Should We Lock Up the Sane?

A new studythe MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study — found that those living with classic mental illness — schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression — alone are not likely to use guns when they commit acts of violence:

“For the small group of people with mental illness who are at risk of committing gun violence, improved collaborations with the criminal justice system are clearly indicated,” the researchers stated. “However, directly targeting mental illness as the major driver of gun violence is misguided. … Prior violence, substance use, and early trauma are more likely to contribute to subsequent violence than is mental illness per se. In this regard, the politically inspired haste to focus gun control efforts on people being treated for a mental illness, rather than on people with demonstrated indicators of violence risk, such as restraining orders related to domestic violence, seems particularly misdirected.”

This contradicts the latest psychophobic reign of error that comes upon the shooting in Charleston, South Carolina. It isn’t the mentally ill who shoot people, but those who have no psychiatric diagnosis. So what are we going to do about them?

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Charleston AME Shooting

As I write this, I can only begin to imagine the number of people who have jumped to the conclusion that the shooter at the Charleston AME Church was mentally ill. By this time tomorrow, even if the shooter has not been caught, we will hear the pundits debating what kind of disability afflicted the shooter. Undoubtedly there will be more calls for Forced Outpatient Treatment.

There are a few things to keep in mind before we turn Charleston into our reason-to-support-Murphy’s-Law-of-the-day:

  • We have no idea who the shooter is at this point, except that he is white and in his twenties or thirties.
  • South Carolina has “Assisted” Outpatient Treatment. So even if he was mentally ill, the much ballyhooed program sure as hell didn’t prevent anything here.
  • The man had a gun that let him kill a lot of people including a state senator.
  • White supremacist activity has been on the rise.

Rest assured that the NRA — which backs the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act — will blame this on mental illness at the earliest possible press conference. We’re the scapegoat for this kind of thing every time it happens.

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