Preventing School Shootings: Both sides are right

[Image by Michael Ciaglo at the Houston Chronicle]

Today there was yet another shooting at an American school. As always, the public focus has shifted to one of two prevention strategies: gun control or more aggressive treatment of mental illness. It’s always struck me as strange that the focus is always one of the two, not both. The school shooting epidemic calls for a multifaceted approach, as most complicated issues do. Gun control alone will not prevent these atrocities. Neither will mental health treatment. Even putting the two together, there’s more we can do.

Glorification of violence

Society is morbidly obsessed with violence. Our television shows have it, our movies have it, even our children's shows now contain violence. It permeates every level of society. So of course, it shocks nobody when the news media covers school shootings with such depth and detail.

But should they?

A study by Dr Jennifer Johnston at Western New Mexico University concluded that many mass shooters were inspired by others they read about in the news. They also hope to become as infamous as the ones before them. Johnston said fame as a central motivator could explain why so many youths commit mass shootings.

Speaking to the American Psychological Association, Johnston claimed that an agreement among major news outlets to withhold the names of mass shooters could result in a “dramatic reduction in mass shootings in one to two years”.

The idea will be a hard sell to media outlets. They, perhaps rightly so, feel a duty to publish all the details that arise surrounding subjects of public interest. They might even feel that the suggestion itself is a proposal to censor the press. But it’s not. It’s a furtherance of the public interest.

There is a distinction between public interest and the public’s interest. Arguably, the public may want to know the name of a mass shooter, but the question is really “do they need to know?” In what way does the knowledge of a name enhance the understanding of the story? Details can be published in relation to the person without naming them.

I think the key aspect of this agreement is that it should not be mandated by the government. They probably could legislate it with legal justification from the national security exemption to the first amendment, but it would cause protest and wouldn’t result in positive change. The agreement has to be made by news executives. It has to be done voluntarily.

Gun control

I wrote a post a while back that outlined my views on gun control. I stand by that post. For the sake of this post, I’ll briefly reiterate the views here, including elaborations I made in the comments.

Mandatory psychological evaluations would keep guns out of the hands of mentally disturbed individuals most likely to carry out mass shootings. Extensive background checks, with a streamlined database easily accessible across state lines would also help prevent guns from getting into the hands of violent criminals. Blockchain technology might be an effective way to keep this decentralized but easily accessible, but that’s a topic for another time. Parent accountability for the use of their guns in mass murders is also a must. Many school shootings are committed using firearms belonging to the shooters parents. Basic precautions taken by the parents may have been able to prevent these.

All out gun restrictions are not the solution. Criminals have ways of getting guns outside of legal systems that would just be strengthened by the lack of a legal market. This is similar to prohibition and alcohol. The problem isn’t people having guns, it’s certain people having guns.

Mental health

Obviously, metal health is a serious issue. Most school shooters have some form of mental illness, whether it’s diagnosed or not. The study by Johnston also cited depression as a predisposing factor to becoming a mass shooter.

In America, little has been done to treat people with mental illness. Many Americans have routine visits to doctors to check up on their physical health, but do nothing to maintain their mental health. This is in part due to lingering stigma around mental illness.

Most mentally ill people are productive members of society. Being mentally ill doesn’t make you lesser, just as being physically ill doesn’t. We don’t need to shun those with mental illness, we need to help them. As a society, we do a poor job of this. We isolate people, and label them “weird” or “crazy”.

People avoid treatment for fear of being labeled that way. Issues that could be addressed by mental health professionals wind up being buried and festering out of fear of being judged. It is our judgement and isolation of people different than us that leads people with mental illness to the breaking point. Combined with influence from the infamy of other mass shooters and the ease of access to guns, we are breeding killers.

It’s not an issue a single change can fix. We have to come together and make drastic changes to all areas of our society. If we can’t, tragedies will keep happening. Nobody wants that.

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What do you think? Am I nuts? Did I overlook something? Agree or disagree, I'd love to hear what you think in the comments, my only request is to maintain a sense of civility.