Americans seem unable to ever agree about gun control, even after sickening mass killings of innocent people. We do seem to agree that these are the result of mental illness.
Chula Vista’s City Council recently passed its own gun control measure in hopes of stopping the innocent slaughter of youth. Southwestern College’s campus police department is hoping to add assault rifles to its inventory in an effort to protect students.
Restricting the types of guns one can purchase or limiting the magazine capacity may feel good, but it ignores the illness behind the shootings.
Mental illness is a stigmatized phrase, reserved for private conversations, whispered in hushed tones. We no longer lock up the mentally ill in asylums or give them frontal lobotomies, but mental illness is still an all-to-common malady.
An armed elephant in the room cannot be ignored.
Ignoring mental illness allows America to depict shooters as sub-human demonic entities rising from the depths of hell. Truth is a lot uglier. A shooter is someone’s brother, son, father, uncle or husband.
Many remember April 20, 1999 for the Columbine shooting in Colorado. Shooters Eric Harris, a clinical psychopath, and Dylan Klebold suffered from Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), according to the FBI. A month later Thomas Solomon Jr. armed with a pistol and a rifle, claimed to hear voices when he shot six people in Georgia. Five years later in 2005 Jeffrey Weise, who was being treated for depression, shot 12 killing seven at the Red Lake Massacre with a shotgun and pistols. Seung-Hui Cho, who had a severe anxiety disorder and MDD, killed 32 and wounded 17 at Virginia Tech using two pistols. Most recently came the pointless slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary by Adam Lanza who had several guns, including an assault rifle. He killed 27 innocent people, mostly children. Lanza’s brother said the shooter suffered from a personality disorder. Mental illness is the common denominator in all these shootings.
Our nation’s treatment of the mentally ill is negligent at best, immoral at worst.
For too long people with mental illness were something locked away in the basement, sometimes literally. Warehousing the mentally ill in large asylums with no freedom or dignity was culturally acceptable 60 years ago.
President Reagan’s administration exacerbated the mental illness and homeless problem. Reagan cut the budget of the Department of Housing and Urban Development from $83 million in 1978 to a meager $18 million in 1983. This spilled the mentally ill out on the street by the hundreds of thousands, fueling a simmering American disaster.
Circumstances have not changed much. Mental illness is still seen as shameful, weak or sub-human. People often hide the symptoms in shame until it is too late to receive treatment, as seen by the record amount of suicides by our brave servicemen.
Society needs to remove the stigmatization that accompanies the mentally ill. By doing so, friends and family are more likely to share any haunting thoughts that occupy their minds. It is time to bring it out of the shadows. Mental illness is no different than a broken bone or sprained ankle. Not only will we be saving the lives of the mentally ill by catching and treating them early, we may also curb the senseless slaughter seen around the country.
Documenting mental illness instead of hiding or shaming it can make firearm background checks more effective. It is currently too easy hide the illness, subsequently background checks come up clean. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) restricts vital medical information to be shared with anyone, including state and federal agencies running background checks for gun purchases.
Mental health practitioners and HIPAA need changing to put some teeth in the background checks, while protecting patient privacy. It is time for honest dialogue to save the children.
What we do not need to do is take away the rights of law-abiding citizens. The United States is a unique nation with legions of citizens who considers its founding documents as gospel and believe that taking away the people’s ability to protect themselves is criminal. Limiting ammunition clips and taking away certain types of guns are half-baked solutions.
SWC’s campus police can get assault rifles and Chula Vista can try to pass new guns laws to curb violence. But until there is dialogue and discussion to treat the mentally ill, there is no solution. Until then, child-size bulletproof vests should be on every school supply list.
