Some expert on NPR the other day was decrying President Trump's statement that mental illness was the cause of the mass killings we've experienced recently. The only gun crimes committed by the mentally ill, according to the expert, were suicides.
Not being an expert on mental health, I've got no rebuttal to the expert on the radio. But it seems that the willingness to accede to an overwhelming urge to kill a bunch of people certainly isn't a sign of good mental health.
Perhaps it might have satisfied more people to call it a "disorder." In any event, it doesn't take an expert to observe that young males are disrespected by society, and they become alienated as a result.
Meanwhile, Taylor Day writes this at Americanthinker.com Mass Shootings: The Elephant in the Room in which she lays out the five stages of thinking she calls the Levin & Madfis model that lead to a mass shooting: chronic strain, uncontrolled strain, acute strain, planning, and ultimately, the attack. Click the link for more detail on those five stages.
Malcolm Gladwell's observation that each mass shooting lowers the threshold for the next one is not very comforting.
Lawmakers are under pressure to do something. But whatever they end up doing will probably be useless. See The Impact of Mass Shootings on Gun Policy in which the study authors say this:
The annual number of laws that loosen gun restrictions doubles in the year following a mass shooting in states with Republican-controlled legislatures. We find no significant effect of mass shootings on laws enacted when there is a Democrat-controlled legislature, nor do we find a significant effect of mass shootings on the enactment of laws that tighten gun restrictions.
So what do we do? The military has bent over backwards to identify and treat PTSD in combat veterans. Let's apply that same mentality to disaffected youth with efforts to identify them and try to help solve their disorder. It may or may not work. But it wouldn't hurt to try.
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10:56 AM 8/7/2019
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