Since a gunman went on a rampage in Lewistown, Maine, killing 16 people, we’ve learned a few things about the shooter, Robert Card, who was found with a fatal self-inflicted gunshot wound after a two-day manhunt. A member of the Army Reserve, Card had recently been committed to a mental health facility after he reported hearing voices and threatened to shoot up the National Guard base in Saco, Maine.
Card’s mental health history has been central to reporting that laid out the lead-up to the deadliest mass shooting in the US this year. Questions of how Card was able to have access to guns, given his psychiatric hospitalization and documented concerns of family and soldiers in his reserve unit, drove much of the coverage. Lax gun laws that allow people like Card to slip through the cracks warrant interrogation, but the reality is that most mass shooters don’t have a mental health history like Card’s, nor is a record of mental illness a good predictor of gun violence.
Card’s ability to carry out this tragedy is a symptom of the gun violence crisis in the US, but the presence of his mental illness is not representative of the issue. In the vast majority of cases of mass violence, mental illness is not considered a primary factor. Attempting to rationalize the horrors of a mass shooting by emphasizing the perpetrator’s mental state does very little to address the larger issue at best, and leads to dangerous mental health stigma at worst.
Hellbound and Down 