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The Mental Health Scapegoat
The GOP's hand-wringing over "deranged" individuals distracts from America's real pathology: guns.
By Sarah Jones
February 16, 2018
Nobody doubts that Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old man responsible for killing 17 people in Parkland, Florida, on Wednesday, is troubled. The troubles are obvious now, the troubles are chyrons on the television, and experts are busy exploring the ruins those troubles have created. Every time someone troubled picks up a gun and murders mass numbers of people, we ask ourselves why it happened as if the answers will ever materialize.

We’re doing it again now, along with another near-ritualized display: Every time a mass shooting occurs, conservatives go on TV to offer thoughts and prayers and to suggest—politely—that you just can’t fix crazy. “This horror shouldn’t exist, and we don’t know right now exactly why this deranged individual did this,” Ted Cruz intoned on Fox News. Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants to “study” the role of mental health in school shootings; Florida Governor Rick Scott similarly wants to “work on how they can make sure people with mental illness aren’t able to get guns.” President Trump, meanwhile, suggested profiling. “So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior. Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!” he tweeted. For good measure, during a televised statement on Thursday, he also agreed that officials must “tackle the difficult issue of mental health.”
Here is what we know about Nikolas Cruz. He reportedly abused a girlfriend and killed small animals. He published racist posts on social media and posed often with guns. He had recently been orphaned. Several classmates have described him as “off” and “weird.” Of all these traits, two fit most neatly into the profile of the average mass shooter: violence against women and an obsession with guns. Cruz is also said to have had “flashes of rage.” And certainly mass shooters are angry, but a person can be angry, even violently angry, without meeting any diagnostic criteria for mental illness. White supremacy, for what it’s worth, is also not a label in the DSM-V.
And yet the right-wing suggests that mental health is clearly the culprit. Never mind that in reality, mental illness is rarely violent in an external sense. It tends to direct violence toward the self: Research suggests that people with mental illness are more likely to commit suicide rather than they are to kill others if they have access to firearms. They are 16 times more likely to be killed by police even though a 2014 study by the American Psychological Association found that only 7.5 percent of all violent crime could be linked to perpetrators’ symptoms of mental illness.

If we must rank human threats to American security,  the NRA’s activist network comes far above even the seriously mentally ill.
There is really only one way to effectively reduce gun violence, and that is to reduce the number of gun owners. But the only reductions that interest Trump and his party are reductions to the very social safety net that ensures access to affordable mental health care to begin with. For people with mental illness, conservative policies and rhetoric represent an existential threat: The GOP’s war on welfare and Medicaid could make it dramatically harder for people to access care, and Republicans have proposed expansive waivers for essential health benefits that would also impact mental health parity in private insurance.
Now, the party’s rhetoric on gun violence as a mental health crisis isolates the same vulnerable community they’ve abandoned by positioning them as a dangerous fifth column. There’s a McCarthyite impulse here, a drive to identify and scrutinize the deviant so as to purify society. Profiling the “off” and the “weird” won’t reduce the number of mass shootings any more than eliminating their care will. Meanwhile, the grim total of Americans who die at the end of a gun will continue to rise.

In America, some lives always matter more than others. But guns matter more than almost anything else. The United States is flooded with guns, a reflection both of its cowboy mythos and its obeisance to profit. It’s lucrative to make guns, to sell them, and to lobby for their unfettered possession. In 2016, there were nearly 300 million guns in America—the highest rate of per-capita gun ownership in the developed world. Globally, the United States represents half of the world’s supply of civilian-owned guns. But while there’s roughly one gun for every person in the country, gun ownership is hardly evenly distributed. The Washington Post reported in 2016 that 3 percent of Americans own half the country’s guns. What we do not possess in any disproportionate measure compared with other countries, however, are people with mental illness.
Look exclusively at the money fueling the National Rifle Association, and a clearer picture emerges: Only 19 percent of the nation’s gun owners donate to the NRA. Those gun owners lean heavily to the right, and their hostility to any restriction on gun ownership places them firmly outside the American mainstream. If there is an American pathology, this is the demographic where it resides. And if we must rank human threats to American security, the NRA’s activist network comes far above even the seriously mentally ill. The beliefs and donations of a select few grip the Republican Party so tightly that they are able to essentially contravene democracy. Most Americans want gun control. But whenever the nation is confronted with tragedy, the Republican Party offers prayers and scapegoats—and people with mental illness are among the easiest, most vulnerable targets the country has to offer.
The scapegoat, as defined in the Book of Leviticus, is a propitiation. He is to be presented alive before the Lord as an atonement for the sins of the people. The goat is an individual solution to a collective problem; he becomes too dangerous to tolerate. So he is sent into an uninhabited place to wander, where no one can see him. If he suffers, then he suffers alone. This is how the guilty scrub themselves clean: They pass their shame to the innocent. They create outcasts. And then they continue to sin.

Yeah, the GOP is closer to the cause of school shootings when they say Mental Health -

Prescription Psychiatric Drugs -

Experts say psychiatric drugs linked to long list of school shooting sprees

[www.wnd.com]

"... stopping antidepressants can be as dangerous as starting them, since they can cause very disturbing and painful withdrawal reactions,” he added.

The TeenScreenTruth website, dealing with the campaign to “screen” children for “problems” and then prescribe drugs, has documented an extended list of violent episodes believed connected to the use of psychiatric drugs.

They range as far back as 1985, when Atlanta postal worker Steven W. Brownlee, who had been getting psychotropic drugs, pulled a gun and shot and killed a supervisor and a clerk.

Among the specifically school-related attacks the site documents are:

In 1988, 31-year-old Laurie Dann, who had been taking Anafranil and Lithium, walked into a second-grade classroom in Winnetka, Ill., and began shooting. One child was killed and six wounded.

Later that same year, 19-year-old James Wilson went on a shooting rampage at the Greenwood, S.C., Elementary School and killed two 8-year-old girls and wounded seven others. He’d been on Xanax, Valium and five other drugs.

Kip Kinkel, a 15-year-old of Springfield, Ore., in 1998 murdered his parents and proceeded to his high school where he went on a rampage killing two students and wounding 22 others. Kinkel had been prescribed both Prozac and Ritalin.

Patrick Purdy, 25, in 1989 opened fire on a school yard filled with children in Stockton, Calif. Five kids were killed and 30 wounded. He been treated with Thorazine and Amitriptyline.

Steve Lieth of Chelsea, Mich., in 1993 walked into a school meeting and shot and killed the school superintendent, wounding two others, while on Prozac.

10-year-old Tommy Becton in 1996 grabbed his 3-year-old niece as a shield and aimed a shotgun at a sheriff’s deputy who accompanied a truant officer to his Florida home. He’d been put on Prozac.

Michael Carneal, 14, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in Heath High in West Paducah, Ky. Three died and one was paralyzed. Carneal reportedly was on Ritalin.

In 1998, 11-year-old Andrew Golden and 14-year-old Mitchell Johnson apparently faked a fire alarm at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Ark., and shot at students as they left the building. Four students and a teacher were killed. The boys were believed to be on Ritalin.

In 1999, Shawn Cooper, 15, of Notus, Idaho, took a shotgun to school and injured one student. He had been taking Ritalin.

April 20, 1999, Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, shot and killed 12 classmates and a teacher and wounded 24 others. Harris had been taking Luvox.

Todd Smith walked into as high school in Taber, Alberta, Canada in 1999 with a shotgun and killed one and injured a second student. He has been given a drug after a five-minute phone consultation with a psychiatrist.

Steven Abrams drove his car into a preschool playground in 1999 in Costa Mesa., Calif., killing two. He was on probation with a requirement to take Lithium.

In 2000, T.J. Solomon, 15, opened fire at Heritage High School in Conyers, Ga., while on a mix of antidepressants. Six were wounded.

The same year Seth Trickey of Gibson, Okla., 13, was on a variety of prescriptions when he opened fire on his middle-school class, injuring five.

Elizabeth Bush, 14, was on Prozac. She shot and wounded another student at Bishop Neumann High in Williamsport, Pa.

Jason Hoffman, 18, in 2001 was on Effexor and Celexa, both antidepressants, when he wounded two teachers at California’s Granite Hills High School.

In Wahluke, Wash., Cory Baadsgaard, 16, took a rifle to his high schooland held 23 classmates hostage in 2001. He has been taking Paxil and Effexor.

In Tokyo in 2001, Mamoru Takuma, 37, went into a second-grade classroom and started stabbing students. He killed eight. He had taken 10 times his normal dosage of an antidepressant.

Duane Morrison, 53, shot and killed a girl at Platte Canyon High School in Colorado in 2006. Antidepressants later were found in his vehicle.

In 2005, 16-year-old Native American Jeff Weise on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota was under the influence of the antidepressant Prozac when he shot and killed nine people and wounding five before committing suicide.

Another case involving a school-age youth – although not at a school – happened in 1986, when 14-year-old Rod Mathews of Canton, Mass., beat a classmate to death with a baseball bat while on Ritalin.

And just a few among the dozens of incidents cited, but not apparently related to schools:

William Cruse in 1987 was charged with killing six people in Palm Bay, Fla., after taking psychiatric drugs for “several years.”

The same year, Bartley James Dobben killed his two young sons by throwing them into a 1,300-degree foundry ladle. He been on a “regimen” of psychiatric drugs.

Joseph T. WesBecker, 47, just a month after he began taking Prozac, shot 20 workers at Standard Gravure Corp. in Louisville, Ky., killing nine. Eli Lilly, which makes Prozac, later settled a lawsuit brought by survivors.

In 1991, 61-year-old Barbara Mortenson, on Prozac for two weeks, “cannibalized her 87-year-old mother …”

In 1992, Lynnwood Drake III, shot and killed six in San Luis Obispo and Morro Bay. Prozac and Valium were found in his system.

Sixteen-year-old Victor Brancaccio attacked and killed an 81-year-old woman, covered her corpse with red spray-paint. He was two months into a Zoloft regimen.

While on four medications including Prozac, Dr. Debora Green in 1995 set her Prairie Village, Mo., home on fire, killing her children, ages 6 and 13.

Kurt Danysh, 18, shot and killed his father in 1996, 17 days after his first dose of Prozac. “I didn’t realize I did it until after it was done. … This might sound weird, but it felt like I had no control of what I was doing, like I was left there just holding a gun.”

In 1998, GlaxoSmithKline, maker of Paxil, was ordered to pay $6.4 million to surviving family members after Donald Schnell, 60, just 48 hours after taking Paxil, flew into a rage and killed his wife, daughter and granddaughter.

The Public Health Threat Of Private Anger

One in 10 adults has a history of anger problems and access to a gun.

10 Essential Quotes On The 2nd Amendment From Our Founding Fathers

[thefederalistpapers.org]

The “it was only implied for a militia” argument.

There’s a certain level of irony in liberals claiming that the second amendment was only implied for a militia. Any time a militia group does spring up they’re quickly denounced by the left, such as we just saw in Oregon.

“The Constitution shall never be construed… to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” – Samuel Adams

“…arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside… Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them….” – Thomas Pain

“To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them…”- Richard Henry Lee

“The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.” – Noah Webster

“A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite; and their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.” – George Washington

“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.” – Thomas Jefferson

“The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes…. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” – Thomas Jefferson

“I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.” – George Mason

“A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves …” – Richard Henry Lee

“The people are not to be disarmed of their weapons. They are left in full possession of them.”- Zachariah Johnson