A Comforting Diversion: Why Did Trump's Mass Shooting Speech Shift the Blame to Mental Illness, not Guns?

Donald Trump, White House portrait

When President Donald Trump spoke yesterday from the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House to respond to the horrors of the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, he explained a complex set of causes and accompanying solutions for America’s epidemic of mass shootings. Mostly, the president was diverting attention from public policy – gun control – focusing instead on individual morality. More exactly, he focused on mental illness – which has little to do with morality – as a way to ignore public policy. It is easier to condemn people than it is to fix social problems. Because it is not mental illness that causes our violence problem.

As soon as I joined my high school debate team, I was taught the stock issues, which explain the most basic rules of public policy: find out what harms exist today, figure out what causes them, and then look for a solution. Years later, I wrote some articles about that exact topic. (Click the button above for my publications.) Trump (like most conservatives) misdiagnoses the cause, and so he misses the obvious solutions.

What did the president’s rhetoric reveal about our national psyche, about how we understand the problems of violence, and about how the president tapped into our fears? Like millions of people, Trump viewed the killings as a moral problem of individuals, and not as something wrong that society itself could correct.

During my years as a university professor, I devoted my career to research and study. It was my job to learn things according to the best facts and to pass that knowledge on to my students. Overcoming our common beliefs, some of which are comforting but wrong, was often my biggest challenge. The gun debate is marked by diversion, wrong social science, incorrect preconceived beliefs that evidence does not support.

So, yes, the killers were evil: Trump was right to call the El Paso shooter “a wicked man.” He was right to talk about families “shopping with their loved ones.” He was right to call the Dayton shooter “a twisted monster.” But does any of that help solve our problem? Psychopaths – people who lack conscience – live all over the world; why is it only the United States that has such an epidemic of mass shootings?

If we misdiagnose the problem, however, that means we are going to misprescribe the solution. That’s exactly what Trump did wrong.

First, Trump condemned the “racist hate” that seems to have motivated the El Paso shooter. Many critics, who think that Trump’s own incendiary rhetoric contributed to our culture of violence, found this ironic. Still, this was the first time I have ever heard Trump complain about “these sinister ideologies” or “condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy.” That, at least, is a start. Maybe there is hope for him. And, yet, is he not diverting our attention from his own association with bigotry and white supremacy? 

Second, Trump complained about the Internet, which can “radicalize disturbed minds.” When we talk about “disturbed minds,” we are already focusing on mental disturbances – on mental illness. Aren’t we?

Trump offered four solutions: to act on early warning signs, to stop glorifying violence in video games and television, to “reform our mental health laws,” and to prevent dangerous people from gaining firearms. He called for an end to “destructive partisanship” – good luck with that! As he reached his conclusion, Trump again focused on mental health: “It is not up to mentally ill monsters; it is up to us.” Guns were not the problem, he said: “Mental illness and hatred pulls the trigger, not the gun.” History should remember and deplore Trump’s statement. It isn’t the gun, he says; it isn’t even the person, but the mental illness. He's wrong, and there are two problems when he says things like that:

Two problems:

First, Trump’s diagnosis was wrong. Few mass shooters are mentally ill. They are angry; many are political radicals; many have led frustrating lives. Their bad attitudes may prevent them from succeeding in the workplace or in romance. Many of them lack a normal conscience. None of that is mental illness. Nor do mass shooters “snap.” As psychiatrist Michael Stone points out, most mass shooters plan their killings for days, weeks, or years before they conduct them. Those are not the acts of people who snap; those are the acts of people who plan in great detail how to lash out at their fellow humans.

Dr. Rosie Phillip Davis, President of the American Psychological Association, issued this statement after the shootings; her point was that, according to research, mental illness does not cause these mass shootings:

“Routinely blaming mass shootings on mental illness is unfounded and stigmatizing. Research has shown that only a very small percentage of violent acts are committed by people who are diagnosed with, or in treatment for, mental illness. The rates of mental illness are roughly the same around the world, yet other countries are not experiencing these traumatic events as often as we face them. One critical factor is access to, and the lethality of, the weapons that are being used in these crimes. Adding racism, intolerance and bigotry to the mix is a recipe for disaster.” 

In part, society wants to hide from evil. It tempts us to pretend that evil doesn’t exist. The most common explanation that people give for Hitler, for example, is that he was “crazy.” That’s ridiculous. Hitler became Chancellor of Germany by winning an election. He was a baby-kissing, grandmother-hugging, speechmaking politician of consummate skill. His program of violence and cruelty was planned for years, and Germany, a nation that was a center of religion, art, music, philosophy, and science, united behind him to carry out his program. A psychotic person couldn’t do that. Anyone who thinks about it for 10 seconds should realize that a severely mentally ill person cannot do that. When I taught history of public speaking, I told my students that Hitler was not crazy but that he was evil. They snickered. They didn’t want to believe in evil.

We regular people, however, who think of ourselves as normal, don’t want to admit that something is wrong with our society. We don’t want to admit that mass murderers are more like the rest of us than we want to think. If we call Hitler or the El Paso shooter or the Dayton shooter crazy, then we can place a distance between ourselves and the forces of evil. That, I’m sure, reassures us a little bit. But it distracts us from good policy. Many points get ignored; for example, the military-style ammunition that many mass shooters load into their weapons cause far more damage than a handgun. But do we think that ammunition is mentally ill? Of course not.

Few people want to admit that their ideology is wrong; it's easier to make excuses. Blaming gun violence on mental illness is an excuse. I think many people listening to Trump believe it. Again, it's easy to believe excuses. If we think that it is crazy people who commit violence, then we think the solution is to deal with crazy people. We think that the solution is to fear the mentally ill. And we would think wrongly.

P.S. Much was made of Trump's comment that the Ohio shooting happened in Toledo, not Dayton. Pretty careless.