A combination of biological, familial, and social influences defines whether a mentally disordered individual may commit a crime. Biologically, genetics may be the cause of criminal behaviors, and criminality factors, such as mental disorders or personality, are heritable in 40-60% of cases (Ling, Umbach, & Raine, 2019). Another biological cause of antisocial behavior is the symptoms of disorders, for example, hallucinations or delusions (Peterson & Heinz, 2016).
Frequently, mentally ill people commit offenses not because of direct influences of mental disease but because of poverty, a lack of social support, or substance abuse, which are social factors (Peterson & Heinz, 2016). The family may also contribute to antisocial behavior if they do not understand a mentally disordered relative or fail to recognize the symptoms of mental illness (Peterson & Heinz, 2016). Thus, psychiatric disorders alone do not define the likelihood of criminal behaviors in psychiatric patients.
Further, the case of the Sandy Hook school shooting will be analyzed. The shooter was Adam Lanza, who killed “20 first-graders, six educators and himself” on 14 December 2012 (CBS News, 2018, para. 3). The published writings of Lanza reveal possible reasons for his crime. The most likely cause was his fascination with mass murder. He made up a large spreadsheet containing details of mass killings that had happened since 1786 (Kovner & Altimari, 2018).
Perhaps, Lanza’s mission behind his crime was to find his place among murderers. Another reason is his loneliness, due to which he felt no empathy with other people, and they stopped being real for him (Kovner & Altimari, 2018). He once wrote, “I incessantly have nothing other than scorn for humanity” (as cited in Kovner & Altimari, 2018, para. 57). By the time of the shooting, Lanza had developed obsessive-compulsive disorder with sensory defensiveness (Kovner & Altimari, 2018). Hence, Lanza’s contempt for people and mental illness led him to commit the massacre.
The Connecticut State Police was the first responder to this incident. During their response, the crime scene was full of people, which made it difficult for police officers to do their work and exposed the staff to the terrifying picture (CBS News, 2018).
Although police officers were compassionate while notifying relatives of victims, they made some mistakes (CBS News, 2018). After the shooting, the family liaison program was established, and although it was helpful, victims’ families felt that police officers were not trained for that kind of work (CBS News, 2018). Thus, law enforcement responded to the accident effectively, but some improvements were possible. The outcome would have been better if the number of authorized officials at the crime scene had been limited, and police officers had been trained to communicate with victims’ families correctly.
Although mental diseases do not always determine antisocial behavior, mass shootings are often committed by mentally ill people. Therefore, such individuals should be prohibited from possessing guns of any kind. So far, the U.S. has not enacted enough laws to ensure that psychiatric patients do not carry firearms (Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence [GLC], n.d.). In 2008, the Supreme Court heard the case of Heller v. District of Columbia and decided that the Second Amendment allowed for having guns at home for self-defense (GLC, 2019).
That case applied only at the federal level, so in 2010, as a result of Chicago v. McDonald, the Second Amendment began to apply at the state and local levels (GLC, 2019). Nevertheless, the Court pointed out that the right to possess guns was not unbounded (GLC, 2019). It means that states can pass laws that will restrict the right to have firearms for particular people.
Consequently, lawmakers can legally forbid carrying guns for individuals with psychiatric disorders based on the Court’s comments that this right is not unlimited. Furthermore, they can support the need for restrictive laws by the Fourteenth Amendment that protects U.S. citizens’ rights. Giving guns to mentally ill people means endangering other citizens. Since one of the rights is the right to security, laws forbidding psychiatric patients to possess guns could be considered protective and, therefore, constitutional.
References
CBS News. (2018). Long-awaited review on Sandy Hook police response released. Web.
Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. (2019). The Supreme Court & the Second Amendment. Web.
Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. (n.d.). Commonsense solutions: How state laws can reduce gun deaths associated with mental illness. Web.
Kovner, J., & Altimari, D. (2018). Courant exclusive: More than 1,000 pages of documents reveal Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza’s dark descent into depravity. Web.
Ling, S., Umbach, R., & Raine, A. (2019). Biological explanations of criminal behavior. Psychology, Crime & Law, 25(6), 626-640.
Peterson, J., & Heinz, K. (2016). Understanding offenders with serious mental illness in the criminal justice system. Mitchell Hamline Law Review, 42(2), 537-563.