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Michael Rabbitt

English 1302

Professor Moore

16 March 2017

The Misunderstanding of Guns and the Mentally Ill

The origin of this issue dates back to the 1900s when a federal law, which became

effective in 1968, said an individual is not able to purchase or possess a firearm if they have been

summoned to a mental facility or deemed mentally defective. The majority of this issue has been

put to rest in the case that most believe it was resolved in 1968. In the years dating from 2007-

2012, a study has shown many mass shootings have been committed by people with serious

mental illness. Now, most would assume the persons that committed these acts must have

obtained the firearm illegally, or got them through acquaintances who bought it for them.

However, when the investigation into many shootings (Virginia Tech, Tucson, and Aurora, and

etc.) was being looked into, they found most had bought the firearm legally and committed these

sinister killings with the purchased firearm. Many wonder how anybody can stop this from

occurring. One theory states an increase in the background check technology used to screen

individuals purchasing firearms and further regulations surrounding them. Another way would

be an increase in funding to mental institutions. This allows kids that show serious mental issues

early on, to receive the help and placement into institutions to protect them as well as others and

focusing on identifying such individuals as mental defective or people with serious mental issues

and prevents most of these mass shootings from occurring. Many issues have risen with the
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mentally ill owning guns, and as a result, lots of federal laws are to blame as many of these

individuals are not getting the help they need and deserve.

Gun violence has been a great deal in the news and controversy surrounding the subject

has been a huge problem over the last several years. However, many dont realize most of these

attacks are committed by people that have been classified as mentally ill. For instance, a

Connecticut school, by the name of Sandy Hook elementary, was victim to a mass shooting from

an individual named Adam Lanza, who had previously killed his mother. Lanza shot and killed

20 students between the ages of 5 and 10, as well as six adult workers(Adam). At the end of that

tragic day, he ended up taking his own life in one of the classrooms at the school. Lanza, as many

reports referred to him as after the shootings, released a one hundred and fourteen page report

that depicted the two decades of Lanzas life. In this investigation they found out Lanza had early

motor function and developmental issues growing up. Soon after that he was diagnosed with

autism spectrum disorder, anxiety, and obsessive compulsive disorder. As he progressed through

life he was taken out of school due to the downward spiral of his mental health state. Also, Lanza

had previous interest in murder that dated back to when he was in the fifth grade. The Yale

program, designed to detect these young kids issues, deemed that Lanza was in need of

psychiatric help but that was ignored by his parents and other programs connected to him. The

attack was learned to be premeditated. After the shooting, researchers concluded that if proper

actions had been taken to protect other people from Lanza, then this mass tragedy would have

never occurred. It stands as the third worst mass shooting in US history. Learning that this

couldve all been prevented by taking proper actions into getting Lanza help is an abominable

reality that needs to be looked into. This horrendous turn of events couldve ultimately been

stopped if Lanza was admitted into a mental health ward earlier in his life.
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Along with Lanza, there are many other mass shootings that are brought upon by

mentally disabled individuals, but these murders are not only attempted solely of the mentally ill.

It is undeniable that persons who have shown violent tendencies should not have access to

weapons that could be used to harm themselves or others. However, notions that mental illness

caused any particular shooting, or that advance psychiatric attention might prevent these crimes,

are more complicated than they often seem(Metzl). Mental disabilities are not the only causes

for these murders, ordinary individuals in the correct circumstances act out in similar ways,

leading to the same result of lost lives. With this in mind, allowing the mentally ill to access

firearms that could potentially endanger the lives of the innocent, should not be a risk individuals

are willing to take and should prevent as many lives from being lost as they possibly can.

A major issue in todays society is the easy availability for the mentally ill to purchase

firearms. Investigations have found that when a person chooses to purchase a firearm, they must

pass the NICS; National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The issue with this system

is that a large portion of the information in this system is incomplete. In this misleading data,

includes a huge breach in health records. Millions of mental health files are missing from the

database. In many states, they refuse to send their mental health records to the federal system

which includes the national database for background checks. When confronted as to why the

states were not complying, study researchers wanted to find out why. The Oklahoma man they

had interviewed said "lack of political will appears to be the only barrier to submission,

according to the unnamed official cited in the study. Under current state law, the only cases

Oklahoma sends to the federal system are people who have been forcibly committed. Hume did

not meet those criteria, according to police. Under the 10th Amendment, the federal government

cannot legally make states submit these records, regardless of importance. Instead they've got to
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beg shame or really hang a lantern on the problem to get the states to comply with this federal

law," Glaze said. (Christensen) Making states mandate this law is a future political battle that

needs to take place before any other innocent people are harmed. It will be very important to the

countrys future to solve this issue before it gets out of hand.

Furthermore, another issue surrounding gun violence of the mentally ill is the

disappearance of mental health institutions. In fact more than half a million Americans are not

getting caught by the system in which they belong which is having detrimental effects on their

lives. These unlucky individuals will either end up in jail or on the streets where either they are

being punished for something that is clearly out of their control, or suffering on the streets when

they belong in a mental hospital, receiving the proper care. According to the Bureau of Justice

Statistics, an estimate of 705,600 mentally ill adults were incarcerated in state prisons, 78,800 in

federal prisons and 479,900 in local jails(NIC). Mental hospitals and institutions assist these

individuals with the help they need and the public needs, but with the sudden decrease in these

institutions, it has proven to be harmful to the public. A major cause to this is due to the great

recession in 2008 when states cut funding to their mental health institutions by an average of 1.8

billion dollars. With this huge cut in funding, more mental health patients have ended up in

prison beds instead of psychiatric wards where these individuals would be safe from the

hardened prisoners and the public would be safe from their unpredictability. An increase in

mental health in general has started to rise again. However, the mental health division has a long

way to go till the problem is under control.

In the last 50 years, the debate over the mentally ill committing crimes due to them

obtaining guns has been a huge controversy. Instead of being placed in institutions, they are

being allowed to roam freely, obtaining the necessary tools to inflict harm amongst others. Many
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actions can be taken to help solve this issue, but allowing this freedom to the mentally disabled is

also preventing others from having a safe livelihood. In this regard, people still need to have

respect for these individuals and get them the help they deserve. A prison cell is no place for a

mentally disabled person, but by placing them in the proper care ahead of time, the rate of mass

murders will decline as well as those of the mentally ill in prisons.

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Works Cited

Christensen, Jen. How the Violent Mentally Ill Can Buy Guns. CNN, Cable News Network, 5

Feb. 2013, www.cnn.com/2013/01/30/health/mental-illness-guns/.

(NIC), National Institute of Corrections. Mentally Ill Persons in Corrections. NICIC.gov:

Mentally Ill Persons in Corrections, nicic.gov/mentalillness.

Adam Lanza. Biography.com, A&E Networks Television, 13 June 2016,

www.biography.com/people/adam-lanza-21068899. Accessed 2 Apr. 2017

Metzl, Jonathan M., and Kenneth T. MacLeish. Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics

of American Firearms. American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health

Association, Feb. 2015, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4318286/.