“This is a mental health problem at the highest level,” said President Donald Trump while in Japan on Monday, the day after a gunman killed at least 26 people in a rural Texas church.
Mentally ill individuals are often villainized and become the political scapegoat following mass shootings, even though people with severe mental illness are 10 times more likely to be victims rather than perpetrators of violence.
Research aside, Trump and the Republican party have long espoused that mass shootings should be addressed strictly as a mental health problem. But if Trump truly believed this, then why did he roll back a regulation that sought to impede people with severe mental illness from purchasing guns?
The Obama-era regulation would have required the Social Security Administration to report any beneficiaries with psychiatric disabilities to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The National Rifle Association (NRA) opposed the rule.
Trump quietly signed H.J. Res 40 into law in February, months before the regulation was scheduled to take effect. “News that the president signed the bill was tucked at the bottom of a White House email alerting press to other legislation signed by the president,” reported NBC News.
Trump only acknowledged the measure as part of a host of bills that nullified “unnecessary” regulations imposed by his predecessor. In a statement, the White House further defended its decision by saying:
“The rule would prevent some Americans with disabilities from purchasing or possessing firearms based on their decision to seek Social Security benefits. Applications of this rule could endanger the Second Amendment rights of law abiding citizens.”
The remarks from February stand in stark contrast to Trump’s Monday statement, where he described the Texas shooter as a “deranged individual.” In short, Trump says this is a mental health problem, but his actions suggest otherwise.
It’s unlikely that the Obama-era regulation would have stopped the Texas shooter (it’s laughably easy to get a gun in Texas). Additionally, the measure was largely characterized as misguided by some public health professionals and civil rights groups. Furthermore, strictly addressing these shootings as a mental health problem will do nothing to stop future tragedies or gun violence more broadly. According to 2015 epidemiological research, “even if we could completely eliminate mental illness as a violence risk factor, the population prevalence of violent acts toward others would go down by less than 4%.”
Trump is taking cues from Republican lawmakers, who routinely cite mental illness as the cause of mass shootings and have long blocked any meaningful gun control legislation at the urging of the NRA, which maintains strong influence over the party.
Following last month’s deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, when a man opened fire at a Las Vegas concert killing 59 people, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said “mental health reform is a critical ingredient” to preventing these atrocities. His comments from three weeks ago are nearly identical to ones he made in 2015, after an gunman killed at least 14 people in San Bernardino, California.
While the White House and many in Congress ardently advocate for improved mental health care whenever there’s a mass shooting, they’ve actively undermined legislation that helps this community receive care. The GOP’s repeated efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would have also rolled back mental health care, for instance.
Under the ACA, all health plans must cover behavioral health treatment, mental and behavior health inpatient services, and substance abuse. This is known as the essential health benefits provision — a provision that Trump recently scaled back. Additionally, the ACA extended the reach of the 2008 Mental Health Parity Act, which demanded that insurance companies provide mental health benefits that were comparable to medical or surgical benefits.
This post has been updated to include a note that many health professionals and civil rights groups opposed the Obama-era regulation. An earlier version of this article inaccurately stated Speaker Ryan represented Ohio. He represents Wisconsin’s First District. We regret the error.