Public Mass Murderers and Federal Mental Health Background Checks

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12102
• Published date: 01 April 2018
• Date: 01 April 2018

Public Mass Murderers and Federal Mental Health

Background Checks

JAMES SILVER , WILLIAM FISHER, and JOHN HORGAN

The litany of public mass murders, from Aurora, Newtown, Charleston, Las Vegas, and

Parkland to less well-known incidents that occur yearly, has focused national attention on

federally mandated mental health background checks of prospective gun purchasers. The call

has been to put more gun-disqualifying mental health records into the National Instant Criminal

Background Check System database to prevent “deranged” murderers from buying guns and

running amok. Our study examines whether increasing the robustness of the mental health

background database will likely prevent potential public mass murderers from buying guns.

Building on research that shows that serious mental illness contributes little to the risk of

interpersonal violence and, further, that few persons with serious mental illness acquire gun-

disqualifying mental health records, we examine whether public mass murderers are among the

small percentage of those with serious mental illness who do have gun-disqualifying mental

health records. Using a large sample of 106 US offenders who used a firearm to commit a public

mass murder from 1990 to 2014, we find that half of the offenders had a history of mental illness

or mental health treatment but that less than 5 percent had gun-disqualifying mental health

records. Implications of these findings and recommendations for further research are discussed.

I. INTRODUCTION

The litany of public mass murders, from Aurora, Newtown, Charleston, Las Vegas, and

Parkland to less well-known incidents that occur yearly, has generated both controversy

as well as intense debate on proposed solutions. These high-profile incidents attract sub-

stantial media interest and appear to be the type of “signal crimes” that cause changes in

public perceptions about shared safety based on their prospective dimension—they sug-

gest a likelihood of dangerous behavior in common spaces and indicate to citizens across

the country the need for greater law enforcement and governmental control (Bottoms

2009; Innes 2004a, 2004b). A recent Congressional Research Service report on mass mur-

ders with firearms notes that “mass shootings in public places have dominated the

national dialogue about gun violence” (Krouse and Richardson 2015, 9) and that these

events “typically renew calls for passage of gun control legislation” (ibid., 3). Perhaps in

part because a recent poll showed that 63 percent of adults in the United States see mass

shootings as a mental health issue (Tyson 2015), the response of lawmakers has been to

propose that more gun-disqualifying mental health records be entered into the national

This research is supported by Award No. 2013-ZA-BX-0002, awarded by the National Institute of Justice,

Office of Justice Programs, US Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommenda-

tions expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department

of Justice.

Address correspondence to: James Silver, Worcester State University, 486 Chandler Street, Worcester, MA

01602, USA. Telephone: (508) 736-7419; E-mail: jsilver@worcester.edu.

LAW & POLICY, Vol. 40, No. 2, April 2018 ISSN 0265-8240

V

C2018 The Authors

Law & Policy V

C2018 The University of Denver/Colorado Seminary

doi: 10.1111/lapo.12102