Why Most Mass Shooters are White
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Most mass shooters are white simply because young black males with any type of personality disorder are in prison by the age of twenty. That is, American society criminalizes mental illness among minorities. I'm not talking of some diabolical racial scheme on the part of the criminal justice system. It is rather the fact that the hourly rate for hiring the type of high-caliber mental health professional that can keep a dangerously mal-adjusted teenager out of jail is steep, very steep. As a consequence, affluent whites are able to hide their socially deviant children in psychiatrists' offices, until the kid goes off and kills twenty innocent kindergarteners. Sadly, the mental health profession has an abyssmal record either of identifying those of their patients, who may pose the greatest danger to the general public, or of stopping them even when their intentions have been telegraphed to the doctor.
Even so, the mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut like most other mass shootings are primarily gun-control issues. Why, for instance, did Adam Lanza's mother, whom he shot in the head, possess a cache of weapons in the first place? Nevertheless, the issue of how American society deals with mental illness cannot be swept under the rug. I'm not suggesting that all young people with behaviorial problems be locked up. Some element of mental illness and social deviance is encoded in the human genome, and will always be with us, no matter how many new psychiatrists and psychologists our society produces. As a consequence, rather than imprison those who are too poor to afford elite mental health care, the access to guns must be curtailed for all of us. The only reason so many illegal weapons circulate among criminals is because United States gun manufacturers produce so many in the first place. My real hope is that American society see the light one day and recognize that this problem can never be fixed unless we revisit the sacrosanct Second Amendment itself.
Most mass shooters are white simply because young black males with any type of personality disorder are in prison by the age of twenty. That is, American society criminalizes mental illness among minorities. I'm not talking of some diabolical racial scheme on the part of the criminal justice system. It is rather the fact that the hourly rate for hiring the type of high-caliber mental health professional that can keep a dangerously mal-adjusted teenager out of jail is steep, very steep. As a consequence, affluent whites are able to hide their socially deviant children in psychiatrists' offices, until the kid goes off and kills twenty innocent kindergarteners. Sadly, the mental health profession has an abyssmal record either of identifying those of their patients, who may pose the greatest danger to the general public, or of stopping them even when their intentions have been telegraphed to the doctor.
Even so, the mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut like most other mass shootings are primarily gun-control issues. Why, for instance, did Adam Lanza's mother, whom he shot in the head, possess a cache of weapons in the first place? Nevertheless, the issue of how American society deals with mental illness cannot be swept under the rug. I'm not suggesting that all young people with behaviorial problems be locked up. Some element of mental illness and social deviance is encoded in the human genome, and will always be with us, no matter how many new psychiatrists and psychologists our society produces. As a consequence, rather than imprison those who are too poor to afford elite mental health care, the access to guns must be curtailed for all of us. The only reason so many illegal weapons circulate among criminals is because United States gun manufacturers produce so many in the first place. My real hope is that American society see the light one day and recognize that this problem can never be fixed unless we revisit the sacrosanct Second Amendment itself.
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