In the wake of a mass shooting, the main question on everyone’s mind is “Why?” and the answer invariably takes the form of ideological motivation or mental illness. To many, the process of determining which of these two drivers played a role in any particular attack is straightforward and factual. However, when scrutinized, the line that separates these two answers begins to blur which prompts an alarming observation about the apparent widespread politicization of mental illness in cases of mass killings.
Consider the popular characterization of Sayfullo Habibullaevich Saipov, the Uzbekistani immigrant who murdered eight people by ramming them with a rental truck. When confronted by police, Saipov emerged from the truck brandishing a paintball gun yelling "Allahu Akbar.” A search of the crime scene discovered notes written by Saipov that indicated an ideological affiliation with ISIS and an ISIS flag. Despite reports of his being “troubled,” erratically temperamental, and incapable of holding a stable job, many viewed Saipov’s attack as purely ideologically motivated.
Why didn’t people instead conclude Saipov’s suffered from mental illness? He fathered three children with his wife who he would take to school himself and generously shared home cooked meals with his elderly neighbor, yet frequently lost jobs due to an inability to control his emotions. Ideology clearly contributed to the attack’s occurrence, but does this exclude the possibility that Saipov suffered from mental illness? It is often thought that the degree to which a perpetrator espouses a radical ideology inversely relates to the likelihood he suffers from a mental illness, but surely someone can possess a radical ideology and suffer from a mental illness simultaneously.
Contrast the public perspective of Saipoiv with that of Stephen Paddock, the white retiree responsible for the deadliest mass shooting in recent US history. Paddock murdered 58 people by firing on a group of concert-goers from a hotel room before committing suicide. He smuggled 23 guns into the hotel and installed cameras to monitor police activity. The investigation produced no evidence to suggest Paddock possessed any ideological motivation which spurred many to conclude he suffered from mental illness. When Paddock's unearthed 2013 court deposition transcript revealed he played an exorbitant amount of video poker, dressed plainly despite his wealth, and occasionally took Valium for anxiety, many regarded this as proof of his unstable mental condition.
However, there is just as much, if not arguably less, evidence for the claim that Paddock suffered from a mental illness than that Saipov did. Paddock’s shooting bears many of the identifiers of an ideologically motivated attack like premeditation, efforts to maximize the number of casualties, targeting a densely populated event, etc. Certainly it is possible, even plausible, that an individual capable formulating and executing a plan like Paddock’s could consciously conceal his affiliations. And if not for the presupposition of mental illness, Paddock’s habits would merely expose a bit of eccentricity on his behalf. The point is that there is insufficient evidence to definitively claim a shooter was driven by mental illness or ideology, one must simply assume it.
Those who wish to prevent the media and public from considering the possibility that their own ideology may have influenced a mass shooter’s psychology exploit this fundamental yet obscured inadequacy in the analysis of shooters’ motives. These people are motivated to use mental illness as a scapegoat to deflect further investigation and suspicion of their views in cases where contradicting ideologies cannot easily be blamed. For example, in the wake of the Charleston Church Shooting where a white supremacist murdered nine black churchgoers, many Republicans quickly blamed mental illness as opposed to far right Neo-Nazism. The perpetrator affiliated himself with anti-black hate groups, posted pictures of himself online with the number “88” which stands “Heil Hitler,” and authored a manifesto in which he explicitly declared his belief that black people should be eradicated. Roof’s ideological connection with Neo-Nazism was just as strong as Saipov’s connection with radical jihadism, yet Republicans only blamed ideology in Saipov’s case in fear that their own ideology, which shares many more similarities with Neo-Nazism than radical jihadism, may be cast in the spotlight.
In order to prevent the exploitation of mental illness in this way, people need to ask themselves whether or not assuming a mass shooter’s motivation was driven by ideology or mental illness in any particular case supports their own ideological positions and also start with what can be known by way of hard evidence rather than a default assumption based on the shooter’s profile. And perhaps most importantly, Politicians need to be held accountable for forwarding politically biased claims about perpetrators’ motives in mass shooting cases as this practice not only furthers the false and harmful social stigmas surrounding mental illness, but also prevents crucial public conversation about the real underlying issues contributing to these attacks and effectively weakens efforts to solve them.