Following the Valentine’s Day school shooting in Florida, many people took to the streets to ask for gun control. But others argued that the focus should be on mental health. So let’s take a look at some of the numbers.
Approximately one in five Americans will suffer from mental health issues in their life. In 2017 there were 346 mass shootings. A “mass shooting” is defined as one in which four or more people are shot at with a gun in the same incident.
Compare this to the UK, where one in four people will experience a mental health issue at some point in their life, and where the last mass shooting was in 2010, when 13 people were shot in Cumbria.
If Trump is right and it actually is mental health that is to blame for these mass shootings, then there would be evidence of more of these shootings in the UK, where the percentage of people with poor mental health is slightly higher. Instead in the UK we have next to no mass shootings at all.
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There is also evidence that once gun laws are tightened, mass shootings decrease or stop altogether. The best example of this is Australia, where after several shootings the state tightened the gun laws. There has not been a mass shooting in Australia since 2014.
The contrast between 346 mass shootings in just one year in the US, and the infrequence such gun violence in places such as the UK and Australia, suggests that mental illness is not to blame.
Another problem with blaming mental health is that it runs the risk of stigmatising those with mental health issues, when we should be addressing the real issue, which is the gun itself.