As soon as a mass shooting occurs, people suspect that the shooter may have been mentally ill.
This belief about violence and mental illness comes largely from the media.
I’m looking at newspaper headlines since 1975. Examples are Former mental patient kills 3 outside store; Mental patient hurts boy, officer on plane; Mental patient killed, hostages freed; Ex-mental patient kills two neighbors.
Here’s the problem. Headlines never say “Non-mental patient patient kills………… But shootings and killings happen much more frequently and illustrate that more people who don’t have a history of mental illness are dangerous. This fact has been born out by repeated research studies. As a 1980 headline in the Miami Herald declared, there’s a distinction between behavior that is sick and behavior that is sickening or evil. Most violent behavior is the latter.