A renewed debate over gun control has emerged following another mass shooting, this time in Lewiston, Maine. However, while attention remains focused on firearms, a common thread has emerged linking several high profile shooters to cases of severe mental illness, according to an expert.
Robert Card, the suspected gunman in the Lewiston, Maine, mass shooting that unfolded at a bowling alley and bar, which killed 18 people and injured 13 others, suffered from severe mental health issues, according to law enforcement. The family of Mr. Card had alerted authorities about his deteriorating mental health months before the shooting rampage.
Mr. Card, a 40-year-old U.S. Army reservist, was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at Maine Recycling, where he previously worked, officials said.
Amy Swearer, a legal fellow who specializes in the Second Amendment and criminal law at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington, told The Epoch Times that like Mr. Card, nearly all mass shooters show outward mental health warning signs that are recognizable before the tragedies.
“When you look at these mass shootings it’s pretty rare that people say, ‘I had no idea this was coming,’” said Mrs. Swearer. “What usually becomes clear is that the event was entirely foreseeable and if the shooter was not diagnostically mentally ill, they are more often than not at the very least clearly mentally unstable.”
Further, Mr. Card suffered a psychological deterioration in the months leading up to the killings, and spent two weeks at a mental health facility after threatening to “shoot up” an army base, according to relatives.
However, despite the Mr. Card’s transparent mental health struggles, during the aftermath of the tragedy politicians focused their messaging on reforming American gun laws.
On an Oct. 25 visit to Lewistown, Maine, to the scene, President Joe Biden told reporters he would seek bipartisan consensus in attempting to pass stricter gun laws.
“It’s about common-sense, reasonable, responsible measures to protect our children, our families, our communities,” the President told reporters. “Because regardless of our politics, this is about protecting our freedom to go to a bowling alley, restaurant, school, church without being shot and killed.”
While the messaging on gun control might be more politically palatable, it deflects focus from the source of the problem, according to Mrs. Swearer.
“The focus on guns fails to address the underlying issue. Our nation’s mental health infrastructure is horribly broken and inadequate on nearly every level,” she said.
“It’s like a bridge that is crumbling—and the consequences can be seen all around us.”
- Seung-Hui Cho - Mr. Cho was diagnosed with severe anxiety disorder and placed under treatment. On Dec. 13, 2005, he was found “mentally ill and in need of hospitalization. On April 16, 2007, he killed 32 people and wounded 17 others at a University in Virginia.
- Jiverly Wong - In a letter dated March 18, 2009, Mr. Wong expressed his concerns to a local television station that undercover police officers were changing the channels on his television, making the air “unbreathable,” and had figured out a way to play music directly into his ear. On April 3, 2009, Mr. Wong entered the American Civic Association immigration center in Binghamton, New York, and killed 13 people.
- Jared Loughner - On Sept. 10, 2010, Mr. Loughner was asked to leave Pima Community College in Tucson on mental health grounds after a psychologist who reviewed his journals said he showed symptoms of schizophrenia. Four months later Mr. Loughner fired into the parking lot of a Tucson shopping mall, killing six and injuring 13.
- James Holmes - Between March 16 and June 11, 2012, the psychiatrist who treated Mr. Holmes, Dr. Lynn Fenton, wrote in her notes that Mr. Holmes “may be shifting insidiously into a frank psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia.” On July 20, 2012, Mr. Holmes entered an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater and killed 12 people, injuring 70 others.
- Adam Lanza - Mr. Lanza was diagnosed with a sensory condition that made it difficult to touch doorknobs, be in sunlight, or chew food, and sometimes had to change his socks up to 20 times a day. On Dec. 14, 2012, Mr. Lanza shot and killed 26 people before turning the gun on himself and taking his own life.
The current mental health infrastructure in America allows for only two extremes: institutionalization, which is increasingly rare and selective due to a lack of bed space, or a visit to the hospital emergency room, which often isn’t equipped to deal with severe cases of mental illness, according to Mrs. Swearer.
“We don’t have a lot of intermediary steps, either the state forces an individual to be committed to a mental health institution or people come to the realization that they need help, and go voluntarily, but we are left with nothing in between for the vast majority of those who are struggling with mental illness.”
The longer the lack of media coverage over the mental health crisis persists, the more difficult it becomes to see a potential step towards a resolution—which would include making more resources available and expanding bed space at already existing institutions to accommodate those in need, said Mrs. Swearer.
“Mental health as a general rule lends itself to a more complex nuanced discussion,” said Mrs. Swearer. “It doesn’t fit very well on a bumper sticker, T-shirt, or tweet and there is a tendency when it comes to a mass public shooting to go to the guns because it is an easy default answer. It is the thing that makes the most sense.”
“Meanwhile, the very obvious underlying issue at the heart of these shootings, the mental health crisis, remains unresolved.”
