Friday, February 16, 2018

The myth that mental illness causes mass shootings

Good article in Behavioral Scientist, especially since it debunks the repugnantan fallacy that the mentally ill are responsible and therefore the only remedy is early treatment. (Never mind that Dump has removed the prohibition that mentally ill people cannot own a gun.) The bare truth is that owning military-style weapons is the cause of mass killings and we need to outlaw them. From the article:

"In their 2016 edited book Gun Violence and Mental Illness, psychiatrists Liza Gold and Robert Simon summarize the evidence debunking the myth that mental illness is a leading cause of gun violence. As they report, less than 5% of shootings are committed by people with a diagnosable mental illness. Like mentally healthy offenders, the mentally ill are far more likely to shoot people they know rather than strangers. The mentally ill are also far more likely to be victims of gun violence rather than perpetrators. These data suggest that the link between mental illness and mass shooting exists in our minds, not in reality."

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.