On Monday, Donald Trump remarked: "Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun".
Meaning, gun control is not the answer.
On Thursday, he framed gun violence as a mental illness problem.
And he said he wanted to build more mental institutions.
“We can't let these people be on the streets”, he maintained.
In response, mental health experts repeated what they have said after previous mass shootings: Most people with mental illness are not violent, they are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators, and access to firearms is a big part of the problem.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fewer than 5% of the 120,000 gun-related killings in the US from 2001 to 2010 were inflicted by people diagnosed with mental illness.
Experts have also balked at the idea of mental health treatment – let alone institutionalization – as a solution to gun violence.
Adam Lankford, a University of Alabama criminologist who published a 2016 analysis of data from 171 countries took the position that a country's rate of gun ownership is a far better predictor of public mass shootings than indicators of mental illness.
"If mental illness were the driving factor, we would expect the countries with highest suicide rates to have higher rates of public mass shootings. That's not what we see", Lankford had added.
Arthur Evans, chief executive officer of the American Psychological Association agreed: "Although the United States makes up less than 5% of the world's population, we are home to 31% of all mass shooters globally, according to a CNN analysis. This difference is not explained by the rate of mental illness in the US”.
The one stark difference? Access to guns.
Methinks Trump (left) oversimplifies the role of mental illness in public mass shootings and downplays the ease with which his fellow citizens can get guns.
Really, he should admit himself into a funny farm first because he is, definitely, a loco.
In Saturday’s EPL must-win game against Southampton, Liverpool ground out a 2-1 win.
To be honest, the Reds were awful. Except for the brilliance of the two goals we scored.
Sadio Mane fired a curling effort into the far corner in the forty-fifth minute for our first goal. And in the seventy-first minute, Roberto Firmino blasted in the second.
An Adrian howler let Saints sneaked one in twelve minutes later. It must be a Liverpool thing because last season, Alison did the same!
I’m certainly relieved that we beat Southampton.
A draw or worse, a loss would have been unacceptable – not when Manchester City are the most relentless points-gathering, big-spending, transfer-ban-dodging English team of all time. As somebody said, even a draw would seem like a defeat; a defeat would feel like a derailment.
In Saturday’s EPL must-win game against Southampton, Liverpool ground out a 2-1 win.
To be honest, the Reds were awful. Except for the brilliance of the two goals we scored.
Sadio Mane fired a curling effort into the far corner in the forty-fifth minute for our first goal. And in the seventy-first minute, Roberto Firmino blasted in the second.
An Adrian howler let Saints sneaked one in twelve minutes later. It must be a Liverpool thing because last season, Alison did the same!
I’m certainly relieved that we beat Southampton.
A draw or worse, a loss would have been unacceptable – not when Manchester City are the most relentless points-gathering, big-spending, transfer-ban-dodging English team of all time. As somebody said, even a draw would seem like a defeat; a defeat would feel like a derailment.
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