Guns,Crime,and Dangerous Minds

Public officials from across the political spectrum have responded to the massacre at Newtown and other recent mass shootings with calls for more attention to “mental health” and “mental illness” as a way to prevent gun violence. In a series of public statements, Wayne LaPierre, the Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association (NRA), has argued for the creation of a national “active mental health database” that might keep guns out of the hands of “monsters,” “lunatics,” and the “insane” (Neporent, 2012). President Barack Obama has issued executive orders that seek to “launch a national dialogue [ . . . ] on mental health” and make it easier for mental health care professionals to share patient information with the federal background check system (Weigel, 2013). Coming together around the perceived “mental health component” of gun violence, the U.S. Senate recently introduced several bi-partisan bills that propose broad legal changes to national mental health care policy (Fox, 2013). The NY SAFE Act, signed into law by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo less than a month after the Newtown shootings, includes a section requiring mental health professionals to report any individuals deemed to be a threat to themselves or others. If the individual holds a gun license, law enforcement officials may be authorized to suspend the license and seize his or her weapons (Governor’s Press Office, 2013). Such initiatives have been lauded by pundits on the left and right (Charen, 2013; “Gun Control and Mental Illness,” 2012), and are overwhelmingly popular with gun owners and non-gun owners alike (Barry, McGinty, Vernick, & Webster, 2013; Saad, 2013). Traversing ideological lines between gun enthusiasts and gun control advocates, the “deranged mind” has become a discursive common ground for many policy makers and their publics (Killough, 2013).

The fact that the “mental health” turn in gun violence discourse has garnered support from those traditionally on opposing sides of the politically divisive gun rights/control debate suggests a need for greater scrutiny of these policies. Our claim is that policy proposals that tie contemporary gun violence prevention to mental health care can be seen as part of a confluence of technologies of social governance that includes a turn from therapeutic to risk-management approaches to mental health care (Castel, 1991; Rose, 1998, 2010); a turn from retrospective/forensic to prospective/preventative approaches to criminal justice (Feeley & Simon, 1992; Zedner, 2007); and, a broader turn toward a “criminological” view of civic identity, in which the victim/perpetrator binary encompasses other broad identity positions such as race, class, gender, and sexuality (Simon, 2007). Public support for the seemingly innocuous claim that better mental health care can prevent gun violence has helped to consolidate a host of powerful industries committed to new forms of social control, advancing what Rose (2007) has described as a post-disciplinary “neuropolitics” that uses psychiatric and pharmaceutical technologies to pursue the “continuous task of monitoring, managing, and modulating” the “capacities . . . of the contemporary biological citizen” (p. 223).

What accounts for the current mental health turn in the American gun debate? Surely, the facts regarding mental illness and mass shootings do not. Although it appears that Jared Loughner, James Holmes, Adam Lanza, and other perpetrators may have been psychologically impaired (Saletan, 2013), history has shown that few mass shooters are ever clinically diagnosed with mental disorders either before or after their crimes (Plumer, 2013). Tellingly, no mass shooter has been found “not guilty by reason of insanity” since 1988 (Ingold, 2013). Furthermore, although mass shootings have become a national epidemic (on average they occur once a month), these atrocities account for only one tenth of 1% of all homicides committed with a gun (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2013). And, mental health patients are far more likely to be the victims than perpetrators of homicidal violence (Crump, Sundquist, Winkleby, & Sundquist, 2013). A history of other violent crimes (e.g., assault and battery) and the tendency to lose control when under the influence of alcohol or other intoxicants have been found to be better predictors for committing acts of gun violence (Fisher & Lieberman, 2013). And, in America, 61% of all gun-related fatalities are suicides—a U.S. citizen is significantly more likely to use a firearm to kill himself or herself than to kill someone else (CDC, 2013). By virtue of their terrifying frequency, nature, and outcomes, mass shootings generate immense media scrutiny, public dialogue, and political response. However, many experts agree, “a multiple-casualty shooting by a disturbed individual is a statistically rare and virtually unpredictable event” (Swanson et al., 2013). Viewing the broader problem of gun violence through the narrow lens of mass murder by the mentally ill skews the focus and justifies “crisis-driven” policies seeking to find, disarm, and detain potential monsters at any cost (Swanson, 2013).

The idea that the state should enact laws to keep firearms out of the hands of those deemed dangerous or otherwise unfit is by no means unprecedented. Historically, most developments in gun regulation have been driven in part by public discourse about dangerous others from whom “society must be defended” (Foucault, 2003). Consider the Second Amendment: adopted in 1791, its final draft represented a hard-fought compromise between Federalists, who were concerned that armed majorities might abuse minorities in the states, and Anti-Federalists, who feared the potential tyranny of a regular standing federal army. Mirroring the language of many state constitutions (most of which barred Blacks, Catholics, Indians, foreign-born citizens, and other “suspect” groups, from obtaining guns), it ultimately authorized the arming of highly regulated state militias as a means of national defense (Bellesiles, 2000, pp. 213-218). Throughout the antebellum period, propertied “nativists” in New York and Connecticut sought official bans on immigrant and Black militias and worked to increase the distribution of firearms to nativist regiments (which were commonly deployed by governments during urban riots, workers’ strikes, and immigrant uprisings; Bellesiles, 2000, pp. 392-399). During Reconstruction, southern Whites formed new militias and vigilante groups (most notably the Ku Klux Klan [KKK]), which accumulated firearms in anticipation of a “war of the races,” seized weapons from Blacks, and instigated a widespread reign of terror, murder, and White supremacy that would extend well into the 20th century. Federal attempts to disarm and prosecute the KKK and other guilty parties proved ineffective, and were further hampered by an 1876 Supreme Court ruling that affirmed the right of states to establish any gun regulation laws deemed fit (no matter how prejudiced or racist; Bellesiles, 2000, pp. 438-441). Finally, notable Congressional gun control acts passed in 1934, 1968, 1988, and 1993, were primarily contemporary responses to the perceived threats of (respectively) “gangsters armed with machine guns” [sic], politically motivated assassins, terrorists, and violent criminals (American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1976, p. 3; Carter, 2006, pp. 161-163; Diaz, 2006, p. 94). As these examples suggest, pivotal shifts in U.S. gun discourse and legislation tend to reflect and amplify broader political battles over civic identity and the management of violence in a democratic society. Officials have often used the state regulation of firearms as a way to redistribute the means of violence, arming certain citizens in defense against others deemed unfit or unworthy of the rights and responsibilities of full citizenship.

Today, a new iteration of the long debate about citizenly identity and gun violence has emerged. Policy makers on both sides of the typically polarized gun control/rights debate have agreed that laws seeking to regulate the possession of firearms should be assessed according to their ability to protect the innocent from the unpredictable criminal violence of the insane. It may seem self-evident that gun policy should protect the innocent from those considered likely to do harm: A firearm is a machine able to amplify the consequences of criminal action and, potentially, to prevent crimes from occurring. However, this underlying “criminological” view of civic identity, in which individuals are defined primarily in terms of their capacity to commit or suffer from crime, is part of a broader, newly emergent approach to governance that Simon (2007) has described as “governing through crime.” Simon argues that victims of crime have become idealized political subjects of contemporary law and public policy. More than consumer protection, enforcing labor laws, ensuring environmental stewardship, defending civil rights, or any number of alternative ways of justifying political intervention, it is defense against violent crime that has emerged as the principal “governable interest of the public.”

This criminological view of civic identity is apparent in the many “stand-your-ground” and “castle doctrine” gun laws that have emerged in recent years. Increasingly controversial since the Trayvon Martin shooting, yet still on the books in most states, such legislation characterizes the ideal citizen as one who is capable of defending himself or herself and others against potentially violent aggressors through the use of preemptive lethal force. In essence, these laws inscribe the right of the gun owner to transcend victimhood by shooting first. Thus, they simultaneously are predicated upon and reaffirm the victim/perpetrator binary addressed above. The New York SAFE Act and other policies initiated during the recent “mental health turn” take the ideological construct of the law-abiding gun owner a crucial step further, defining him or her as one who is psychologically stable and able to maintain perfect vigilance over self (always a potential victim) and other (always a potential perpetrator) alike.

Despite the broad political consensus that gun policy should be judged according to its ability to deter violent crime, research about the criminal use of firearms remains scarce. In 1993, Arthur Kellermann and a team of researchers published a study that found that ownership of a firearm increased the risk of homicide in the home (Kellermann et al., 1993). The study, funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC), sparked a lobbying effort by the National Rifle Association (NRA)—which feared that federally funded research could be used to promote gun control legislation. In 1996, Congress responded to the pressure from the NRA and voted to cut funding for gun violence research by the CDC. Since then peer-reviewed research publications about gun violence have fallen by 60% (Mayors Against Illegal Guns, 2013). Research on firearms by the Department of Justice has also declined and the National Institute of Justice has not published a study of gun violence since 2007. In addition, since 2003 Department of Justice appropriations bills have included so-called Tiahrt Amendments that prevent the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives from releasing gun crime data to academic researchers. Across the nation, states have barred physicians from discussing firearm safety with patients. And the 2011 National Defense Authorization Act prohibits military officers from asking soldiers about private weapons possession even if that soldier has disclosed having suicidal thoughts. As these examples suggest, there are a wide range of federal legal barriers that limit the ability of researchers and clinicians to gather information about dangerous weapons and to implement policies based on that knowledge (Kellermann & Rivera, 2013).

In contrast, research about potentially dangerous people has flourished, driven in part by a host of new technologies, including neuroimaging (Bufkin & Luttrell, 2005; Krämer, Jansma, Tempelmann, & Munte, 2007) and behavioral genetics (Caspi et al., 2002; Caspi & Moffitt, 2006), designed to quantify and display the mind and body of those deemed likely to commit certain crimes. As Rose (2007) notes, “New sciences of brain and behavior forge direct links between what we do—how we conduct ourselves—and what we are” (p. 26). Armed with technologies that promise to reveal neurobiological locus of human behavior, “anything and everything appears, in principle, to be intelligible, and hence to be open to calculated interventions in the service of our desires . . . ” (Rose, 2007, p. 4). This influx of knowledge about the biological drivers of everyday social conduct has informed a wide range of technologies of governance seeking to organize, vitalize, and control bio-political publics. Officials have sought clinical procedures that can help distinguish those capable of “normal,” socially responsible conduct from those who are likely to be incapable of such conduct and who, therefore, pose a threat to social order. Mental-health practitioners have become part of this broader bio-political apparatus, called upon to gather neuronal evidence from which predictions about an individual’s future behavior can be made.

The contemporary study of genetic and neurobiological factors contributing to specifically criminal behavior has been controversial. Some have feared a return to deterministic causal analyses of earlier theories of biological criminology. However, the current approach differs from 19th- and 20th-century biological theories of criminality in some significant ways. Practitioners of those earlier theories (associated with phrenology, eugenics, and other forms of what is now recognized as scientific racism) sought to exclude groups presumed to possess innate and unchangeable qualities that made them a threat to the health of the social order. The new biology of control, by contrast, focuses on individuals rather than groups and presumes that violence is a result of a confluence of dynamic changing personal “risk factors” . . . not unalterable static features of the individual’s body or soul. Likewise, biological markers of potential problems are not considered unalterable curses—risk reduction through pharmacological and behavior-modification therapies immediately follows diagnosis. In sum, if older theories about biological basis of criminality can be described as deterministic, the new model is actuarial—seeking to calculate and mitigate risk in a world in which any one of us might have the latent potential to commit acts of catastrophic harm.

Although earlier research did find evidence that gun ownership is a significant risk factor for homicide in the home, there has since been a dearth of public health research about gun violence. Due in part to the Congressional suppression of gun violence research, biological explanations of risk and risk reduction have become part of the taken for granted vocabulary of violence prevention policies. Advocates for biological theories of criminality can therefore speak with the weight of scientific authority, while those who argue for renewed attention to the use of firearms in incidents of lethal violence can be dismissed as unscientific and politically motivated anti-gun activists. Policy proposals that seek to address gun violence primarily through changes to mental health care thus obscure the role of lethal weapons and instead focus attention on a new and increasingly pervasive subject position, the “susceptible individual”: A person who, barring psycho-pharmaceutical and/or custodial intervention may present a measurable threat of perpetrating antisocial violence (Rose, 2007). The mental health consultation thus becomes a technology for assessing a range of risk factors for violence and determining whether it is in the state’s interest to deprive an individual of certain civil rights (including, in some cases, the right to own a weapon). This changes the clinical encounter from a therapeutic relationship focused on the patient to a threat-assessment procedure primarily concerned with the well-being of the society rather than the individual. Those deemed to be sufficiently susceptible to violent or antisocial conduct must be separated from those for whom firearms may be used as appropriate tools for defense against a dangerous world.

Drawing upon this confluence of neurobiological and criminological views of the citizen-subject, policy makers have charged clinicians and criminal justice professionals with the task of managing social risk by preventing future crimes. The temporal direction of these new policies is noteworthy. Traditionally, criminal statutes are retrospective/forensic in orientation (i.e., the state is burdened to prove that an individual has already committed an offense). Proposals focused on risk assessment and preventative intervention are, by contrast, prospective—seeking to foresee and mitigate the risk of future harms. The NY SAFE Act, for instance, criminalizes the possession of a gun by those deemed to be susceptible to violence despite the fact that they have not been convicted or even accused of any specific crime. This focus on “pre-crime” may be part of a broader turn in penology suggesting a new “logic for the conduct of conduct: not so much ‘discipline and punish,’ but ‘screen and intervene’” (Rose, 2010, p. 97; Zedner, 2007).

In sum, rather than limit the manufacturing and distribution of dangerous weapons, these proposals have sought to limit the ability of dangerous individuals to own weapons—a turn from gun control to “people control” (Swanson, 2013). Lawmakers thus help to cultivate fear of a new kind of monster, whose latent potential for violence must be discovered and made legible. Perhaps not surprisingly, this is an exceedingly profitable response to the phenomenon of mass violence—stimulating public and private investment in technologies designed to provide the feeling of security in an insecure world. Weapons manufacturers, private security firms, and the military/police complex, along with the psychotherapeutic and pharmaceutical industries all benefit from this turn toward biological culpability and risk management. Furthermore, the psychological turn dematerializes the firearm at the very moment when its materiality is most vivid. Mass murders and other fatal gun crimes draw attention to the “thingliness” of violence: Media texts offer detailed descriptions of the scene, the make and number of weapons, bullet counts, and details about the ruined flesh of the wounded and the dead. The mental health turn, though, helps obscure this “materiality/thingness of the firearm, as an element generating new economies, complex sets of social relations, embodiment, wealth, and poverty” (Springwood, 2007, p. 3). The locus of lethal violence shifts from the weapon to the interior world of the potential violent criminal. By this rationale, guns are not a problem. They are a symbolic solution, stoking fantasies of defense and protection against ever intrusive dangerous others. And once a public accepts the narrative of biological culpability, there is little room for other ways of describing potential motives for gun violence—such acts can only be the “senseless” acts of monsters. The mental health turn thus threatens to foreclose accounts of gun violence that focus on the manufacture, distribution, and sale of firearms; the increased lethality of specific weapons; the political influence of special interests groups; and a host of other material and political-economic analyses of the deaths of the 80 or more people per day, everyday, who are killed by a gun in America.