UNITED STATES – Same tragedy, same (false) excuses. The United States is once again in mourning after the shooting that left four dead and around thirty injured in a high school in Georgia on Wednesday, September 4. A student at this establishment in the southeast of the country, Colt Gray, aged 14, opened fire, killing two students and two teachers before being arrested.
Georgia high school shooting leaves four dead, dozens injured
In response, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris called, once again, for action against this epidemic of violence by regulating access to firearms. At the same time, their Republican opponent Donald Trump, also in the midst of a presidential campaign, preferred to point the finger at the shooter’s mental health, calling him a “sick and deranged monster”. An argument he has been using for years, but which has its limits.
Mental illness responsible for killings, says Trump
Indeed, with every shooting in the United States, the question of the mental health of the shooters arises. In July 2019, after the shootings in El Paso and Dayton that resulted in the deaths of 31 people, Donald Trump held the “mental illness”.
“We need to reform our mental health laws to better identify people with mental health problems who are likely to commit acts of violence and ensure that these people are not only treated but, if necessary, detained preventively.”he said, assuring that “It’s mental illness and hatred that pulls the trigger, not the gun.”
And here, even if we do not yet know the motivations for this act by the 14-year-old teenager, we know that he was under surveillance. The American federal police (FBI) indicated in the evening that they had issued a report in 2023 on the suspect, who had threatened on the internet to carry out shootings in a school, with photographs of weapons in support.
Following the report, he was investigated by law enforcement in neighboring Winder County, where the shooting occurred, but denied making the threats, while his father said the teen did not have access to weapons in the home. Local schools were also notified so the suspect would be put under increased surveillance. But “at that time there were no reasonable grounds for arrest or further action by law enforcement”the FBI said in its press release.
Experts contradict Trump’s theory
It has also been proven that mental health is not always linked to acting out. In 2019, Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry, acknowledged to AFP that “To massacre a group of strangers is not the act of a sane mind. Often the perpetrators of shootings are isolated people with complex social lives.”. But he qualified: most of them do not have “ identified serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, that prevents the brain from reasoning or understanding reality”.
Similarly, Susan B. Sorenson, professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania, pointed out the same year to Vicea link between a certain emotional state and the passage to violent action, but not with any mental illness. “We know that gun violence can happen when someone is impulsive, discouraged and angry. But those are all human emotions and conditions. It’s not specific to someone with a diagnosed disorder.”she explains.
A study on the profile of shooters released by the FBI in June 2018 supported this view and showed that shooters suffer from “multiple stressors” (at work, in a relationship, money problems, in school). This stress can manifest itself, for example, through depression or violent behavior. But three-quarters of the perpetrators of shootings studied in these studies did not suffer from any diagnosed mental illness. “Claims that all shooters are simply mentally ill are misleading and unhelpful.”the FBI said.
Political argument before the presidential election
Despite everything, this argument of Donald Trump is regularly taken up by the Republicans to avoid looking into the thorny issue of the arms market. Hillary Clinton had also responded to the ex-president on this subject: “ People have mental disorders in every country and people play video games in every country. The difference is guns.”.
And with the long-awaited debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump scheduled for five days, it is not at all in the Republican candidate’s interest to take a position on possible gun control. Not when the NRA, the all-powerful pro-gun lobby in the United States, weighs very heavily in politics and can use its influence in the November presidential election.
Absolutely determined to defend the integrity of the Second Amendment, the Republican had claimed his desire to protect the right to bear arms by appointing federal judges who will oppose new restrictions on firearms if he is elected in November. A statement he made just after surviving a last-minute assassination attempt by firearm.
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