Mental health and gun violence are two separate problems
Mental Health and Gun Violence Do Not Go Hand In Hand from Mariel Zambelli on Vimeo.
Mental health has been criticized the last couple of weeks as the cause of the most recent gun violence incidents. As the gun violence and mental health debate continue; after speaking to multiple professionals, the correlation between the two do not relate.
In February, a school shooting in Parkland, Florida left 17 people dead and 14 people injured. Following the events, students from the school have taken it upon themselves to try to bring the issue of gun violence into the public sphere once more.
After large scale shootings like the one in Parkland, the debate of gun violence often rears its head. When this happens, mental illness is usually tied to the issue of gun control, but it might depend on one’s view of what a mental illness is to decide if gun violence and mental health are linked.
The Executive Director of the Mental Health and Recovery Board of Portage County, Dr. Joel Mowrey, says that defining mental illnesses in an individual may not be as simple as narrowing down a diagnosis.
“First of all, we need to start with; mental health is a health problem,” Mowrey said. “Just like physical health problems, we all have mental health problems as well.”
Mowrey says that 100 percent of the population has some kind of mental health problem, because the term is broader than the definition of well-known and diagnosed mental illnesses.
“Some people have maybe the more diagnosed conditions like depression, anxiety, bipolar,” he said. “But we all have even just day-to-day problems of living, of stress, of dealing with loss, dealing with relationships, with grief. Those are all mental health issues. So we all have mental health issues.”
When it comes to purchasing a gun, it’s these “diagnosed conditions” that sellers look for. The Executive Director of the Buckeye Firearms Association, Dean Rieck, explained how the process for buying a firearm works.
“If you walk into a store and you wanna buy a shotgun you have to go through that background check process,” he said.
The background check is a federal requirement for license sellers, generally known as Federal Firearms Licensees. If a person is purchasing a gun legally, they have to go through one of these sellers.
“The system is called NICS and it’s the National Instant Criminal Database (sic) System,” Rieck said. “If you’re prohibited, the sale won’t go through. If you’re not prohibited, then you can purchase the firearm and it generally just takes a few minutes because it’s all a computerized database system.”
Reick also said that NICS, or the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, only works if it has all the information. This has been an issue that gun sellers have come up against recently.
Currently, states aren’t required to send mental health records to NICS under federal law. According to research from the National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics and the National Center for State Courts from 2012, only about 30 percent of mental health records in the United States over the past two decades can be found in the system.
A bill is currently moving through the house that seeks to correct this. H.R.4477, or Fix NICS Act of 2017, intends to create incentives and punishments to encourage states to submit mental health records to NICS.
“We (Buckeye Firearms Association) support Fix NICS because we think that goes right to the heart of the problem,” Rieck said. “If there is a mental health issue that’s been substantiated, you’ve gone through the due process and you shouldn’t have a firearm by law then you should be in that database.”
Mowrey said he doesn’t agree that banning anyone who suffers from mental health problems from having a firearm is the best response to the issue.
“When you go from 100 percent of people have mental health issues and then they say ‘well, anyone with mental health issues shouldn’t have a gun,’” Mowrey said. “Then you want to follow that argument, then since we all have mental health issues, then nobody should have a gun. Then it’s like, well, I don’t agree with that either.”
Alanna Updegraff, the Director of Psychological Services at Kent State, said the protections keeping people with diagnosed mental health problems aren’t just meant for protecting the population, but for protecting the person themselves.
“We have to think not only about people being dangerous to others, but also about them being dangerous to themselves,” she said. “And I think that guns are dangerous things and that most people don’t need to have guns. I know we have the Second Amendment, but, you know what? I think there’s many more important things than somebody being able to buy a gun. And so, yes, I would be in favor of there being protections between mental health diagnoses and purchase of guns.”
With a lack of information being shared and the idea that 100 percent of the population deals with mental health problems, it seems like it might be easy for someone with mental illness to still purchase a gun.
“When someone decides that they’re gonna kill a whole bunch of people, I think just by definition we know there’s a mental problem,” Rieck said. “In every single case where you see, especially these school killings or church killings, anything like that, if you follow the story long enough, you’ll find out that there was some sort of mental issue.”
It might not be that simple.
A study done by the National Center for Biotechnology Information found that, between 2001 and 2010, less than 5 percent of gun-related killings in the United States were committed by someone with a diagnosed mental health condition.
According to the American Mental Health Counselors Association, people with diagnosed mental illnesses are “far more likely to be victims of violence, included but not limited to firearm violence, than the perpetrators.”
“The vast, vast, vast majority of people that have mental illness or that have been assigned a mental health diagnosis are not doing things like that,” Updegraff said. “I think there’s political, social and other issues that are driving gun violence and I think we need to focus on clients and not be afraid of talking about and recognizing when somebody’s struggling and just help.”
Mowrey agreed that an important step to preventing violent acts is to recognize the signs and be willing to speak up.
“One of the things I really like to emphasize, especially with kids, is tell an adult when you see things,” he said. “I think that’s one of the best ways of prevention is everybody is sort of aware and looking out for everybody else.”
Mental health and gun violence are two separate issues, and I have all the details on both. Follow my tweets for an update on when the story is live. #jmcrpp
— Mariel Zambelli (@M_Zambelli72) March 16, 2018
Outside of politics and social topics, mental illness may not be as tightly correlated to gun violence and you may think. Watch for my story today! #JMCRPP
— Ella✨ (@ellasaurusrexx) March 17, 2018
Many think gun violence is from mental health issues… only 5 percent of the shootings from ‘00-‘10 have been from a mental illness. Follow my story. #jmcrpp
— Mariel Zambelli (@M_Zambelli72) March 16, 2018
When people talk about gun violence, they also tend to talk about mental illness. But how related are the two, really? Check out my story here! #JMCRPP https://t.co/MkUdKcAolw
— Ella✨ (@ellasaurusrexx) March 17, 2018
