Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Felix]

LuckyR: "As you mention, Swiss data is particularly unsuited to answering questions in this thread since the thread is dealing with the relative risk of legal gun owners (vs those who do not legally own guns) as pertains to gun crime or more broadly violent crime."

Except for the obvious consensus: mentally ill people should not own guns - which means about 20% of the population should not have access to firearms.

[LuckyR]

LuckyR: "As you mention, Swiss data is particularly unsuited to answering questions in this thread since the thread is dealing with the relative risk of legal gun owners (vs those who do not legally own guns) as pertains to gun crime or more broadly violent crime."

Except for the obvious consensus: mentally ill people should not own guns - which means about 20% of the population should not have access to firearms.

Not so obvious:

"Yet surprisingly little population-level evidence supports the notion that individuals diagnosed with mental illness are more likely than anyone else to commit gun crimes. According to Appelbaum,25 less than 3% to 5% of US crimes involve people with mental illness, and the percentages of crimes that involve guns are lower than the national average for persons not diagnosed with mental illness. Databases that track gun homicides, such as the National Center for Health Statistics, similarly show that fewer than 5% of the 120 000 gun-related killings in the United States between 2001 and 2010 were perpetrated by people diagnosed with mental illness.26"

From:

Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms

Jonathan M. Metzl, MD, PhD and Kenneth T. MacLeish, PhD

In the American Journal of Public Health

[GE Morton]

[quoting) "Yet surprisingly little population-level evidence supports the notion that individuals diagnosed with mental illness are more likely than anyone else to commit gun crimes.

Yes indeed. "Mental illness" is much too broad a descriptor upon which to base a disqualification for gun ownership. Most persons with diagnosed mental illnesses are not prone to crime or violence, and pose no danger to anyone, except perhaps themselves. A substantial opposition to that blanket disqualification has developed among mental health professionals and civil rights defenders, including the ACLU. In general, they urge that the right to own a firearm be revoked only for "specific individuals whose actions evidence that they pose a heightened risk of danger to self or others."

https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/ ... s-and-guns

[Felix]

"Databases that track gun homicides, such as the National Center for Health Statistics, similarly show that fewer than 5% of the 120 000 gun-related killings in the United States between 2001 and 2010 were perpetrated by people diagnosed with mental illness."

There's a good example of what Mark Twain was referring to when he spoke of "lies, damn lies, and statistics."

The problem with that statistic is that numerous studies have suggested that over half of mental illness cases are never formally diagnosed. And the majority of gun deaths are suicides, would you consider attempted suicide a sign of good mental health?

[LuckyR]

"Databases that track gun homicides, such as the National Center for Health Statistics, similarly show that fewer than 5% of the 120 000 gun-related killings in the United States between 2001 and 2010 were perpetrated by people diagnosed with mental illness."

There's a good example of what Mark Twain was referring to when he spoke of "lies, damn lies, and statistics."

The problem with that statistic is that numerous studies have suggested that over half of mental illness cases are never formally diagnosed. And the majority of gun deaths are suicides, would you consider attempted suicide a sign of good mental health?

While likely true, the undiagnosed cases are also likely to trend toward the mildest ones. In addition, this thread is specifically geared toward violent crime, suicide is not a crime.