Guns and the problem with "It's about mental health."

I. “Putting God Back in Schools”

I spent five minutes arguing with myself, trying to convince me to ignore yet another “we need to put God back into public schools” comment. It was posted in a way that implied this is a solution to school shootings. But, I lost the argument with myself. Here’s the core of what I posted:

1. It's absolutely legal for students to pray in school. How could anyone stop them? I prayed fervently before taking history tests when I was in high school. And I wasn’t even particularly religious in high school.

2. Students can express their religious views as long as they don’t harass others or disrupt learning. They can even gather for religious purposes during non-instructional time. Students have remarkably broad rights in this area. The stories about kids getting in trouble for praying in school are simply false.

3. Those who believe in God know God is already in schools. How could God not be in schools? I challenge you to describe what you mean by “putting God back in schools.” What would that look like for you? What would you do to make that happen? (I’d recommend replacing all the outer doors with new ones that God can open.)

4. While I’m not entirely sure what “putting God back in schools” means it seems likely you are talking about school-sanctioned prayers, or teaching or promoting Christianity in schools. Here’s why we cannot do that:
   

   (a) The First Amendment's Establishment Clause forbids it. The government cannot promote religion, nor can it promote non-religion. It has to remain neutral. Public schools, being government institutions, must abide by this.
   

   (b) Every student, parent, and employee has the right to feel welcome and fully included in their school, regardless of their religion. It is impossible for Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, or atheist/agnostic students to feel included if a school promotes a specific religion. Making groups of children feel like outsiders, even subtly, is wrong.
   

   (c) Even if we agreed to “put God back in schools”—and I suspect what’s meant is making public schools Christian—Christian parents themselves would argue over what should be taught. For example, as someone noted, I wouldn't want my Catholic grandchildren being taught religion in public schools by evangelical teachers, and if I were an evangelical Baptist, I wouldn’t want my grandkids taught by Catholics.
   

   (d) No coherent theology would claim that promoting religion in public schools would prevent school shootings. Though I typically avoid comments like this, since you’ve said it’s “insane” for Christians to oppose religious practices in public schools—you are just flat, 100% wrong.

II. Hey. Let’s Just “Fix Society,” Blame It on Mental Health, and Get Nothing Useful Done

This reminds me of a friend of mine—a good guy—who used to say that it's not about guns. What we really need to do, he’d insist, is “fix society.” Yeah, by all means, let's get right on that. Reckon we can get that done in a couple of years?

I have some credentials to comment on the "it's not guns, it's mental health" chorus. Even if we accept that argument, I’ve never seen any workable proposal for addressing the mental health crisis in a way that would make a difference in less than decades. Moreover, many of the measures schools have taken in recent years to try to address these issues have come under attack from various conservative groups.

Speaking as a clinical psychologist times 41 years, there is no short list of mental health problems or clinical diagnoses we can point to and say, “Here are the ones we need to address.” I’ve not seen evidence that mass shooters are more likely to be bipolar, schizophrenic, clinically depressed, suffering from severe anxiety, or having specific personality disorders than the general population. Personally, I suspect—but can’t prove—that many of these men likely suffer from severe depression. So, for the sake of this discussion, let’s pretend that addressing clinical depression in men could dramatically reduce mass shootings.

How do we do that? What about a law that says if you’re diagnosed with clinical depression, you can’t own guns? Men are already four times more likely to kill themselves than women, partly because, as a group, they don’t talk about it or go to their doctors to say, “Listen, I’m really depressed.” At least, not as readily as, generally speaking, women do. We don’t need to add to that problem by passing laws that make men feel even more reluctant to seek help because their doctors might report them if they admit they’re depressed.

Oh. And mental health professionals are not any better at predicting who will engage in act of terrible violence than anyone else.

Moreover, only the tiniest fraction of people with clinical depression will ever engage in mass shootings. And, uh, further furthermore, clinical depression is so common that trying to identify and treat everyone with the disorder would overwhelm any system we put in place. And all of this assumes, falsely, that the problem is depression.

So, what do we do? Mandatory psychological evaluations for every high school student? Mandatory psych evaluations for every angry American male? For socially-maladjusted adolescents. For bullies? For the victims of bullies? For kids from dysfunctional families?

One more thing: It’s possible that some broad, extensive enhancement of the mental health delivery system in the U.S. might reduce school shootings. But, (a) it would take a long time to implement and see results, (b) it would probably require nationalizing the mental health care system, and (c) for sure, it would be so incredibly expensive that Republicans would scream like they were giving birth to a case of AR-15s if it were proposed.

Okay, one more thing. The forces have prevented measures like assault weapon bans are correct when they say that doing so would be extremely difficult, because there are—I can never get over this—an estimated 20 million of them in the US. And guess who is largely responsible for that? The very individuals and organizations who now tell us that nothing can be done about them.