Consider the Source

This Internet meme appeared January 17th on a facebook page called Tea Party Stand Up, which describes itself as a "NOPC Radio Free Speech Tea Party Republican movement".

Apparently one can listen to the group's program live on Blog Talk Radio Saturdays at 10 pm. EST.

The group's stated mission is "To save America one person at a time!"

Since January 17th, 444 people have 'liked'  this meme and it has been 'shared' 481 times. 

Although I was skeptical of the information presented, I was intimidated by the thought of trying to debunk it.  

The creator of the meme did not feel it necessary to provide an attribution or cite sources for the  statistics, but I would.  It seemed possible that I would invest several hours of research and not be able to offer a credible response, so I moved on.  

But the boldness of this assertion kept niggling at me and I wound up doing the work anyway.

I believe the statement comes from this article by John Fund  which appeared in the National Review Online on December 16, 2012, just two days after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The National Review bills itself as offering "Conservative commentary on American politics, news and culture."  It was founded in 1955 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

Fund's article is entitled, "The Facts about Mass Shootings" with a tag line of "It's time to address mental health and gun-free zones." 

The main thrust of the article is summarized in this paragraph: 

"Almost all of the public-policy discussion about Newtown has focused on a debate over the need for more gun control. In reality, gun control in a country that already has 200 million privately owned firearms is likely to do little to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals. We would be better off debating two taboo subjects — the laws that make it difficult to control people with mental illness and the growing body of evidence that “gun-free” zones, which ban the carrying of firearms by law-abiding individuals, don’t work." 

In that article, Fund offers statistics collected from various sources to support his assertions. 

For instance, he cites a study by Mother Jones magazine, as having " . . . found that at least 38 of the 61 mass shooters in the past three decades “displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings.”  Fund didn't provide a link to the study, or even provide the name the study, which meant I had to locate it myself, but I think he means this one, which offers an interesting interactive map, and does reports a statistic called "Prior Signs of Possible Mental Illness."  

To support his assertion that "gun-free zones" are counter-productive, Fund references a 1999 study by John Lott and William Landes as having found that " . . a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools."  

Apparently John Fund spoke with John Lott after the Newtown shooting.  He quotes Lott as saying, “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”

It was a relief to find the source of the statement so quickly.  I was envisioning having to analyze every  word of this rather convoluted sentence to determine whether or not it was factual, beginning with an attempt to determine the definition of the word "public" and continuing on with an investigation into the gun laws of every state in which there was a public shooting where 3 or more people died -- since 1950, no less.

In one respect, then, the debunking of the meme was complete.  The quote should have been presented like this:  

"With just one single exception . . . every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns." -- John Lott 

but otherwise, the meme's message seems to reflect the viewpoints of both John Lott and John Fund -- and apparently also the viewpoint of the folks at Tea Party Stand Up. 

But I became curious about John Lott and this 1999 study -- are they credible sources?   So I kept reading.  

What I learned is that John Lott is a controversial figure who has published several books, articles and studies. He maintains a prominent social media presence, including this blog.  Just yesterday, he appeared on Glenn Beck's radio show. 

The survey John Fund referenced is available in PDF format and makes for interesting reading.  The abstract states that the results of the study find that ". . . the only policy factor to have a consistently significant influence on multiple victim public shootings is the passage of concealed handgun laws." and "... explain(s) why public shootings are more sensitive than other violent crimes to concealed handguns, why the laws reduce the number of shootings and have an even greater effect on their severity."

Wikipedia's entry for John Lott is extensive and its neutrality has been questioned, but there were several legitimate references cited. A few hours' reading reveals that the credibility of Lott's work has often come into question.  It has been alleged that his work was funded by the NRA, that he created a fake persona to offer favorable reviews of his own work and that his statistical studies are "junk science".   

In John Fund's article (from which I believe this meme's quote was culled) he cited Mother Jones' statistical study relating to mass shootings, which I take to mean that he considers Mother Jones to be as reputable a source as John Lott.  Here's a Mother Jones article from 2003 which does a thorough job explaining the controversies surround Lott's credibility.  He's legitimacy as a scholar has long been in question.

Some might say, "where there's smoke there's fire."  Others might say that the reason Lott has so many detractors is that he speaks a truth which others seek to hide.

No wonder people like to form their opinions based on Internet memes and sound bites.  Choosing to investigate is a lot more work and a lot less cut-and-dried.

Let's All Talk About That

This Internet meme was found on the facebook page of  a group called, Being Liberal which describes itself as ". . . fighting to bring back the true meaning of the word into the mainstream language.  We are PROUD OF BEING LIBERAL!"  As we can easily see, the meme was created by Ola Betiku.

My daughter thought this meme would be a good candidate for debunking.

So let's see what's to be learned.

First, we need to decide who the "you" is in this meme.  Based on current events, I think it's safe to say that this question is primarily  directed at the National Rifle Association's, Wayne LaPierre, who testified recently on Capitol Hill.  There, among other things, he said:

"I think we can also agree that our mental health system is broken. We need to look at the full range of mental health issues, from early detection and treatment, to civil commitment laws, to privacy laws that needlessly prevent mental health records from being included in the National Instant [Criminal Background] Check System."

Although not cited, it seems likely that the $4.3 billion statistic used in the meme was collected from this article which appeared in The Huffington Post in September of 2012.

"Across the country, states facing severe financial shortfalls have cut at least $4.35 billion in public mental health spending from 2009 to 2012, according to the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD). It's the largest reduction in funding since de-institutionalization in the 1960s and '70s. In fiscal year 2012 alone, 31 states that gave their numbers to the association reported cutting more than $840 million."

I was unfamiliar with NASMHPD (pronounced NASH-bid), so I looked it up and learned that it is  a  nation-wide organization which has been around since 1959, representing members of the public mental health delivery system in all 50 states.  

Next I followed the link provided by The Huffington Post and read the NASMHPD report from which the statistics about the spending cuts were drawn.  The report is entitled,  "Proceedings on the State Budget Crisis and the Behavioral Health Treatment Gap: The Impact on Public Substance Abuse and Mental Health Treatment Systems" and was prepared in March of 2012,  summarizing a Congressional briefing.

So far, so good in terms of fact-checking.  If anything, the creator of the meme is guilty of reducing the spending cuts by half a billion dollars. 

Now for the most difficult task:  determining whether it is factual to credit the Republicans with those spending cuts.  

NASMHPD's report does not point figures at one political party or another, which is not surprising.  The organization operates under a cooperative agreement with the National Governor's Association, clearly a bipartisan group, and was briefing Congress.  Assigning blame would not have furthered its cause.

So where does the idea that Republicans are responsible for the cuts come from? 

I found this article in The Huffington Post earlier this week, which discusses the fact that some legislators are currently introducing or supporting programs aimed at addressing mental health issues, claiming these measures as being integral to the solution to our nation's problem with gun violence.  

The author of the article, Alana Horowitz, points out that some of these legislators have not been supportive of spending money on mental health programs in the past. She questions their motives for doing so now. 

Here is one example she offers:  

"Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R)  this week proposed nearly $29 million in state funding on mental health initiatives to combat gun violence.

"Just gun control alone may or may not address [violence]. If you've got someone with a severe mental illness that's causing them to take irrational actions like this, banning a certain type of firearms may just move them to some other weapon, some other explosive," he told CBS58 in December. "It really begs the question: what are we doing to address mental illness?"

But Wisconsin, under Walker, has slashed funding for mental health services in recent years. Between 2009 and 2011, Wisconsin cut $107.1 million in mental health funding. Walker did not respond to HuffPost's request for comment.

Like most of the lawmakers mentioned, Walker has received a high rating from the National Rifle Association."

Is it fair to assume that having a high rating from the NRA means that a legislator is influenced by the NRA?  

Is it fair to say that most of the legislators who have received endorsements from the NRA are Republicans?  

Here's an info-graphic from an article I found at ThinkProgress:

Not every state shown here is typically categorized as a "Red" state, but many are.  Does that mean Republicans are primarily responsible for the cuts?

On Capitol Hill there is a long on-going Mental Health Caucus.  Its stated purpose is to work ". . . in a bipartisan manner to inform, educate, and advocate to Members of Congress and the public on a variety of mental health issues . . ."  

Its membership is overwhelmingly Democratic.  Does that mean that most Republicans are indifferent to mental health issues and therefore might be more prone to cut funding for mental health programs?

And what Republicans wanting to repeal "Obamacare" and cuts to Medicaid funding for mental health programs?  If I attempt to try to make heads or tails of those debates in this forum, we'll be here til the cows come home.

So what's the verdict on this meme? 

It scores well in terms of the hard numbers it presents and it makes a persuasive case for the argument that the current flurry of enthusiastic support by Republicans might be disingenuous and might have a lot to do with the NRA.  

BUT. 

I wish this meme ended with something more than just an invitation to "all talk about" the cuts to mental health funding allegedly made by Republicans.  

What does mental illness have to do with gun violence?  Why are we all of a sudden talking about mental illness in relation to gun laws?

The NRA often tells us that most gun owners are law abiding citizens who do not commit acts of violence with their guns, and they are absolutely right to say so, because it is true.

 It is also true that most people who suffer from mental illness are not violent.

 In fact, according to the National Institute of Mental Health,  " . . . mental illness contributes very little to the overall rate of violence in the community. Most people with  SMI (severe mental illness) are not violent, and most violent acts are not committed by people with SMI. In fact, people with SMI are actually at higher risk of being victims of violence than perpetrators.. . .The most common form of violence associated with mental illness is not against others, but rather, against oneself."

Shootings such as the one which occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School throw a spotlight on a problem which plagues our society.  In sorrow and fear, people demand action.   As I've said here before, no one on any side of the argument believes that it is OK for innocent people to die in public places. 

I found this in a 2011 report from the National Alliance on Mental Illness:


"Unfortunately, the public often focuses on mental illness only when high visibility tragedies of the
magnitude of Tucson or Virginia Tech occur. However, less visible tragedies take place everyday
in our communities—suicides, homelessness, arrests, incarceration, school drop-out and more.
These personal tragedies also occur because of our failure to provide access to effective mental
health services and supports." 


I think we need to keep in mind that the 'less visible tragedies' are as important as those which splash across the national news media from time to time.

Discussion on this topic is too often reduced to polarizing, self-serving, vitriolic debate.  

Lots of pledges have been made in the aftermath of the tragedy at Newtown.  Many people are promising not to rest until changes are made.  Many say they will 'do anything' to keep such an event from happening again. 

What if everyone would start by acknowledging these two simple facts:  

1.  Because a person who commits a mass murderer is mentally ill, it does not naturally follow that all mentally ill people are mass murderers.

2.  Because a mass murder is committed with a gun, it does not naturally follow that all gun owners are mass murderers.

Or would that be too much to ask?