Thoughts on “Don’t Call Us Dangerous. Don’t Call Us ‘the Mentally Ill.’”

Marc L
Marc L
Nov 6 · 4 min read

I just read the article Don’t Call Us Dangerous. Don’t Call Us “the Mentally Ill.” published by The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and I have to say, I am very conflicted.

After a mass shooting, it’s easy to say “there must have been something wrong with him” because no one in their right mind would indiscriminately kill innocent people, right? Yet there are many fallacies to this assumption, as Bryan Barks points out in his article. “[B]laming mental illness in these situations is akin to blaming maleness — after all, these shooters are usually men,” Barks writes. (By the way, if you hadn’t noticed, they’re also usually Christian.) “We cannot categorically blame a single characteristic or an entire demographic when tragedies occur.” And he’s right. Just like not all men or Christians or Muslims are dangerous, neither are all people with mental illness.

On the other hand, restrictions are often put on people due to medical conditions for their own safety and the safety of others. In many states, people with epilepsy or narcolepsy must provide a doctor’s certification that their condition is well-controlled with medication. Barks states that “approximately 1 in 5 adults experiences mental illness in a given year.” But we’re not talking about everyone with a mental illness, we’re talking about people with severe and potentially dangerous mental illnesses — things like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which only affect approximately 3.7 percent of Americans.

Just like I am OK with banning people on the “no-fly list” from buying a gun, I am also OK with restricting gun sales to people diagnosed with a severe mental illness, a number that is much smaller than the “1 in 5” statistic that Barks mentions.

We are also talking about restricting access to one specific item — firearms. This isn’t something as egregious as banning all Muslims from entering the country because a few of them might want to do us harm. This is about preventing a small number of people from buying a potentially lethal weapon due to a specific diagnosis.

The bigger problem is, many people living with mental illness are not diagnosed. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that only half of people with mental illness receive treatment. That means that half of the “dangerously mentally ill” would still be able to purchase guns, even with some sort of mental health background check.

That being said, I have always said that gun laws aren’t about preventing all murders, and any law that reduces gun deaths even a little bit is an improvement. If banning assault weapons or high-capacity magazines can reduce gun deaths by even 10 percent, that’s hundreds of innocent lives saved. Likewise, if banning gun sales to people with specific mental illnesses can prevent even one mass shooting, then I believe that restriction is justified.

I am tired of hearing “it won’t work” as an excuse against tighter gun control. You know what doesn’t work? Doing nothing. At this point, we need to try everything and see what works. If one law doesn’t work, then we try something else.

I understand Barks’ concern about stigmatizing an entire group of people. We’ve already seen what stigmas have done to Muslims, immigrants, and others. I even wonder if I, as someone who takes medication for attention deficit disorder, would be classified as having a mental illness that would prevent me from buying a gun — not because I want to buy a gun, but because of the fear of being labeled “dangerous”. That’s why I am so conflicted about this issue.

Another good reason to pass this restriction is that, as Barks mentions, it is “one of the most universally agreed-upon gun violence prevention proposals.” And in this age of legislative partisanship and inaction, it is important to get any gun control law passed, even as a symbolic gesture of standing up to the NRA. Hopefully this would open the door to more comprehensive restrictions in the future. But more importantly, hopefully the laws would have some effect on today’s epidemic of gun violence.

On the other hand, what if these restrictions don’t work? I don’t want to fuel the GOP’s chants of “gun laws don’t work.” But the fear of failure and retribution from the right is no excuse for inaction. Like I said, if one law doesn’t work, we try another. But at least we are trying something.

I also believe there are many more important, common-sense gun laws that should be enacted — universal background checks, closing the gun show loophole, preventing domestic abusers from owning guns, and banning assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines that allow people to kill so many people in seconds. But that is no reason to take restrictions for mental illness off the table. What kind of message does it send if we can’t even pass a law supported by 89 percent of adults?

To be honest, perhaps we’re looking at this backwards. Perhaps instead of considering who shouldn’t own a gun, we should be asking who should be allowed to buy a gun. Many countries, including Australia, New Zealand, and most of Europe, only allow firearm ownership with a valid reason and require additional background checks to deem the person to be generally low-risk. (Even the United Kingdom, where most Americans think all firearms are banned, allows private ownership of rifles and shotguns.) But that is a different issue, and one that requires confronting the Second Amendment head on. For now, we need to focus on an “all of the above” approach to stemming this wave of gun violence.

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