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Objects in the Media Are Often Smaller Than They Appear

After yesterday’s post on the Washington Navy Yard massacre fueling the stigma around mental illness, I got the usual assortment of feedback after that post published.

If you’re for gun control, you told me I was minimizing the reality of gun violence by suggesting more gun control laws will accomplish nothing. Those of you who don’t see this as a gun control issue took me to task for picking on NRA Chief Wayne LaPierre for suggesting the mentally ill be committed.

Mood music:

One good friend commented, “What he REALLY said was ‘that the nation needs to do more to lock up mentally ill people who are dangerous.’ He did not make a sweeping generalization about the mentally ill, just the subset that are dangerous.”

Truth be told, I agree with a lot of things LaPierre said on Meet the Press. The mental healthcare system is broken, especially in the schools. I also agree that it takes good guys with guns to stop bad guys with guns and that security personnel at military facilities need to be better armed.

My main criticism here is with the media, which sliced and diced his words to make more dramatic headlines suggesting people are homicidal maniacs if they are mentally ill.

Wife and OCD Diaries editor Erin Brenner said of the phenomena, “Shocking things, like mass murders and mentally unstable people committing murder, get over-reported so that we think there’s an epidemic.” I agree.

I’ve been a journalist for most of my career and will believe in freedom of the press until my dying breath. But we also have the freedom to ignore the press. In my case, I try to find the more objective news sources and avoid the loud, obnoxious networks that are guilty of over-hyping the causes and effects of national and global tragedies.

Perversely, the hyperbolic drama of the mainstream media is contributing to the mental illness of many. When I was at my worst, I watched the news nonstop. If there was a shooting in London or LA, it may as well have been right outside my bedroom window, because in my sickness, that’s how it felt. The music and graphics TV news used magnified the feeling exponentially.

Is there a mental illness epidemic? Yes, but there always has been. Depression and mental disorders have been woven deep into the fabric of humanity since the beginning. But people are much more open about it than they were 20-plus years ago.

You could say that’s good, because a society more open about mental illness is more capable of devising remedies. Or, through the filter of mainstream media, you could say it’s bad; that recent shootings were the handiwork of mentally sick people. Therefore, there’s a mental illness epidemic, and if a depressed soul acquires a firearm, watch out. The truth is probably more of the former than the latter.

Just remember: Objects in the media are often smaller than they appear.

Breaking news alert

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Navy Yard Shootings: The Stigmatizer’s Wet Dream

With last week’s terrible Washington Navy Yard murders, politicians are preaching the importance of better mental health services. In the process, stigma building has reached disturbing heights.

Mood music:

This massacre, like Sandy Hook and Aurora, Colorado, before it, was perpetrated by a troubled soul with some degree of mental illness. Navy Yard killer Aaron Alexis had told authorities weeks before that he was hearing voices in his head. Aurora shooter James Holmes had colored his hair red and was dressed head to toe in black tactical gear when he murdered people. After he was arrested, he told police he was The Joker. Adam Lanza had a history of deep mental illness when he grabbed his mother’s guns, killed her and headed to Sandy Hook Elementary School.

As a result, the media is sinking its teeth into the crazy factor, the notion that if you’re mentally imbalanced, you might be the next mass murderer. The NRA, in an effort to deflect renewed calls for tougher gun control, suggests the problem is that too many homicidal maniacs are running loose. NRA Chief Wayne LaPierre went as far as suggesting more of the mentally ill need to be committed.

What LaPierre and others are saying is “If someone is mentally ill, they are a potential threat to public safety.”

Whether they they really believe that or not is debatable. It’s true that recent shooters were deeply disturbed emotionally and mentally. But the words LaPierre chose paints everyone with mental illness as a dangerous lunatic and they build an undeserved stigma.

My struggles with mental illness are well established. It’s the reason I started this blog. At my lowest lows, I never considered picking up a rifle and wiping out a school. I know many, many people who have struggles similar to mine. I don’t know of a violent soul among them. They include business leaders, cops, doctors, friends and family.

Suggesting these tragedies are about the need to register mentally ill citizens in a database and commit them if necessary is as stupid as suggesting that tougher gun control laws will prevent more mass shootings. It hasn’t worked in the past, and it won’t work now.

Recent shootings didn’t happen because we have an epidemic of crazies on the street. I don’t even think weak gun laws are to blame. They happened because somewhere in the sequence of events, someone didn’t do what they were supposed to do.

Lanza’s mother kept a lot of guns around the house, even though she knew how disturbed her son was. She could have kept the weapons locked up and out of sight. Instead, they were easily accessible at the moment her son snapped.

Alexis had called police a week before the shootings and told them he heard voices he feared were “sending vibrations through his body” and were out to hurt him. Police questioned him, and then notified the Navy police. Naval police sat on the information, and Alexis held on to his security clearance, ability to carry a weapon and access to the Washington Navy Yard.

Along the way, people with the authority failed to follow the most basic of security protocols.

Maybe it’s time to stop debating whether the problem is too many guns and too many crazies, and demand those responsible for security do their jobs better.

DC Shooting Suspect

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Comparing Politicians to Hitler Is Stupid

The debate over firearms is bringing out extreme levels of stupidity in people. Right-wingers who think gun control means taking away everyone’s right to bear arms are comparing President Obama to Adolf Hitler. Left-wingers did the same to President Bush over his war policies.

It’s the lowest common denominator; the dumbest of the dumb.

Mood music:

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On the Drudge Report, Obama’s picture was lumped in with images of Hitler and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin next to a story about Vice President Biden’s suggestion that Obama will target guns through an executive order. The Hitler comparisons have actually been going on since Obama’s administration began four years ago:

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When George W. Bush was in the Oval Office and debate raged over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the left put out the same suggestions:

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So if you disagree with the president, Republican or Democrat, it’s OK to compare them to a man who sent millions of innocent people to the gas chamber. Wanting to put controls on the type of weapon American citizens can access is suddenly on par with genocide. The logic seems to be that if Obama “takes away” your guns, he is going to invade a bunch of countries next.

I can’t say that I haven’t used the same tactics. Back during the first Gulf War, I used a writing assignment in my college poetry class to compare the first President Bush to Hitler. My professor, who was a lot further to the left than I was at the time, suggested in red marker that I was taking things too far.

When we get angry with our leaders, this is what happens. We go to the extreme.

Frankly, I think both sides oversimplify things. In moments of anger, we turn off the part of the brain that controls reason.

I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life when my anger turned off that switch. I made a lot of extreme statements about our political leaders. But somewhere along the way, I made an effort to grow up and not let my fear and anger override my reason.

I suggest the folks comparing Obama to Hitler do the same.