Mental illness is not what’s driving high rates of mass shootings in the U.S., but Donald Trump thinks it is and wants more institutions, so White House staff are looking for ways to put his useless ignorant whim into policy. There are at least two big issues here.
One is that institutionalizing large numbers of mentally ill people is not actually going to reduce gun violence significantly—as has been pointed out ad infinitum, other countries have mental illness without having mass shootings. Reducing mass shootings requires dealing with guns, full stop. A large majority of U.S. voters know this, with 93% support for universal background checks, 82% support for requiring a license to buy a gun, and 60% support for an assault weapons ban.
The other reason institutions are a bad idea is that it’s a terrible plan for treating mental illness. There’s a reason deinstitutionalization happened in the 1960s and 1970s. That reason is that “Anybody with any sense of history understands they were a complete failure. They were money down the drain,” as Paul Gionfriddo of Mental Health America told the Associated Press.
The U.S. needs more investment in mental health care, for sure. But Trump isn’t interested in spending the money to make that happen. In fact, if someone gave him a price tag for building the new institutions he claims to be interested in, he would probably reject that, too. Trump’s real interest is in a talking point to distract from the need for stronger gun laws, but once the idea of mental institutions had left his mouth, his ego demanded that the idea get official validation.