Most immediately, it draws attention to the fact that determining mental illness is a nebulous and often subjective practice. Included in that analysis is consideration of whether the alleged perpetrators had demonstrated a history of mental illness. Suddenly, the largest group is the one in which the perpetrator showed unclear signs of mental illness but who obtained firearms legally. Investigators think he had an undiagnosed mental illness, in part, ABC News reported, because “he had real difficulty interacting with people. But that’s overly neat and reliant on a definition of “mental illness” that simply doesn’t work as a preventive measure.

Source: Washington Post February 22, 2018 15:41 UTC