byChrisWhite – 2015

Now, I suppose there are certain phrases in the English language that, by necessity, evoke the darkest recesses of our national experience. Say “Sandy Hook Elementary,” and you conjure a specter that hovers over every classroom in America. Whisper “Columbine High School,” and watch the atmosphere in any room thicken with ghosts of disbelief and sorrow. And if you’ve been to a movie theater recently, perhaps you found yourself unconsciously scanning the exits, just in case some real-life villain from the 2012 Aurora massacre showed up, spoiling not just your evening but also any sense of sanctuary you might have left in a darkened room filled with strangers.

These names, and the hollow spaces they represent, have left a brand on our collective psyche, almost as if they were some grim parody of our favorite entertainment franchises. They are, after all, our recurring episodes, each one a grim rerun, spun by cable news channels and reinforced by the tireless pontificators who roam our airwaves. The storytellers behind them would have you believe that the solution to all this lies in a tidy little phrase called “reasonable gun control.” If only it were so simple.

The folks selling us this notion want you to think that if we just pile enough laws on top of each other, the violent elements among us would suddenly remember their manners. They want you to believe that passing an act or a regulation could have prevented Sandy Hook, Columbine, Aurora, and heaven knows how many others. But let us be honest, shall we? Could any law, other than an outright ban on all privately owned firearms, have prevented these horrors? And if we take that path, eliminating every gun in every corner of America, are we truly convinced that our troubles would vanish like morning fog under the sun’s gaze?

I have my own thoughts on the matter, but I’ll hold off until later in this discourse. Before then, let’s indulge in a little trip into the annals of history, aided by a dab of common sense, shall we?

Now, to begin with, there’s a particularly amusing sleight of hand that’s been played on the public mind when it comes to these tragedies, namely, the belief that firearms are the only common denominator. It’s understandable, of course, in an age where we have an attention span more befitting a goldfish than a discerning citizen. But to give this notion its proper burial, we need to examine not only the tools used in these infamous acts but also the motives and the state of mind behind them. Are guns the exclusive culprits, or could there be a deeper, more disquieting commonality?

It might surprise some to learn that every single perpetrator of the last twenty major mass shootings was, in some form or another, suffering from a mental health disorder. Not just any disorder, mind you, we’re talking about serious afflictions, often linked to psychotropic medications that have some rather troubling side effects. The scientific community has studied these medications, called SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors), and they have linked them with an increased propensity for violent behavior. Now, that’s not an opinion, that’s cold, clinical data, and it should give us pause.

Take Columbine, for instance. Eric Harris, a disturbed young man with a grudge against the world, was on medications, first Zoloft, then Luvox. To hear it from those who knew him best, Harris was obsessed with showcasing his superiority and wanted to be remembered, though his chosen method would do more to blacken his name than glorify it. And he was only one among many. The Aurora movie theater shooter, James Holmes, was also on medication and showed plenty of red flags before his deadly act, including warnings from his own psychiatrist to the authorities. But nobody intervened, not because they didn’t want to but because they couldn’t. In a country that values individual liberties, our systems simply weren’t built to intervene, even when the writing was on the wall.

What about the infamous Sandy Hook tragedy? Here we have Adam Lanza, who had a history of severe mental disorders, autism spectrum disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and more. This wasn’t a young man falling through the cracks; this was someone free-falling through a yawning chasm that our society prefers not to acknowledge. And there his mother was, burdened, struggling, yet with no proper help from a system that had long abdicated its responsibilities. In his final, grotesque act, he took his mother’s life, then went on to take the lives of 20 innocent schoolchildren. The issue wasn’t merely about access to firearms. It was about an untreated illness festering until it burst forth in a violent frenzy.

To truly understand the problem, you have to look past the immediate spectacle of the gun. You have to consider the fact that America, in a cost-cutting frenzy, decided that mental institutions, those once-menacing symbols of medical overreach, were no longer needed. We replaced them with community-based care systems designed for those who could follow directions, take their meds, and keep to the straight and narrow without much oversight. For everyone else, those who didn’t fit into neat boxes or whose afflictions defied standard treatments, there was nothing but empty space.

Take a look at our jails if you need proof. They are filled with people who, in another era, might have been institutionalized. Prisons have become the new asylums, only without the qualified personnel, facilities, or compassion. It doesn’t matter that they’re locked up for nonviolent offenses, tax evasion, petty theft, because, once inside, these vulnerable men and women become fodder for a system that treats them as hardened criminals. What we need, but seem reluctant to admit, are institutions that can treat the mentally ill with dignity, oversight, and compassion. We need care systems designed to rehabilitate, not merely isolate.

And what about those background checks everyone is clamoring for? In Tennessee, the state runs prospective buyers’ information through a digital gauntlet, a system that inevitably throws up false negatives, people turned away not because they have done anything wrong, but because they share a name or birthday with a known felon. Computers are cheap labor, and if you end up wrongly flagged, well, you can always submit an appeal, in a month or two, someone might sort it out. Meanwhile, the government uses those inflated statistics to boast about how many criminals they’re keeping from guns, leaving out the minor detail that most of those rejected turn out to be regular citizens with names like John Smith or Jane Doe.

The media would have you believe that the National Rifle Association is the villain in this sordid tale, and gun owners the accomplices. But the truth is much more complicated. The problem isn’t firearms, it’s a lack of foresight and a stubborn refusal to address the shortcomings in our mental healthcare infrastructure. We don’t need more laws that tie the hands of law-abiding citizens. We need honest conversations about our responsibilities, and that includes caring for those who cannot care for themselves.

To prevent future Sandy Hooks or Auroras, we need a government willing to act decisively and thoughtfully, a government that prioritizes mental health care as much as it does education or defense. Until then, we’ll continue to watch in horror, scapegoat the nearest available villain, and pretend that new gun laws are the panacea to our troubles.

So there’s my answer. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, I know. But until we stop relying on comforting half-truths and face the uncomfortable reality, that the mentally ill are being left to fend for themselves in a world that doesn’t care to understand them, we’ll keep running in circles, forever haunted by the names that we should never have had to remember in the first place.