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Do guns kill or do people kill people?
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Mentally ill people kill people

About 1 in 5 adults suffers from a mental illness each year, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The focus needs to shift away from banning guns, and into pouring resources and funds into mental health initiatives and programs. This will effectively stop gun violence.

The Argument

Guns don’t kill people; people kill people. Many killers have mental health problems, and mental illness significantly contributes to gun violence and mass deaths. Because gun violence is such a problem in America, it is a prime country to look at the statistics regarding this issue. Reports suggest that up to 60% of perpetrators of mass shootings in the United States since 1970 displayed symptoms including acute paranoia, delusions, and depression before committing their crimes.[1] Mental health systems in countries like America, where gun violence is so prevalent, are woefully inadequate.[2] Not enough resources go into funding mental health initiatives and programs that can get people the help they need. Mental illness is often ignored or overlooked and there is no effective system in place that prevents the mentally ill from getting their hands on weapons that they then use to commit heinous crimes. If mentally ill people are given the support they need on a large scale, then gun violence would not be as prevalent as it is today. It isn’t the guns that are killing people, it is the mentally ill who are killing people.

Counter arguments

Mental illness can not be the prevailing cause of gun violence and mass shootings because there are plenty of murderers who do not have any sort of mental health problem. The same is true vice versa; there are plenty of people with mental health issues who don’t engage in the grotesque act of murder. For instance, 1 in 5 Americans have some sort of mental health issue, and yet there is no statistic to show that 1 in 5 Americans are mass murderers.[2] In fact, the vast majority of those with mental health issues have no violent tendencies whatsoever. It is not mentally ill people who are the cause of violent deaths in the span of a few moments; it is guns.



Rejecting the premises


This page was last edited on Monday, 19 Oct 2020 at 01:20 UTC

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