New study finds need to better address connection between gun violence, mental health

<p>Allison Robertson, an assistant professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences, is one of the authors of a recent study that&nbsp;analyzed legal restrictions on firearm sales.</p>

Allison Robertson, an assistant professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences, is one of the authors of a recent study that analyzed legal restrictions on firearm sales.

A recent Duke study argues for better enforcement of existing gun control laws and better criteria to identify individuals at risk for gun violence. 

Led by Jeffrey Swanson, a professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, the study examined the efficacy of legal restrictions on firearm sales. It also analyzed gun-related suicides and violent crimes among more than 80,000 adults diagnosed with mental illness in two Florida counties. 

“Our goal was to determine if and to what extent mental health disqualifications affected rates of suicide or gun violence against others among this population,” wrote Allison Robertson, an assistant professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences and an author of the study, in an email.

Results showed that individuals not legally permitted to own guns were involved in 62 percent of violent gun crime arrests and 28 percent of gun-related suicides. Researchers said this shows the need for better enforcement of existing gun laws. 

Conversely, Robertson explained, 38 percent of violent gun crime arrests and 72 percent of gun-related suicides involved people who were legally permitted to own guns. This indicates the need for better methods of identifying high-risk individuals, researchers noted.

"This suggests that these criteria do still miss many individuals who are at high risk of harming others with a gun," Robertson wrote. 

Robertson recognized that prior legislation such as the National Instant Criminal Background Check System Improvement Amendments Act of 2007—which requires federal firearm sellers to run potential buyers through a database—appeared to have positive effects.  However, she also continued to emphasize the importance of better enforcement.

“Reporting of mental health adjudications to NICS appears to have helped reduce violent crime among individuals who are disqualified,” she wrote. “[But] we need to do a better job of removing existing guns from people once they have become disqualified.”

One policy the study suggested is risk-based gun removal laws, which require gun removal if an individual has become high-risk. For example, Connecticut law requires individuals subject to a restraining order to give up their firearms. California has a similar law. 

A diagnosis of mental illness alone is not strongly linked to interpersonal violence, the study concluded. However, those diagnosed with mental illness are often categorically excluded in current firearm laws.

"The idea with risk-based rather than categorical-exclusion policies is to try to identify people during times of high risk, rather than excluding entire groups of people, most of whom do not pose any danger to themselves or others," Robertson wrote. 

Robertson explained that both North Carolina and Florida have the same federal criteria for mental health exclusions and that both states have the problem of over-inclusiveness. That is, she wrote, disqualifying too many people whose actual risk for violence is low. 

The same goes for under-inclusiveness, which is failing to capture the people who are at high risk for violence, she noted.

“North Carolina could potentially benefit from adopting policy approaches that are more risk-based in nature rather than strictly broad categorical exclusions from gun possession,” she wrote.

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