Fifty-nine people are dead from the worst mass shooting in recent U.S. history. As happened after Omar Mateen killed 49 people at a nightclub with a gun, or after Dylann Roof killed nine African Americans with a gun, or after Adam Lanza killed 26 children and teachers with a gun, or after James Holmes killed 12 moviegoers with a gun, the call for action from some policy makers has centered on one commonality between these events: All of the killers had brains.
“Mental-health reform is the critical ingredient to making sure that we can try and prevent some of these things that have happened in the past,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday in response to reporter questions about mass shooters. (President Obama also proposed better mental-health care last year, when recalling the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.)
It’s worth noting that investigators and reporters have so far uncovered no psychiatric diagnoses in the background of the Las Vegas suspect, Stephen Paddock. His brother, Eric Paddock, has said to reporters that Stephen had “not a bit” of mental-illness history. But even if he did, better treatment access might not have deterred him.
[For more on this story by Olga Khazan , go to https://www.theatlantic.com/he...ss-shootings/541965/]
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