Then Is It About Mental Illness?

So, if it’s not about the guns, then what is it about?

Now that a few days have passed since the horrific incidents last week, the good news is that the focus isn’t just on gun control anymore, but is expanding to the state of mental illness and how we deal with it, the money-driven pharmaceutical industry, and cultural phenomena that may contribute to such incidents occurring (e.g., proliferation of violent video games & movies desensitizing us, especially as it pertains to children).

However, what still doesn’t seem to have been addressed — except as it’s been briefly touched upon here — is facing the fact that some people are born with brains that will ultimately lead to committing horrendous acts of destruction no matter how they’re raised, unless & until we acknowledge that psychopathy and similar personality disorders exist and that those thusly disordered are not a product of upbringing or society, but of biology.  In fact, evidence is mounting that brains of psychopaths are structurally different from those of non-psychopaths.  How it manifests itself may be somewhat malleable, but whether or not it will manifest is absolutely undeniable.  This must be recognized, and we need to learn how to protect ourselves from it and those afflicted by it.

It's Not About Guns

Yes, it should certainly be a stringent process to procure a firearm.  However, guns aren’t the problem here.  The problem is that humankind is collectively oblivious to some basic tenets of human nature.  Unless & until we recognize the reality of “The Bad Seed”, we will continue to suffer horrific acts of malicious violence and other life-destroying deeds.

Most of us believe that humans are born good, and that some among us are made bad.  When someone does something as inconceivable as this, we unrelentingly search for something in the background of the perpetrator to explain it, typically blaming upbringing and/or some traumatic or triggering event.

In fact, some psychopaths or similarly personality disordered people on the psychopathy spectrum may well have been influenced by child abuse.  Since it is likely that those conditions are inherited, it is as likely that sometimes those on the spectrum raise children on the spectrum, so some will have been abused to some degree.  However, it is just as likely that some were raised by a parent who was merely a carrier, but not thusly afflicted, and who suffered no such abuse.

Whether or not someone on the spectrum was a recipient of abuse by a parent on the spectrum, s/he is still on the spectrum, and will behave in ways indicative of its inherent glibness, arrogance, and lack of empathy & conscience.  It is a neurological disorder for which there is currently no cure, nor even proven treatment to make those afflicted less dangerous to the rest of us.  Furthermore, even if or when such a “cure” were to be discovered, there’s the added conundrum unique to this disorder of motivation to seek or allow it by the disordered.  Afterall, s/he doesn’t know what s/he’s missing by lacking ability to love and feel empathy, so why would s/he want to be cured?  Indeed, s/he sees those of us who do feel the emotions of which s/he’s incapable as contemptible, a source of amusement, and to be used for their feelings.

This is not to say that the perpetrator in Connecticut on December 14^th was anywhere on the psychopathy spectrum, although, as an educated layperson on the subject, I highly suspect so.  It is to say that chances are excellent that psychopathy was involved somehow in his life, as even those who are not psychopathic but who commit heinous acts are typically the victims of them, sometimes even unwitting accomplices.

Just as a talking point:  How to Stop a Massacre