One the face of it, it is reasonable to think a mass shooter must have “something wrong” with them. Well-adjusted, moral people do not engage in mass murder. But are mass shooters mentally ill? The nature of mental illness is a medical matter, not a matter for common sense pop psychology or philosophers to resolve. But critical thinking can be applied to the claim that mass shootings are caused by mental illness.
Using the strict medical definition, mentally ill people do not make up the majority of mass shooters and about 3% of violent criminals are mentally ill. Research consistently shows that the mentally ill are more likely to be victims of violence rather than perpetrators. Violence on the part of the mentally ill tends to be self-directed rather than directed at others.
Self-injury is a matter of concern, but mass shootings and gun violence are not primarily a mental health issue. While the mentally ill commit some gun violence, focusing on mental illness as the primary means to reduce gun violence would be an error, except to address cases of self-harm.
It could be objected that the definition of mental illness used above is too narrow and that engaging in a mass shooting is evidence of mental illness because a sane person would not do such a thing. While this has some appeal, expanding the scope of mental illness to automatically include those who engage in mass shootings would be problematic.
One obvious concern is that soldiers and police could thus be classified as mentally ill simply by being involved in shootings on par with a mass shooting. It could be countered that soldiers and the police (usually) use violence legally and rationally while mass shooters and people engaging in other gun violence do not. While it is true that mass shootings and gun violence are illegal, mass shooters do often act from grievances and ideology, just as soldiers and police are sent to kill over grievances and in accord with an ideology. As such, killing people for these reasons does not make someone mentally ill, unless we want to classify combat veterans and some police officers as automatically mentally ill. As far as the legal aspect is concerned, breaking the law hardly seems to show someone is mentally ill, otherwise all criminals would be insane and thus would always succeed in the insanity defense.
A second concern is that assuming mass shooters are mentally ill would eliminate the role of evil. If people do mass shooting things because of mental illness, then they are not evil in a morally meaningful sense. While this could be true, such an approach to evil would need to be applied consistently and not just to mass shootings. So, for example, when terrorists crash planes into buildings or blow up a wedding, they are suffering from mental illness and are not evil. One could attempt to work out accounts of ethics and mental illness that put the blame for gun violence on mental illness while putting the blame for terrorism on evil, but this would be challenging. After all, if a white supremacist kills people because he is mentally ill, then the same would apply to a member of ISIS. Interesting enough, while Republicans and the NRA rush to blame mass shootings on mental illness, they do not do the same for terrorism or other crime and it is interesting to compare the rhetoric used by the same pundit or politicians to describe these situations. This is not to say that a case cannot be made for eliminating the concept of evil in favor of the concept of mental illness, but this must be done in a principled manner and applied consistently.
Considering the above discussion, the mental illness explanation for mass shootings (and gun violence) is not adequate. While seriously addressing mental illness would be laudable, it would not eliminate mass shootings and would have an insignificant impact on most violence (other than self-inflicted violence). This is not to say that mental illness should not be addressed, it absolutely should. But claiming mental illness explains gun violence is an error and a distraction from addressing the causes of gun violence.
I have tried to, as Dennett and Hofstadter (spelling?) once claimed, JOOTS this problem. If you are unfamiliar with the notion, the letters stand for: jumping out of the system. Some might argue this is only another term for thinking outside the box. I can neither corroborate nor refute that assessment—don’t know if Dan and Doug ever codified jootsing. Probably not. A box is one thing. A system is another, broader one. I don’t know if there is any distinct line of demarcation—or if there could be. Anyway, here is what I think (as briefly as I can manage) : anger and rage are manifestations of mental illness, all be they temporary, ephemeral. Roughly estimating, I would guess 99% of living people have been mentally ill, due to a temporary hormone imbalance, mostly adrenalin. If, and only if, an ordinarily rational person becomes angry, full of rage; and has access to a gun; someone may die. I’m not saying who…no one can accurately predict chance: I put little stock in *error statistics*. It is hard to JOOTS on this conundrum. Why? Because everyone is, potentially, mentally ill, if only for long enough to kill someone with a gun.What follows that is what we call justice. Rawls wrote on that. As did Mortimer Adler, et. al. Happy springtime!
Will think on this some more. Initial assessment? Ideology leads to mental illness…that is not sarcasm, it is reality.
This essay should be read by all politicians. It defeats all their arguments about mental illness. I was going to mention terrorists, but of course I immediately read the same argument in your essay.
It is pretty clear: we are good or bad according to what we believe. It is true for terrorists, as for mass shooters, as it was true for the Spanish Inquisition, as it was true for Nero, and on and on since the dawn of thinking mankind. We are what we think, no two ways around it. Which is why we should be very careful about where our mind goes, what it reads, what it learns. And of course, if no effort is made to make it better, guess what, it can only get worse, what is called ‘ignorance’.
Socrates said that evil people are really ‘just’ ignorant, if I am not mistaken. But good old Socrates wasn’t aware of all the evil we are capable of, he just saw a fraction of it, so we can’t blame him for his conclusion, which in some cases holds true, mainly for, say, children, or people who truly had no intention to be bad but ended up being so. But these cases are a minority.
We are bad, and we know that. Some of us will do something about it, the meaning of ‘know thyself’. Most will just accept themselves as they are, and some will get eaten by their ignorance like a cancer that in the end, swallows them whole and does great and lasting harm to others.
Agreed, Dr LaBossiere. It’s all about ideologies, and very little about mental illness.