Just Facts Daily

Mental Illness & Mass Shootings

What portion of mass shooters who wantonly kill people in public settings have been previously diagnosed with a mental disorder or demonstrated signs of serious mental illness prior to the attack?

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A study published in 2020 by the journal Criminology & Public Policy found that 60% of mass shooters who wantonly killed people in public settings from 1976 to 2018 “had been either diagnosed with a mental disorder or demonstrated signs of serious mental illness prior to the attack.” In contrast, 5.6% of noninstitutionalized U.S. adults have a serious mental illness. The U.S. has one of the lowest rates of psychiatric institutionalization in the developed world, and from 1955 to around 2010, the portion of the U.S. population in public psychiatric hospitals declined by 96%. Per an academic book about “America’s Mental Illness Crisis,” “The magnitude of deinstitutionalization of the severely mentally ill qualifies it as one of the largest social experiments in American history.”

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Preventing School Shootings

Invoking the “horrific school shooting in Oregon,” NJ Governor Mikie Sherrill (D) claims that “children” are being “shot and killed in their classrooms” because Republicans won’t “act.”

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IN FACT, the Oregon school shooting was ended by a civilian with a concealed carry permit that Sherrill opposes, and Democrats reject a fact-based measure to protect students that Republicans support. Here are the specifics:

On Thursday, a 16-year-old boy used his mother’s pump-action shotgun to murder 3 children and a teacher at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon.
The shooting ended when a students’ father with a concealed carry permit used his gun to kill the perpetrator.
Democrats who unilaterally control states like New Jersey and New York made it illegal for the bulk of people to carry a gun in most public places by refusing to issue carry permits to anyone unless the government deemed they needed one.
In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (6–3) in the case of New York State Rifle & Pistol v. Bruen that the above-cited restrictions prevent “law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms,” while emphasizing, “We know of no other constitutional right that an individual may exercise only after demonstrating to government officers some special need.”
Sherrill called that ruling “dangerous and extreme,” and all of the Supreme Court justices appointed by Democrats dissented.
President Trump and 74% of Republicans support allowing selected and well-trained teachers to carry guns to protect schools, versus 27% of Democrats.
Contrary to the Washington Post and the New York Times Editorial Board, criminology research has shown that arming teachers would deter potential killers from attempting such shootings.
Contrary to PolitiFact and the NJ Star-Ledger Editorial Board, sufficient levels of armed security are an effective means of protecting students and are utilized in other places where people gather en masse.
Contrary to NBC News and CNN’s Anderson Cooper, people with recreational handgun experience shoot as accurately as police, and law-abiding civilians save far more lives with guns than are killed by criminals or lost in accidents.
Contrary to people platformed by CNN and The Guardian, the cost of equipping, properly training, and supervising enough armed teachers to protect every school in the nation would be 1% of current government spending on K–12 schools.
Contrary to Sherrill, who is a proponent of gun “safe storage measures,” the State of Oregon has guns storage laws that are stricter than a bill she sponsored in 2025.

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