First of all, i think it is clear that blaming mental illness is a red herring. You see pro-gun politicians bring it up ever time a mass shooting gets this kind of media coverage, you never see them take considered action to tackle mental health.Randomizer wrote: ↑Wed Jun 01, 2022 3:31 am
It has been pointed out that the percentages of mentally ill people world wide are roughly the same, but you don't have mass shootings in this great a number in other countries. So gun regulations do make a difference.
Second, mental illness varies from country to country, largely because it is a social construct. We decide what is 'healthy', maybe 200 years ago there was no autism diagnosis, but there we're still people who were not neurotypical - the question of whether they were I'll is whether they fit in, or whether society made space for them to fit it.
But we also see many 'Diseases of Society' - that could mean higher rates of obesity and diabetes in one culture compared to another. But when it comes to mental illness it can relate to things like stress, how much holiday time is available, what kind of extra work you have to do to expect career rpogress (toxic corporate cultures) and what kind of social safety net exists or coercive procedures are in place (like losing your health insurance if you leave your job).
All of that being true, mental health issues do not coorelated with acts of violence. You are not more or less likely to be a perpetrators of violence if you have mental health issues. You are, on the other hand, more likely to be a victim. So not only is it a red herring, which does nothing to help mental health. It also villianize the people who are more likely to he victims (and likely increases police violence against them).
That said, most people with mental health issues don't commit acts of mass violence. But all people who do commit acts of mass violence are mal adjusted in some way. Their society has a toxic culture which is the underlying cause. Whether they were play deprived (and lack of appropriate developmental play coorelates with an inability to respond healthily to stresse) or otherwise maligned by something, most of these shooters knowingly throw their lives away. What is it about their own lives that they don't value? Why are they mal-adjusted?
I'm not going to paint them as cowards because they choose to murder and get killed by cops instead of just killing themselves. But they are following a narrative. One which they see is 'doing something' with their lives. Even if that something is incredibly destructive, unhealthy, and villanous. Even if they see themselves as a villian, they also know they will be remembered.
That said, and i will raise gender again, we do see men in other countries killing their entire family before killing themselves - this is a very similar behaviour. Both are self-destructive, both are blaming others (society/their family) for what they must see as a failed and useless life.
An Irish man a few years ago kill his wife and two kids and then himself. Why did he not simply take his own life? What was he lacking? Some sense of purpose? Of value? And when he decided to take his own life, did he blame his family for not giving him the things he was lacking? Making him the powerful successful father figure he felt he should have been?
I am speculating. But what he expected, and what mass shooters expect their lives should be is an important factor.
The US is a particularily cruel and uncaring one. Freedom means the freedom starve, the freedom to be shot in the streets, beat by police and stress over lack of money for health care. Or bankruptcy from inability to pay medical bills.
But race is a big factor in this, part of the reason only employees get health insurance in the US is that people didn't want those Others to be protected (lack of class solidarity). The UK does not have this issue, despite terrible class division.
But the racism in the US feeds back into expectations, what a white male expects their life to be in a white supremacist culture is very different from a white woman or a black man. And guess who is most likely to go on a killing spree? Those who a given the highest expectations for success and who fail to meet them.
I don't know the figures, but shootings like these (not including gang land crime where murder is rational based on your own survival and the police's lack of value to human life -ie you know they won't bother investigating a 'black on black' shooting) are almost exclusively white and male.
The US has a problem with White Supremacy and with Violently Toxic Masculinity.
Getting rid of guns would be great, but saying that does not address the underlying issue. It is not the guns, it is not the individual person, it is the culture that breeds them.