Masuk Free Press

According to Kiera Alfonsa on ABC News, “The United States has experienced 565 mass shootings so far this year.” So far? There are only 50 days left of 2023, this means there have been two mass shootings every single day. Is this trend likely to continue? Are we going to continue to blame mental health, bad parenting and drugs for the loss of innocence? Are victims always going to be at fault for the loss of their lives?

As the nation sobs, and lives get robbed, politicians have been pointing fingers as to who is to blame for these increasingly common casualties. 

The perpetrators’ background and mental health status is commonly cited following a mass shooting, convincing American society, especially politicians, that poor mental health causes an impulse to kill. 

“We, as a state, we, as a society, need to do a better job with mental health…” stated Texas Governor Greg Abbot during a news conference. “Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge, period.”

While this is not necessarily false, this illogical analysis from Republicans ignores the fact that there are more guns than people in the United States. 

Mental illness is a global occurrence that encompasses our emotional, psychological and social well-being. More than one in five US adults and youth live with a mental illness. 

“In the past five years, there has been a significant stigma against mental healthcare,” explained Masuk social worker Jessica Champagne. “There are plenty of anxious, and depressed, or angry people who don’t choose to do these things [mass shootings]. The sense that this is a person with mental illness and that’s what causes them to do this is not a logical connection.”

Many may struggle with mental illness, but everyone can easily gain firearms. 

Researchers at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and the Columbia University Irving Medical Center examined global principles regarding mass shootings from 1900 to 2019. 14,785 murders were studied, collecting information on the perpetrators, demographics, legal history, drug use, weapons used and history of psychiatric or neurological illness. The result identified that a mere 11 percent of perpetrators were suffering from psychiatric symptoms or depression. 

These results demonstrate the minor impact mental health has on such assaults. The importance of identifying individuals with mental illness at high risk for violence remains accurate; however, policies targeting firearm access, criminal history and substance use would yield greater impact on the safety of society. 

According to the data from Columbia University, mass shootings in America have been a common occurrence since 1900, with a rise in casualties since the 1980s. Countries, such as the United Kingdom, have enacted legislative reform against gun laws since 1996, when a Scottish gunman killed 16 school children in the town of Dunblane. Following the pressure of grieving families and the raging public, the British government introduced a ban on firearms. Citizens had to sell their weapons back to the government under the new law, and records were taken of every purchase and selling of weaponry. 

In 1989, 14 Canadian students were killed in Montreal classrooms by mass murderer Marc Lépine. New legislation followed, enacting background checks and increased penalties for gun crimes. However, after the shooting in 2020 where 13 people in Nova Scotia lost their lives, Canada banned over 1,500 models of firearms and components. 

None of these countries have had a mass shooting since.

Unlike other countries, gun ownership is ingrained into American history, culture and identity: “The US has the highest number of guns per capita than any other country in the world,” wrote Eloise Barry, a political journalist of TIME. 

In order for reform to occur, the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution must be interpreted differently. Regulations on gun ownership is not violating one’s “rights to bear arms”, but accounting the military/grade weapons marketed for every day public use. 

Certain cities and states within the U.S. have attempted gun regulation in response to recurring casualties. For example, New York passed the SAFE act, which prevents those who display signs of harming themselves or others from purchasing weaponry. 

In the end, we shall always recall those who have suffered mentally and instantly mark them as “unstable” or “dangerous” when in fact it is the gun lobby and our politicians that seem more “unstable” and “indecisive”. 

“The gun lobby has put a stranglehold on some of our elected officials so that they are more beholden to gun manufacturers than to their constituents,” stated Cassandra Crifasi, deputy director of the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University. 

The NRA spends over three million dollars a year on gun policy. Mass shootings will continue to be, what Crifasi calls, “the cost of doing business”. Not just the lives of children and the innocent, but disregard towards the mentally ill, and the needs and safety of the American public.