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Reblogged:“Guns Don’t Kill People; Mental Illness Does” … FALSE

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Cultural elites, our President and Attorney General have been so busy trying to prove the Orlando shooting had nothing whatsoever to do with Islam that they’ve forgotten an earlier narrative: “Most shootings are due to mental illness; therefore, we must outlaw guns so the mentally ill cannot have them.”

Now a mainstream professor of psychiatry at Duke University is saying what I’ve been writing for years: Most mentally ill people are not killers, just as most non-mentally ill persons are not killers.

We have a strong responsibility as researchers who study mental illness to try to debunk that myth [that mental illness causes most shootings],” says Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University. “I say as loudly and as strongly and as frequently as I can, that mental illness is not a very big part of the problem of gun violence in the United States.”

The overwhelming majority of people with mental illnesses are not violent, just like the overwhelming majority of all people are not violent. Only 4 percent of the violence—not just gun violence, but any kind—in the United States is attributable to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression (the three most-cited mental illnesses in conjunction with violence). In other words, 96 percent of the violence in America has nothing to do with mental illness.

What is “mental illness,” anyway? I’m not saying it doesn’t exist. But do we want government authorities determining what mental illness is, under the law, so it may control people’s actions, including their right to buy guns to defend themselves? Or do we want government-paid psychiatric lackeys, hired by the government to provide official psychiatric diagnoses, to do what amounts to the same thing? They did this in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany and elsewhere. All dictatorships do it.

It makes sense that authoritarians of all political stripes are interested in using tragedies to get into the mental health business. Authoritarian governments are interested in the mind, most of all. Censoring portions of a 911 call made by a shooter at the time of a mass murder because portions of the call are inconsistent with the agenda of the ruling regime is one form of controlling the mind via censorship. “What Americans don’t know won’t hurt them.” Another form of controlling the mind is for the government to have an official definition of what mental illness is. If you really think the government will remain objective when it comes to mandating psychiatric diagnoses, then you’re probably one of those people who still believes that under Obamacare, “If you like your health insurance, you can keep it.”

The reasoning is as follows. “Mental illness causes most mass shootings. What else could cause people to erupt into savage violence? (Certainly not Islam.) If the government may take guns away from the mentally ill, then there will be fewer shootings.” Airtight logic, right? Unfortunately, the statement relies on two false premises. One, that there’s wide and absolute agreement on exactly what constitutes mental illness, even among mental health professionals; and two, that the government can be counted on to honestly and objectively use such a universal definition, assuming one even existed. Dr. Swanson cites examples of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as instances of mental illness. Most mental health professionals will agree, but even within these diagnostic categories there are many shades of gray and disagreement among mental health professionals on the exact diagnoses. It’s not unusual for one mental health professional to think a patient is bipolar, while another mental health professional does not think so. Shall the government make the final call, deciding who may own a gun, or who may not?

Lest you think that Dr. Swanson, the Duke University psychiatrist, is motivated by a gun rights agenda, think again. He’s all for restricting gun ownership, only for a different reason: suicide, not homicide:

“It’s a big public health opportunity to limit access to guns,” Swanson says.  And it could make a big difference for suicide attempt survival rates. Among people who’ve survived a suicide attempt, more than 90 percent do not go on to kill themselves later. But guns are the most common method of suicide, and people who try to kill themselves with a gun usually succeed—85 percent of the time. “They don’t get that second chance,” Swanson says.

Acknowledging that more people die from suicide attempts involving a gun than suicide attempts not involving a gun is easy to do. But what is the central purpose of government, anyway? Does government exist primarily to save people from themselves, or to protect rights? In other words, should government make gun ownership difficult or impossible for the vast majority of non-suicidal people just because some people wish to end their own lives?

Sadly, a lot of people—a majority, I suspect—will probably say that the central purpose of government is to provide for the welfare of people, even more than to protect their rights. That’s one of the reasons we’re in the mess we’re in.

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The post “Guns Don’t Kill People; Mental Illness Does” … FALSE appeared first on Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D. | Living Resources Center.

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