There was his modest proposal, which seems sincere despite the title:
4 Strict gun control must apply to both manufacture and possession. It is the unrestricted availability of firearms that has made violent crime and the drug abuse problem so intertwined.
I think mental illness does have an impact, but mainly in bringing existing messages accepted by many people with and without psychological problems to a kind of logical conclusion. Elliot Roger and Christopher Harper-Mercer both felt like losers for their lack of a sexual relationship, which ties into strong messages that women are a sign of status. Christopher Harper-Mercer added the “religious people are the problem” message of internet atheists, and ran with that too. Many school shooters were bullied in school and apparently wanted to take out their anger on their school in general, as if the whole student population were against them. I think plenty of people get bullied or excluded, but not so many have this idea that they are ‘betas’, but should rightfully have been ‘alphas’ (rather than just regular students). I still think psychological problems make it more likely that someone will carry out this kind of revenge fantasy, but other factors like the entitlement that these people felt and the reinforcement of this in certain groups, their ability to buy guns despite their inability to use them responsibly (I mean, being able to buy 14 guns from a federal dealer in the space of three years?), the prevalence of these incidents in recent years, the fact that schools are often quite abusive spaces where people can feel isolated and build resentment, the way that calls for looking after mentally ill people in this context often don’t mean much more than locking them up, among other issues, make mental illness no more than one part of the whole picture.
I don’t think any sensible strategy will focus on one issue to the exclusion of the others, but any reasonable strategy has to involve restricting the availability of guns and emphasising constructive ways of dealing with these issues for everyone, rather than looking at it as a problem for the sector of society that we can identify as having mental health problems.
