By Alison Cassidy Norton
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(Image: a large crowd of people gathered together in the form of a semi-automatic rifle)
Content Warning: / / discussion of mass shootings, school shootings, gun violence, death of and harm to a child
My child is in his first year at a public Pre-K, and every day during drop-off, his fingers, with jagged nails that are picked at when he is worried or bored, tangle with mine, pull on my clothing and tighten around my wrists as I start our ritual of saying goodbye for the day. He does not want me to leave, and I do not want to either. It feels important, so I do. We give hugs, and I kiss his hair so he does not smell my coffee breath. I leave his classroom, give him a confident wave, and put on my brave face as I leave my baby in a space that has become nearly synonymous with violence and tragedy.
Since 2015, mass shooting incidents have continued to rise, resulting in over 19,000 injuries and deaths from mass shootings between 2015 and 2022. Last week, after returning home from my morning drop-off, my heart pounded as I read the news alert on my phone: As Gunfire Rang Out, Students and Teachers Huddled in Fear. On September 4, 2024, a 14-year-old killed two students and two teachers and injured more in Winder, Georgia, at Apalachee High School. Like this tragedy, attention has been focused on mental illness having a causal connection to violence since the earliest mass school shootings and became a regular part of the narrative after the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut. With each breaking news account of the latest mass shooting incident, the news cycles, public debates, and political messages are flooded with commentary about the perpetrators being insane, mentally ill, and even deranged monsters. Popularized by the National Rifle Association (NRA) and other gun advocates, the slogan “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” has been used to draw attention toward an individual’s mental health capacity and to advocate for more gun access for protection.
This rhetoric directly links psychiatric disorders and violent behavior that result in mass shootings and gun violence. Specific psychiatric disorders may indeed be associated with an increased risk of violence; however, common features of mass perpetrators (i.e., depression, social isolation, resentment, outward blame, etc.) are relatively prevalent in the general population. Furthermore, with similarities in crucial factors thought to correlate to mass shootings, if it is frankly just people killing people without access to guns factoring in, then there should be comparable rates of gun-related deaths across countries that are positioned alike in relevant areas.
Evans et al. (2016) compared mental illness and gun violence in the U.S., Australia, and Britain as three similarly situated nations with high rates of mental illness and concurrent exposure to “popular culture that perpetuates the stigma of the mentally ill as a violent threat.” They found that the three countries have similar rates of mental illness and access to the same material thought to incite mass shootings by like-minded individuals. However, the proportion of firearm-related homicides in the U.S. was nearly “11 times that of Britain and more than seven times that of Australia.” The difference here is not that the U.S. has higher rates of mental illness with violent expression; the difference is access to guns. For every 100 people in the U.S., Australia, and Britain, there were 112, 12, and 4 guns, respectively.
In Winder, Georgia, after the teenager was detained and charged with the murders at his school, his father was arrested and charged with crimes related to the shootings as well. Initially, I felt grateful. In my anger, sadness, and deep fear as a parent to a child attending school, it made sense that someone with a mature prefrontal cortex should have to pay for the senselessness; gun owners with lax gun safety practices be dammed!
However, after gaining some clarity, I realized this approach has a glaring problem. Arresting the father of the gunman for his part, like blaming mental illness as the cause of gun violence, is the equivalent of putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. Perhaps these things help us sleep better at night because we think we know who to blame and because we can take concrete actions that serve justice where justice is unquestionably due. But placing such baseless blame does nothing for a safer future; it simply distracts us from the real and systemic issues with gun violence, ultimately giving politicians and lawmakers yet another pass on bipartisan efforts to improve our public safety.
My son had a good day at school the day that the Apalachee High School shooting occurred. He learned about different continents, remembered a new friend’s name, and got an extra snack in the afternoon. I felt worried until I had him with me, and if I am being honest, that worry does not ever go away. While I do not claim to have the answer for what safe, responsible, and reasonable gun ownership looks like in the U.S., I do know that blaming people with psychological conditions and now arresting the father of a mass shooter do not get us closer to finding out. While there are more guns in America than there are people, and federal laws fail to address issues with gun access and safe storage effectively, I continue to worry that there is no future in the U.S. that does not include the ubiquitousness of mass shootings in our schools and communities.
References
Appelbaum, P. S. (2013). Public safety, mental disorders, and guns. JAMA Psychiatry, 70(6), 565. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2013.315
Evans, R., Farmer, C., & Saligari, J. (2016). Mental illness and gun violence: Lessons for the
United States from Australia and Britain. Violence and Gender, 3(3), 150–156. https://doi.org/10.1089/vio.2015.0049
Everytown for Gun Safety. (2023, April 3). Mass shootings in the United States. Everytown Research & Policy. https://everytownresearch.org/mass-shootings-in-america/
Fox, J. A., & Fridel, E. E. (2016). The tenuous connections involving mass shootings, mental illness, and gun laws. Violence and Gender, 3, 14-19. doi:10.1089/vio.2015.0054
