Opinion: One thing all mass shooters have in common is guns not mental illness

After my children were born, I struggled with postpartum depression. When we were teenagers, my brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia. A dear friend is fighting alcoholism. Two members of my family are being treated for anxiety. What do we all have in common? We’ve all been diagnosed with a mental illness. What else do we have in common? None of us are mass shooters.

In the wake of every mass shooting, time and again we hear many politicians shift the focus – and the blame – from gun control to mental illness. We need to be vocal and vehement in pushing back on this false narrative.

First, claiming that people with mental illnesses are to blame for mass shootings is a premise that is simply not true. People with mental illnesses are actually less likely than the general population to perpetrate mass violence. Continuing to trot out this talking point after every mass shooting only drives people with mental illnesses further into the shadows. Who wants to admit they have a mental illness when politicians continue to equate them with people who do horrendous things?

Second, even if a mass shooter is mentally ill, his illness isn’t what killed our friends and neighbors – a gun did. Tighter gun control laws, which the majority of Americans support, are what will prevent people who should not own weapons from being able to access them. The mental illness is not the problem; allowing people with some mental illnesses to access guns is.

Third, while some mass shooters are mentally ill, we know that people in countries around the globe have mental illnesses. Yet, we are the only country that has a problem with mass shootings. We also know that both men and women have mental illnesses. But about 98% of mass shootings are perpetrated by men. People of all races have mental illnesses. But the vast majority of mass shooters in our country are white. If mental illness was the cause of mass shootings, we’d see people of all genders and all races and in countries around the world perpetrating this crime at the same rates. Since that’s not the case, it defies logic to place the blame for mass shootings on mental illness.

Finally, all mass shooters do not have a mental illness, but they do all have a gun.

To repeat: the thing all mass shootings have in common is not mental illness. It’s guns.

I absolutely support expanding resources for mental health care because it’s consistently underfunded and difficult to access, not because mental illness is responsible for mass shootings. Unfortunately, many of the people who blame mental illness for mass shootings are the same people who have been working hard to reverse the strides made under the Affordable Care Act when it comes to mental health coverage.

The ACA has its faults, but mental health services have to be covered under essential health benefits. Almost every version of a health care bill put forth by the Republicans would have decimated access to mental health care, and the refusal by the Trump administration’s Justice Department to defend the ACA in court means insurance companies may be allowed to go back to denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Anxiety and depression both make the list of the top 10 most common pre-existing conditions for Americans. Instead of expanding access to mental health care, Republicans at the federal level have consistently restricted access.

Blaming mass shootings on mental illness is offensive to everyone with a mental illness. It succeeds in further stigmatizing mental illness while distracting attention from where the blame belongs: on guns. Providing better mental health care is important for us as a society but it won’t prevent mass shootings. The only thing that has been proven in countries around the world to prevent mass shootings is the same thing that the majority of Americans support: passing sensible gun control laws.

Elisa Hoffman is a parent and education advocate who lives in East Hyde Park and has called Cincinnati home for the past 15 years.