Not all antisocial, violent people are mentally ill. The vast majority of mentally ill people are not antisocial or violent. It’s the guns

— David Frum (@davidfrum) August 8, 2019

This is obvious, but I wanted to expand on this thought - the Right always brings up ‘mental illness’ as a dodge whenever there’s another shooting, but ‘mental illness’ is an umbrella term that covers everything from catatonic, unresponsive patients, to unhinged folks screaming in the street, to psychopaths like Ted Bundy, to folks who suffer occasional bouts of moderate anxiety. It’s not just a spectrum on a single axis. It’s more like a universe of spectra along different axes.

Also, IIRC, most mass shooters never sought help, were never formally diagnosed, and certainly were never determined to be ‘a danger to self or others’ by any professional. So, how do you write a law, or form a policy that would keep guns out of the hands of people who generally are only posthumously diagnosed? And what about the millions and millions who are ‘mentally ill’ by one definition or another, but are no danger to anyone?