Argumentative Essay On Gun Violence

Examples of a mentally ill person using a firearm to hurt others occurred in a movie theater in Colorado in 2012 and again six months later at Sandy Hook elementary school in rural Connecticut. Because of these and other similar tragedies, laws have been passed and people have developed strong stances regarding gun ownership among mentally ill people. The issue of the mentally ill and their firearm use is not something new; in 1993, congress passed the Brady law was which prohibited anyone who had ever been “involuntarily committed” from owning a firearm. Along this same line, Metzl and MacLeish (2015) present evidence that supports the claim that mental illness causes gun violence and the mentally ill should not be allowed to own guns at

There are many cases in which someone who had been diagnosed with a mental condition used a gun to harm multiple innocent people. According to Metzl and MacLeish, “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” (240). Although not all mentally ill people are problematic regarding gun ownership, the people who do abuse their privilege create distrust toward mentally ill people. Usually, there are signs that something is not right with a person before he commits a mass shooting, “Classmates felt unsafe around Jared Loughner because he would ‘laugh randomly and loudly at nonevents’ in the weeks before he shot US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 6 other people at a rally in front of a supermarket in Tucson, Arizona” (Metzl and MacLeish 240). How do we let mentally unstable people own weapons when they clearly have used them for evil multiple times? Metzl and Macleish state, “Crimes such as Newtown—where Lanza killed 20 children and 6 adults with a military-grade semiautomatic weapon—appear to fall outside the bounds of sanity: who but an insane person would do such horrifying things” (241). Based on the evidence presented by Metzl and Macleish, the problem of gun violence among the mentally ill would diminish if they were not allowed guns at