Seventeen kids were just killed at a high school in Parkland, Florida, and the survivors have taken to the streets in hopes of finally convincing Congress to enact reasonable gun reform.
People on both the right and left are directing some blame at people with mental illness. This is grossly misleading and, quite frankly, toxic. According to research done by Everytown for Gun Safety in 2017, 54 percent of mass shootings from 2009 t0 2016 were committed against a family member or intimate partner — making the motivation not mental illness related, but rather connected to domestic violence.
1 in 5 adults in the U.S. have a mental illness, but only 41 percent of adults with a mental health condition have received services for it in the past year. As a result, suicide is the 10th overall leading cause of death in the U.S. Considering the fact that with treatment suicide can typically be prevented, this is unacceptable.
When tragedies like what just happened in Florida occur, we need to be careful of the language we use when describing the perpetrators of mass shootings. Assuming that the shooter is mentally ill and making the blanket statement that “mentally ill people should not have guns” is harmful to the one in five adults who have a mental illness. It is also cruel to people with mental illnesses to use terms like “crazy” or “psycho” to describe anyone. Using language that stereotypes already marginalized people will only serve to divide us further and ultimately harm people we need to protect.
Kerry Bush, Bluffton
