce on the decision last February to relax an Obama-era rule that banned individuals with mental disabilities from buying guns
I'm loudly on the record in favor of gun control, but that was a bad rule. We're not going to get anywhere using evidence-free ableism (that is, discrimination in favor of people without disabilities) as a tool to fight gun violence.

But at least Democrats recognize that the problem is guns. We should be studying the best practices from around the world in reducing mass shootings and everyday gun violence. We should investigate the illegal pathways that guns travel from states like Arkansas and Indiana into cities like Chicago.
We should agree that someone like the Las Vegas shooter, who police say stockpiled a huge arsenal and legally converted his weapons to shoot as quickly as fully automatic rifles, might have set off some alarm bells with law enforcement as he was acquiring all this firepower.
There are lots of first steps to take. But Republicans in Congress aren't going to allow us to even start the conversation. There are reports that some congressional Republicans are showing interest in legislation that would restrict "bump stock" devices that enable semi-automatic rifles to fire rapidly like automatic weapons. We'll see if they maintain that interest. (Of course, the news sent consumers rushing to the store to buy the devices.)
No one serious about making our country safer should advocate for locking up Americans with psychological disabilities while letting guns roam free. Any move to place the rights of guns over the rights of people with mental health needs is pure politics, not evidence-based or pragmatic. We cannot fix the problems in our country by playing on stigmas. And we cannot arm our way to a freer society.

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Thoughts?

 

[Perfection]

Mental illness among congressional Republicans is responsible for many mass shootings.

 

[Commodore]

It all depends on how you define mental illness. If you only stick to clinical definitions (like this article does) then no, most mass shootings cannot be attributed to mental illness. On the other hand, I would contend that anyone who is willing to commit a violent crime could not be described as a mentally stable individual. I mean, something has to be wrong with you if you are at the point that you are willing to commit a violent act against people that have done nothing to you.

 

[JollyRoger]

Ryan is right . : . most have gunafilia.

 

[metatron]

Thoughts?

1. This is a wonderful opening post that should be greatly commended.
2. Gun control helps with overall gun deaths
3. I somewhat doubt that other than possibly reducing the number of victims per event any achievable tightening of gun control can achieve a turnaround in the trend that are suicidal mass shootings in America.

 

[Leifmk]

We have mentally ill people in other countries, too. Sometimes, someone with a mental illness will go on a violent rampage. Most often they only manage to hurt a handful of people.

 

[Commodore]

achieve a turnaround in the trend that are suicidal mass shootings in America.

See, I take issue when people call this a "trend". There is no trend of mass shootings in the US and that becomes apparent when you look at the numbers. While there is no solid data on the matter, best estimates say about a third of the US population are gun owners. That's approximately 106 million gun owners in the US. In 2016 there were 477 mass shooting incidents in the US. That means out of 106 million gun owners in the US only 477 used those guns to commit a mass shooting. 477 out of 106 million does not constitute a "trend". Mass shootings are extremely rare anomalies that are blown way out of proportion by the media and gun control advocates to make it seem like it is some out of control epidemic that needs to be controlled.

 

[metatron]

See, I take issue when people call this a "trend". There is no trend of mass shootings in the US and that becomes apparent when you look at the numbers. While there is no solid data on the matter, best estimates say about a third of the US population are gun owners. That's approximately 106 million gun owners in the US. In 2016 there were 477 mass shooting incidents in the US. That means out of 106 million gun owners in the US only 477 used those guns to commit a mass shooting. 477 out of 106 million does not constitute a "trend". Mass shootings are extremely rare anomalies that are blown way out of proportion by the media and gun control advocates to make it seem like it is some out of control epidemic that needs to be controlled.

I agree with you that the approach that people (e.g. in the media and in centre-left politics) have in the US is dubious. Usually they talk about all manner of - as you say - controls that may help with other gun-related dangers (like gun crime, suicide etc.) but likely will not fundamentally shift things on mass shootings.
None the less:
This is not normal. It's new. It's not a fact of life.

Gladwell speaks here about school shootings, so i will let him make the case.
I am sure you can see how much of it applies to mass shootings in general.

 

[Commodore]

This is not normal. It's new. It's not a fact of life

I agree. I even said this whole thing is just an extremely rare anomaly and it is generally a bad idea to base laws and regulations on extremely rare anomalies. The overwhelming majority of gun owners in the US are law-abiding citizens that don't need any additional regulation beyond what is currently in place.

That video was good by the way. Didn't see anything in it I particularly disagree with.

 

[metatron]

and it is generally a bad idea to base laws and regulations on extremely rare anomalies.

Well, the more crucial thing is if it's a good law or regulation.
I would suspect that something worthy to be considered would be to have some restriction on mentioning the full name of a shooting perpetrator in the media and not showing photographs of the perp either (or not "good" ones).
In many countries the media are to a varying degree stingy with that somewhat voluntarily.
The US are the only place that goes to such extremes in having perp names and perp faces blasted all over the media to such an extreme degree.
Obviously this serves vanity of potential perpetrators, particularly with regards to school shootings.

 

[tuckerkao]

Mental illness is definitely one of the major issues to the mass shooting, but gangster related crime problems still dominate the shooting list which can't be ignored.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Nice how they say mental illness isn't the reason for the stat of mass shootings, but then to support this use the stat 'violent crime'.

Mass shooting is a violent crime, but not all violent crimes are mass shootings.

In the Vegas case, if I'm not mistaken, before the shooting, the shooter wasn't suspected of having any mental issues (well, not serious enough to require treatment). Sandy Hook on the other hand, the kid was highly unstable before the shooting.

Better mental health services will help, but most likely not as much as gun control.

 

[El_Machinae]

There are many additional proximate causes for the high rate of shootings. Or really of any violent crime. Mental illness will obviously be a factor, but it's a statistical one.

The one thing I want to point out is that proper mental health services would bring down the violent crime rate. Now, it will only wiggle the trendline a bit, but it would certainly help.

As well, I'd like to point out how we're still really, really, really in the Dark Ages when it comes to mental illness. 1 in 100 people have Schizophrenia. That's a huge number, and an incredible proportion of those people suffer (or would suffer) despite interventions. That's a higher prevalence than Multiple Sclerosis. It's in the ballpark of Alzheimer's Disease.

Now think about this: when is the last time you've seen a research charity for mental illness? When is the last time you've been solicited? When's the last time you've been the least bit tempted to give??? Compare that to MS.

With so many diseases, we have three wings of looking into it. Government, research charities, and corporate. Each have something they're good at. But with mental illness, one of the largest causes of human suffering in the developed world, we don't really have the charity wing of funding. Why is that? We don't give a crap? We've given up hope? It's so stupid.

And I guarantee you, every dollar spent on research into these diseases has bleed-on effects for so many other diseases you give a crap about. And vis versa, obviously. But we're watching ourselves waddle into through the Dark Ages when it comes to huge proportions of our populations.

 

[metalhead]

I agree. I even said this whole thing is just an extremely rare anomaly and it is generally a bad idea to base laws and regulations on extremely rare anomalies. The overwhelming majority of gun owners in the US are law-abiding citizens that don't need any additional regulation beyond what is currently in place.

The existence of a large number of careful, responsible gun owners means nothing. Laws exist to protect society from the small number of people who aren't careful or responsible, to minimize the harm they are able to do to the majority of people, who are decent and law abiding.

 

[caketastydelish]

There's also the fact that there are 'lone nut shooter' people in every country on earth because every country has disturbed people and yet only America is the one with these consistent problems. It can't be a coincidence, America, specifically America, must be doing something wrong.

 

[EgonSpengler]

There's also the fact that there are 'lone nut shooter' people in every country on earth because every country has disturbed people and yet only America is the one with these consistent problems. It can't be a coincidence, America, specifically America, must be doing something wrong.

Here's a partial answer:
ABC News, 6 Oct 2017 - Here's why the federal government can't study gun violence

Passed in 1997 with the strong backing of the NRA, the so-called "Dickey Amendment" effectively bars the national Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from studying firearm violence -- an epidemic the American Medical Association has since dubbed "a public health crisis."

The amendment, which was first tucked into an appropriations bill signed into law by President Bill Clinton, stipulates that "none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control." A similar provision was included in the Appropriations Act of 2012.

[...]

More than a decade after [the Dickey Amendment] passed, Congressman Dickey himself came come to regret the law he had helped push.

"Firearm injuries will continue to claim far too many lives at home, at school, at work and at the movies until we start asking and answering the hard questions," he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed shortly after the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting that killed 12 in July 2012. "Scientific research should be conducted into preventing firearm injuries."

"I wish I had not been so reactionary," Dickey told ABC years later.

The congressman, who remained a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment until his death in April, said he once worried that the CDC's "agenda" was to take away guns. But he later joined forces with Mark Rosenberg, the former director of the CDC's gun research center, to promote academic inquiry into guns.

"Scientific research... it's our responsibility," Dickey explained. "It's silly for us to watch this nonsense take place, without doing something."

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There're also a handful (maybe more than a handful?) of common misconceptions about people with mental illness and guns that really need to be put to bed once and for all. For instance, the idea that a suicidal person will find a way to kill themselves regardless of whether a gun is available - "They'll just take a bunch of pills or jump off a roof or something" - is simply untrue. A great majority of people who survive a suicide attempt do not subsequently die by suicide. Suicidal ideation is a treatable illness, isn't usually chronic, and is not some sort of immutable character trait. Another truth that, ironically, gun enthusiasts will argue against, is that guns are more effective than other methods of violence, whether you're talking homicide, assault or suicide. It is not just as easy to kill someone with a kitchen knife or drain cleaner, and it is not just as easy to kill yourself with pills as with a gun. Taken together, we find that something like half of successful suicide attempts in the US are committed with a gun.

The New York Times, 7 Nov 2016 - After a suicide attempt, the risk of another try
Harvard University School of Public Health - [Suicide] Attempters' Long-Term Survival (the article is undated, but cites studies from 2002 and 2004, so it could be a little out of date)

 

[warpus]

I blame mental illness for Paul Ryan.

 

[JollyRoger]

The only thing that stops a bad guy with a mental illness is a good guy with a mental illness.

 

[caketastydelish]

Like the batman/joker thing?

 

[Lexicus]

Let's be clear. Only 3% to 5% of all violent crimes involve people with psychiatric disabilities, including conditions such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. People with such conditions make up more than 18% of the American population. These individuals are 10 times more likely to be victims of violence than those without mental illness.

This is the only statistic that actually matters to this conversation.

Mentally ill people really don't need to be implicitly thrown under the bus so that people can sound like they care about mass shootings.

It is also important to recognize that mass shootings represent a pretty small fraction of total US gun deaths. Suicide and domestic violence are the biggest gun violence issues in the US.