William Robiner is the Director of Health Psychology at the University of Minnesota Medical School. So he specializes not only in making sure people are able to get and stay mentally healthy. And when it comes to thinking about ways to stay healthy, that’s exactly what we need in America today. In this editorial, Robiner lays out why firearms are hurting our public health so much: we’re sick, and our legislators are refusing to take the doctor’s advice.
Shortly after the one-month anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings, three more died in a church shooting in Idaho. In the month since the Virginia Tech ordeal, an estimated 2,430 more Americans were killed with guns. Are effective steps being taken to avoid senseless violent acts?
Some seek protection through technological solutions, like better communication. Others assume that mental health professionals should be able to discern risk and act to prevent violence, such as by hospitalizing unusual or threatening individuals. Still others figure that targeted prevention — such as prohibiting gun sales to people who have been committed to a psychiatric institution — will lower the risk, as if most gun violence were perpetrated by individuals with such clearly identified psychiatric problems. Such measures may seem reasonable, but they miss the larger point: the need for effective gun control.
The Virginia Tech shooter used a Glock 19 semi-automatic weapon and a Walther. In less than 10 minutes he fired approximately 170 bullets. In the face of such firepower, do even the most ardent technophiles really believe that quicker communication systems could deliver people to safety? Do those counting on the mental health system to provide a safety net lose confidence when they hear mental health professionals readily acknowledge their limited ability to predict violence? Very few of the millions of individuals suffering from mental illness constitute risk to others. Restricting gun control efforts to them is ineffective. It leaves those who have not been committed, but who far more often pull triggers, free to obtain and use their weapons of choice.
That’s the heart of the problem. There is no way we can tell what people are going to do, or even control their actions. No matter how close the monitoring, how inclusive the background check, or how effective the police are, there is simply no way to tell who’s a “law-abiding gun owner” and who’s a “criminal.” The NRA claims its “law-abiding gun owners” are the good guys (and we should want them armed), but they’ve failed that claim many times over.
So what’s the solution? You can’t control people, but you can control the sale and regulation of firearms.
Our nation’s strategy for securing peace in other parts of the world includes ridding violent societies, such as Afghanistan or Iraq, of the widespread weapons that undermine their peace. We should demand that our federal, state, and local leaders use similar logic and strategies and muster the courage to quell the violence here by standing up to the gun lobby, and outlawing assault weapons and handguns. Why wait any longer to liberate our campuses, neighborhoods, and places of worship of the guns that make them unsafe?
Criminals don’t make their own firearms. They don’t manufacture them (as they unfortunately do drugs) in secret labs and hidden factories. Every single gun in America was made legally, by people who are subject to governmental regulation. The laws work– all we need to do is put them in place, on a far-reaching, federal level. And by not moving on laws that would keep weapons out of criminal hands, and get dangerous weapons out of our country, we are continuing to stay sick. 30,000 Americans are dying every year– it’s time to go to the doctor, get the laws we need, and work on getting well.
