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Mental Illness And Gun Violence Essay

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Mental Illness and Gun Violence Reflection

After researching my case, my findings were very intriguing about the relationship between mental illnesses and gun violence. When I began creating the presentation with my group members, I do not believe any of us knew the role of mental illness and violence. However, as we researched and read many articles, we became aware how people with mental illnesses is not the sole factor for gun violence or mass shootings. Mental illness just a factor, not the factor that causes gun violence.
Initially, I was not as aware of the significant problem of guns in the United States. Approximately 32,000 people die each year due to guns. What surprised me even more is that more than half of those cases are due to suicide. These statistics reaffirmed my stance that there is a problem with …show more content…

During researching this topic, my group members and I discovered how substance abuse was the most significant variable in gun violence; other factors included past “violent victimization, and neighborhood and social disadvantage.” However, I think it is the public’s perception on the mentally ill is the most dangerous issue. With media’s coverage on gun violence and mentally ill leads society to have a schema of the mental ill being the common cause of mass shootings. For example, in a Donald Trump interview he states that the cause of all the shootings were due to the mentally ill; this shows how uneducated people leads to incorrect conclusions due to not having the facts. This leads to the role of the ethical pillar of justice. Is it just for laws prohibiting the mentally ill from buying firearms compared to laws prohibiting people with substance abuse? My belief is that people with serious mental illnesses may have a slightly more chance to act dangerously, but it is not statistically

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