Whenever there’s news of a mass shooting, many are quick to blame mental illness. This talking point became so pervasive that even the president started echoing it. The data that people with mental illness are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators has been around for a while, but that hasn’t stopped conservatives from ignoring that.
Now the whole “it’s just crazies breaking the law” angle has taken another blow in light of a new report from the FBI titled “Study of the Pre-Attack Behaviors of Active Shooters in the United States Between 2000 and 2013.” The 30-page report dives into the pre-shooting behaviors, which found that most shooters don’t, in fact, have mental illness.
An individual’s declining mental health in the face of stressors is common among shooters studied, but only 25 percent of the active shooters had a diagnosed mental illness. Reported depression, anxiety, and paranoia aren’t enough to automatically deem someone mentally ill.
The researchers chide those who push the harmful fallacy about mental illness and gun violence, calling it “unhelpful.”
Some studies indicate that nearly half of the U.S. population experiences symptoms of mental illness over their lifetime, with population estimates of the lifetime prevalence of diagnosable mental illness among U.S. adults at 46%, with 9% meeting the criteria for a personality disorder. Therefore, absent specific evidence, careful consideration should be given to social and contextual factors that might interact with any mental health issue before concluding that an active shooting was “caused” by mental illness. In short, declarations that all active shooters must simply be mentally ill are misleading and unhelpful.
What’s actually helpful is the concrete examples the authors provide that can better equip people to identify the warning signs of a potential shooter. They focused on what they call “concerning behaviors” because it’s about observable behavior, rather than making wild guesses about the wiring in someone’s brain.
The list includes “potential symptoms of a mental health disorder, interpersonal interactions, quality of the active shooter’s thinking or communication, recklessness, violent media usage, changes in hygiene and weight, impulsivity, firearm behavior, and physical aggression.” And they also found that “contextually inappropriate firearms behavior” (an unusual level of interest in or use of firearms) was present in one-fifth of the shooters studied.
They made a point to note that, yes, many of these shooters had stressors before the attacks but noting them isn’t about trying to think from their point of view or sympathize with them. It’s about being able to note that stressors—and a person’s lack of resiliency to them—could be a potential flag when combined with other observable concerning behaviors.
It’d be impossible to cover everything in the report, but it is worth a read. There’s a lot of information debunking other stereotypes like the “lone wolf” myth—they found shooters generally had some social connection. This is important because those social connections often said they did get a bad feeling that something was particularly wrong with the shooter—likely due to the concerning behaviors they observed. Unfortunately, most of them (54 percent) opted to do nothing.
All of the information has one loud, resounding message that anti-violence advocates have been saying for a long time: something can be done to stop mass shootings. With proper awareness about the findings in this report and the connection between gun violence and violence against women, we can stop pretending that it’s a random act that Americans simply have to endure. We can stop it —if we’re willing to face the truth and use it to our advantage.