Never mind that virtually every major psychiatric study states that the vast majority of people living with some form of mental illness are not violent (the U.S. Department of Health and Services puts the violent number at 3 to 5 percent), or that the vast majority of gun deaths are committed by people who are not diagnosed as mentally ill, or that every day about 30 people are killed by gun owners under the influence of alcohol, or that mentally ill people are fare more likely to be victims of crime than instigators, there’s a whiplash reaction among liberal circles to lump me in with emotionally disturbed individuals.
When I mentioned this generalization to a friend, he said I shouldn’t be concerned with “nuance,” and concentrate on the real problem of getting guns away from violent mentally ill criminals. His point would be valid if we lived in nuanced times. We don’t. We live in a meme-reactionary Trump world, where new enemies sprout up like crabgrass.
The case against me has been escalating for a few years. In 2015 Kenneth Cole placed a billboard next to a New York City highway that said, “over 40M Americans suffer from mental illness. Some can access care… All can access guns,” with the hashtag #GunReform. While the sentiment had great merit, the message was naively clear: I’m a threat.
Anyone who suffers from mental illness is aware of the stigma that’s been attached to the label for generations. Not only is there personal shame in thinking you have a defective brain and are crazy, there’s also the challenge of convincing people that you have an illness very much like a physical illness; one that needs to be diagnosed and treated and understood.
After spending my entire adulthood learning how to embrace my illness, and a good chunk of that time learning how to come out of the mentally ill closet, and after so much progress has been made in regards to the treatment and perception of mental illness, I fear we’re stepping back into the mud. There are approximately 25 million Americans recovering from alcohol and drug abuse. Imagine the outcry if signs were put on highways saying people with substance-abuse problems shouldn’t be allowed to have guns. Our acceptance of mental illness is still in the embryonic stage.
I’m also going to take a wild guess and assume rational people wouldn’t be aghast if they found out Carrie Fisher or Patty Duke owned guns; both spoke openly of their mental illness, and both had a friendly, liberal face attached. But when we hear the term “mental illness” our minds almost always go toward people with tin foil hats wearing straightjackets and a strapped-on assault rifle.
Once again, people will say “But crazy people shouldn’t have guns!” They are correct and I agree. If you do a checklist of mass shootings in the United States, a large percentage of the murderers suffered from some sort of mental illness, usually untreated.
How difficult, however, would it be to be a little more responsible in our reporting, and instead of broad-stroking the issue, use more instructive terms like “psychotic disorders” or “mentally unstable,” or, at least, “severe mental illness”? I’m not concerned about being politically correct; I’m concerned that, next time a crazy person goes on a shooting spree, I’m going to have to go back into the mental illness closet. We can undo decades of progress with one unstable criminal and one fear-mongering President.
I’m also concerned that this is one more reason mentally ill people won’t seek help, which, in turn, can lead to violent behavior. Struggling with depression? Don’t tell a doctor: You’ll never be able to own a gun, unlike your next-door neighbor wife-beater. This would be an excellent time to educate people on the myths and realities of mental illness.
By the way, if some new law passed that said anyone’s who’s started a barroom brawl or abuses drugs and alcohol or is stalking his ex-girlfriend could no longer buy a gun, but that people like me could, we’d be a far safer country. I’ve never been arrested and I’ve never started a fight, and I’d be the safest person to possess a firearm—cause I’d never take the damn thing out of the case.