Gov. Bob McDonnell recently sent a letter asking every
governor in the country to support an improvement in background checks for the
purchase of guns. Not surprisingly for a political showman like McDonnell, the
letter was sent out the same week as the 5-year anniversary of the Virginia
Tech shootings[1]
that left 32 dead and 17 wounded.
The gunman during the shootings at Virginia Tech was
reportedly able to buy a gun because his mental health information was not
available.
Due to ambiguities in the law regarding the National Instant
Criminal Background Check System, the commonwealth wasn’t submitting mental
health information on individuals who voluntarily admitted themselves to a
treatment facility but were required to receive outpatient treatment. The law
was subsequently changed after the shootings at Tech to improve the national
database used for background checks, but not much else[2].
The question needs to be asked, however, about how likely it
is that an individual with “mental health problems” will kill relative to a
“normal” individual. Is it clear that society is at a greater mortal risk from
individuals with a checkered mental health background?
What seems more likely is that the media and the public
catch on to certain “facts about the case” that throw particular individual
attributes out of proportion to their actual danger to society. How many
stories, for example, have you seen on the news that alleges a man has murdered
his family? Does anyone mention if this person is “ill?” Often times, they
don’t.
The Virginia Tech
shootings capture a horrific chapter in Virginia’s history, lending reason as
to why so many Virginians put a special focus on this case and explaining why
it happened.
But it is in no way clear that individuals with mental
health issues, on the average, are more likely to kill than a “normal”
population of Americans. So what is effectively happening is that one group,
those with mental health problems, are being targeted and discriminated against
unjustifiably.
Given Virginia’s long history of discrimination, it’s not
much of a surprise that another group is being targeted for fallacious reasons.
It’s far from okay. It’s far from the principles that we all
cherish as Americans.
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