10-10-2015, 09:26 AM
(10-08-2015, 04:48 PM)crash Wrote: The issue is that way too many people in your country die from gun related violence or accidents. I don't have the figures, and tbh, I can't be assed going to look for them, but I'd wager that the gun deaths due to mental illness of the shooter are a low percentage of the total.
I'd wager your wager would pay off, crash.
There's not a lot of government-funded research on gun violence (I hope that changes soon). But, groups that have looked at the correlation between random sample groups of violent criminals have consistently found between 4% and 6% had a known history of mental illness.
That doesn't mean there aren't undiagnosed mentally ill persons among the other approximately 95% of violent criminals in those studies or that the illness contributed to the crime, of course. So, it's hard to say with any degree of certainty how much mental illness contributes to the problem of violence in general, and gun violence in particular. But, in my opinion, it wouldn't be a very high percentage unless combined with serious substance abuse.
For mass murderers specifically though, the percentage of those with documented records of mental illness is much higher. In 2001, 23% of the mass murderers studied had such a history. Just based on following mass murder cases since that time, I'd guess the percentage is much higher now.
I think better and more accessible mental health treatment is something that needs to be addressed seriously (not just in the U.S.), primarily for the benefit of the ill, but also for increased public safety. Improving the mental health system could help reduce/prevent violent crime, but the sparse data available doesn't suggest that it would impact a majority of violent crime carried out with or without guns.