Mentally ill people kill people

The argument

Guns don’t kill people; people kill people. Many killers have mental health problems, and mental illness significantly contributes to gun violence and mass deaths. Because gun violence is such a problem in America, it is a prime country to look at the statistics regarding this issue. Reports suggest that up to 60% of perpetrators of mass shootings in the United States since 1970 displayed symptoms including acute paranoia, delusions, and depression before committing their crimes. Mental health systems in countries like America, where gun violence is so prevalent, are woefully inadequate. Not enough resources go into funding mental health initiatives and programs that can get people the help they need. Mental illness is often ignored or overlooked and there is no effective system in place that prevents the mentally ill from getting their hands on weapons that they then use to commit heinous crimes. If mentally ill people are given the support they need on a large scale, then gun violence would not be as prevalent as it is today. It isn’t the guns that are killing people, it is the mentally ill who are killing people.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Mental illness can not be the prevailing cause of gun violence and mass shootings because there are plenty of murderers who do not have any sort of mental health problem. The same is true vice versa; there are plenty of people with mental health issues who don’t engage in the grotesque act of murder. For instance, 1 in 5 Americans have some sort of mental health issue, and yet there is no statistic to show that 1 in 5 Americans are mass murderers. In fact, the vast majority of those with mental health issues have no violent tendencies whatsoever. It is not mentally ill people who are the cause of violent deaths in the span of a few moments; it is guns.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The figure is contested and its construction matters. Retrospective attribution of symptoms to perpetrators after an atrocity is not a diagnosis, and researchers reviewing the same cases have reached substantially lower estimates of diagnosable serious mental illness. Overall, mental illness is estimated to account for a small fraction of interpersonal violence. [Rejecting P2] The counter-argument on record supplies the base-rate objection that defeats the inference: roughly one in five Americans experiences a mental health condition, and the overwhelming majority are never violent — while many people who kill have no diagnosis at all. A characteristic that common cannot explain an outcome that rare. [Rejecting P3] Better mental-health provision is worth arguing for on its own merits, but the premise assumes it would substantially reduce gun deaths — and the great majority of US firearm deaths are suicides and everyday homicides rather than mass shootings, so a policy aimed at the smallest category is being credited with the whole problem. [Rejecting C] The framing also obscures what the debate is about. That a person pulls the trigger is not disputed by anyone; the question is whether the availability and lethality of the weapon affect the outcome, and pointing to the perpetrator's mental state leaves that untouched. People with mental illness are, on the available evidence, considerably more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it.