Another school shooting occurred yesterday at Northern Arizona University, leaving at least one dead and three injured. This shooting comes barely a week after the shooting at Umpqua Community College that left ten dead and 20 wounded. Important questions have inevitably resurfaced: why are innocent people being killed so frequently, and what can we do to change it?
First, it is important to show the United States has a real, long term problem with school shootings. These past two shootings were recent, but they are only a part of the large history of school shootings in this country. One article by Harvard Politics found that between 1991 and 2013, The United States had 55 school shootings with at least one fatality and more than one intended victim, while no other country in the world had more than three. One publication found that between 2000 and 2010 the United States had the same amount of school killings as 36 other countries combined.
So, why exactly are there so many shootings in the United States? The truth is, it’s difficult to know. A number of issues are pointed at, from gun control laws, to culture, to mental illness to poverty. The truth is there may be no panacea for gun violence, but perhaps these different issues are all contributing factors that should be analyzed.
First, a look at gun control. It’s true that the amount of school shootings in the United States may be skewed because of our large population and the fact that Americans have more firearms than many countries combined. Yet, even when adjusted for population, Americans are more likely to use their guns for violence in school shootings than citizens of other countries. Another issue is that most of China’s school killings, the country with the most number of school killings after the United States, have occurred without the use of firearms; instead, knives and other weapons were used.
That is not to say that gun control may not be a factor, however. An article by factcheck.org attempted to see whether state gun laws changed the number of gun deaths. President Obama had weighed in Oct. 1 after the shooting at UCC that the states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths. The article found that there is indeed a correlation between gun laws and gun deaths, but it may not necessarily be that more gun laws lead to less gun crime. What may be true, however, is that more gun laws can lead to fewer suicides or accidental deaths through firearms. According to the article, it is ultimately difficult to know with complete certainty whether changes in gun laws lead to more or less gun crime. Yet some gun laws focus on a connected issue: mental health.
In a way, mental health, culture and poverty may all be interconnected. According to a 2013 Gallup poll, Americans believe the leading cause of mass shootings is the failure of the mental health system to identify dangerous individuals. Surely, mental health should be an important concern for Americans, yet strangely, it may be difficult to say that mental health issues are the leading reason for mass shootings. First, there is simply the issue of language – people are likely to believe that anyone who is violent and commits a mass shooting has a mental illness by definition, but that may not be the case. The tricky part about mental illness is that the standards of what a mental illness is change over time and diagnoses are not always clear-cut.
Putting aside those knotty obstacles, Jeff Swanson, a medical sociologist and professor of psychiatry at Duke University, studied more than ten thousand individuals (both healthy and mentally ill, as determined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) in order to determine if there was a link between mental illness and violence.
Swanson did find a link – a very small link. According to the study, mental illness alone was a risk factor for violence in only four percent of all cases. The study found that more than mental illness, the real determinants for violence were whether the subject’s gender (as males are more likely to commit violence), whether the subject was poor, and whether the subject was abusing alcohol or drugs.
If the real, preventable determinants of violence are poverty and substance abuse, a conversation must begin. One article published by the Huffington Post argues that poverty is the real determinant of gun violence, as those in poverty are “written off by society as hopeless, worthless, and expendable,” and it is their fear, loneliness and lack of opportunities that leads them to violence.
Once again, however, it is difficult to truly know the root cause of all problems, different factors like poverty and culture can affect one another and then ultimately lead to an increase or decrease in gun violence. It is also important to keep in mind that there may not be a single, simple solution. Changing gun laws may not be enough. Reforming the mental health system may not be enough. Fixing our economy may not be enough. Changing our culture may not be enough. Yet, if action is taken in one or more of these areas, we may see change for the better. We may see less innocent lives lost from meaningless violence. Action should and must be taken. If nothing is done, things will not simply remain the same, but they will get worse as another life is taken.
Sources:
http://www.dailyemerald.com/...
http://www.nytimes.com/...
http://qz.com/...
http://harvardpolitics.com/...
http://www.newyorker.com/...
http://www.nbcnews.com/...
http://www.cnn.com/...
http://www.factcheck.org/...