On a quiet Sunday last November, a young man wielding an assault-style weapon took aim at a church in rural Texas, killing 26 people.
In so doing, Devin Patrick Kelley added his name to an ever-growing list of American mass killers and forced the nation to grapple, once again, with gun violence. Kelley’s well-documented history of violence was on full display across the nation’s televisions and print media, and for good reason — prior violence is a significant predictor of gun violence. However, something far more troubling was also making its way into the narrative.
As has been the case with the overwhelming majority of other mass shootings in recent memory, media and political coverage of Kelley began to focus on his mental health status. And, as has been the case before, this narrow focus on mental illness reignited calls for broader restrictions on firearm access for people with mental illnesses, despite evidence that mental illness contributes to less than 5 percent of all violent crimes and that most individuals with severe mental illness do not behave violently.
Still, these calls beg the question: Are mentally disordered people with access to firearms really driving America’s gun violence problem?
Our recent analysis suggests the answer is no. In fact, we found that people with serious mental illness who have access to firearms are no more likely to be violent than people living in the same neighborhoods who do not have mental illnesses.
The Myth of the Armed and Dangerous Mentally Ill
Our study draws on data from the groundbreaking MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study, a study of individuals who experienced short-term stays in inpatient psychiatric hospitals. These individuals were followed for one year after being released in the mid 1990s. The project represents one of the most comprehensive studies of violence by and against people who suffer from mental illness to date.
In our analysis, we take advantage of the study’s inclusion of a…