*Readers should note that the bulk of this letter was written on the fourth of December, a day in which the writer was overcome with the need to say something.
Dr. Carson,
I distinctly remember the first time I learned your name. On the first Wednesday of every month at the Christian high school I attended, a lovable old priest would substitute for an Anatomy or English or Calculus teacher and lecture my class about moral goodness by using anecdotes and referencing current and previous world events in a way that stirred us all. It was in the 11th grade that this important religious figure in my life emphasized the importance of education, faith and self-determination through the fervent telling of a true story about a poor boy from a single mother household who became a neurosurgeon that successfully separated conjoined twins—a story about you. I was so inspired in hearing your account that learning of your presidential candidacy instilled within me hope for a more righteous America; however, as a citizen of this country, as a student, a daughter, a sister, a friend, a Christian and a human being, I have been gravely disillusioned by your responses to mass shootings in recent and current American history.
I write to you with closed eyes, furrowed brows and a 2,000 pound heart because your reactions to the urgent mass-shooting epidemic troubles and frustrates me deeply, and would shatter the spirit of my elderly high school mentor. I write to you as a first-year from the library of my university, a place (like the high school classroom in which I learned about you) I cannot enter without being tormented by my subconscious awareness that a gunman could be lurking through the crooked bookshelves. I write to you with fear, bewilderment and anger, but more powerfully, with the need to be seriously heard. A Chinese Proverb wisely asserts, “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.” This mindset must be applied to our country’s response to its horrifying and abnormal mass-shooting crisis.
I felt like the world desperately needed and personally begged me to turn 18 so that I could finally vote. Mr. Carson, it is under an inexplicable degree of moral and patriotic pressure that I live as an 18-year-old in this country. In the same breath, however, I feel powerful to be 18 because I know that so many passionate, well informed, newly registered voters, family members of those killed in mass shootings, individuals with mental illness and members of the human race stand with me in solidarity on the issue of mass shootings. In the 18th year of my life alone, according to Mass Shooting Tracker, there have been 352 mass shootings. A mass shooting is a situation in which at least four people are shot (not necessarily killed) at a time. In 336 days, there have been three hundred and 52 of these instances; there have been more mass shootings than there have been days. And it is only the third of December.
Dr. Carson, I understand the importance of prayer. I do. But I implore you to stop asking only for my thoughts and prayers in the aftermath of mass shootings. I applaud your apparent concern for the mentally ill, but I implore you to start talking about mental health not just in the aftermath of a mass shooting, to no longer stigmatize, make blanket claims, and use stereotyped and obscure terminology to talk about mental health, and to actually propose solutions to improve our mental health system. I implore you to consider the benefits of stricter gun laws and of comprehensive and universal background checks.
Just yesterday, on the second of December, 14 were killed and 17 wounded in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. The 352nd mass shooting of 2015 happened during a conference at the Inland Regional Center. I invite you to know that according to the center’s mission statement, it served to work “…with generic services to normalize the lives of people with developmental disabilities and their families by working to include them in the everyday routines and life rhythms of the community and by facilitating needed supports for them.” Those killed in this mass shooting were not the patients at this center; however, they very easily could have been. Before you use stigmatizing terminology to label the shooters (as terms like “crazies,” as you have done repeatedly in the past), please consider who could have been subject to the bullets.
You have said in a Fox News interview, “if they [Democrats] can show me how to stop these things [mass shootings], I’m willing to listen.” In this letter, I am going to provide you with multiple reasons to listen. In the same interview, you said, “we need a better way of categorizing, identifying, and treating these people.” Not once have you, nor Mike Huckabee (whose state received a D- in mental health by the National Alliance on Mental Illness) who said, “this is an issue of mental health,” nor Donald Trump who said, “You have people [“sickos”] that are mentally ill and they’re going to come through the cracks and they’re going to do things that people will not even believe are possible,” have ever actually proposed solutions to improve the lives of the mentally ill or what you see as a faulty mental health system. I find your approach to talking about mental health in the aftermath of mass shootings to be expedient, uninformed and unacceptable.
According to a study done by the Violence Policy Center, in 35.5 of gun killings in 2012, the victims were personally known to the shooter. This fact refutes the popular stereotype that you have fed into time and time again in the aftermath of mass shootings; making claims like, “It’s hard to imagine that you would shoot a bunch of people if you didn’t hate them. You don’t do that to people you love.” It is important for you to know that science and fact has proved otherwise. I believe that by making uniformed statements like this one, you are adding fuel to the fire of stigmatization of the mentally ill.
A study done by the American Journal of Psychiatry shows the results of an online survey given to the public to test the “effects of news media messages about mass shootings on attitudes toward persons with serious mental illness and public support for gun control policies.” The survey displayed three different news stories, the first describing a mass shooting executed by a severely mentally ill person, the second describing the same mass shooting and proposing stricter gun laws, and the third describing the same mass shooting and proposing a large-capacity magazines ban. The study concluded that the mass media’s coverage of mass shootings in their aftermaths almost always raises both negative attitudes toward the mentally ill and public support for stricter gun laws. In the same interview as mentioned above you wonder, “when do we get to the point that we have people who actually want to solve our problems rather than just politicize them?” It seems to me that you are politicizing the issue, because you and other Republican candidates (except for Chris Christie) seem to only promote this study’s conclusion about the mass media’s negative effects regarding mental health stigmatization. The public in this study called for stricter gun control laws in the aftermath of mass shootings, but you have rejected America’s cries.
Dr. Carson, you are both a doctor and a Christian; yet, in light of recent tragedies I have realized that you do not seem to be well versed in either mental health statistics or the ethics of gun safety. A recent study shows that less than 5 percent of the 120,000 gun-related deaths in America in the years between 2001-2010 “were perpetrated by people diagnosed with mental illness.” In the same study it was proven that those diagnosed with mental illness are responsible for only four percent of violence in the United States of America. “In this sense,” Metzl and MacLeish write in an American Public Health Association report, “persons with mental illness might well have more to fear from ‘us’ than we do from ‘them.’ And blaming persons with mental disorders for gun crime overlooks the threats posed to society by a much larger population—the sane (Metzl, et al).”
A reporter from Forbes Magazine has shone light on the fact that neither you, nor many other current presidential candidates, mention anything about mental health in your issues statements. This frustrates me deeply, because it seems that the only time you address issues of mental health is in the aftermath of a mass shooting, in a manner that John Oliver believes is to “veer the conversation away from gun control.” I have analyzed both present Republican and Democratic responses to mass shootings in America, and what I have discovered is this: both parties recognize mass shootings as a result of different issues, but both parties agree that solutions need to be made to bring an end to these shootings. Where the concession ends, however, is when a Democratic candidate like Hillary Clinton, who views the crisis of mass shootings as an issue of gun control, actually proposes tangible solutions to fix what she sees is the issue. For example, Clinton perceives mass shootings as an issue of gun control, so she proposes that our country needs stricter gun laws; she then formally makes public her plans to end things like the “Charleston loophole” and the three-day rule in background check procedures, supporting and defending commonsense legislations like the Brady Bill, which “instituted federal background checks on some gun sales.” Those on the right tend to perceive mass shootings as an issue arising from mental health, so you propose that we need a “better way” of finding and stopping these people, but unlike Clinton, never actually plan out a better way.
A reverend and editorial writer for the Huffington Post makes an interesting argument about those opposed to gun safety laws. She juxtaposes the NRA president Wayne LaPierre’s statement, “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” in a biblical context, stating, “I wonder how the Gospel story would go if Jesus had taught his disciples: ‘The only thing that stops a Roman solider with a sword is a Jewish revel with a sword.’ Dr. Carson, your resistance to the implementation of stricter gun laws in in line with the NRA’s fundamentally non-Christian values. I concede that the Second Amendment is extremely important, but I believe that feeling safe and protected in your own country is even more so; I believe that keeping innocent civilians alive matters above all. The facts are the facts: more guns leads to more crime.
Countries like Australia and England experience dramatically less instances of mass shootings; this is not so because these countries do not have bad people, mentally ill people, violent video-game playing people, or fatherless people. These countries simply have fewer guns. According to the political specialist Firmin DeBrabander, whose lecture on gun safety I attended at my university, the United States has approximately 270, 310, 000 guns in circulation. Whereas a country like Australia has approximately 20 guns per one hundred residents, the United States has a startling 88. It is also startling to know that 50 percent of theses firearms are owned by only thirteen percent of the population, meaning a small fraction of owners possesses the majority of guns in circulation. And that doesn’t scare you? Without comprehensive, universal background checks and with the faulty loopholes in the background check system, it has been made too easy for individuals like Charles Carl Roberts IV, James Holmes, Adam Lanza, Dylann Storm Roof, and Harper-Mercer to obtain guns.
The aforementioned names are the names of men who have pursued and executed acts of mass gun violence in the United States of America in past two decades. I vividly remember the first time I learned about a mass shooting in the United States. In two thousand and six, my fourth grade teacher told my class that a man by the name of Charles Carl Roberts IV killed five Amish schoolgirls after holding them hostage in their schoolhouse. My teacher told us that that the killer allowed the male students to leave the classroom, and emphasized the very real possibility of a tragedy like that occurring at any school, including ours. In retrospect, I am grateful that my teacher was so honest with me at such a young age although I was in a state of paralyzing fear.
I was just as disturbed to learn about the Aurora, Colorado mass shooting executed by James Holmes in two thousand and twelve. He murdered twelve and injured fifty-eight moviegoers at a premiere of The Dark Knight Rises. I could not stop checking over my shoulders the evening I went to go see the same movie with my father and uncle later that month. I was, once again, in a state of paralyzing fear. When Adam Lanza invoked worldwide devastation having massacred twenty first graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut later the same year, I found myself in a state of paralyzing fear.
But as I got older, as mass shootings got commoner, and as President Obama got more frustrated at what he called this “routine,” my paralyzing fear evolved into bewilderment, then transformed into anger, and as of the second of December, became pure determination. When I heard about the June seventeenth Charleston church shooting in which the radical white supremacist Dylann Storm Roof annihilated nine black worshippers after praying with them, I was intensely bewildered because I genuinely could not comprehend the hatred or the reason our country could let another mass act of gun violence occur. By the first of October, when Chris Harper-Mercer killed nine peers and one professor at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, I was infuriated by our apparent acceptance of there being no more hope left. But having learned of the year’s three hundred and fifteen second mass shooting the other day, I decided that I was no longer going to remain subject to living as an eighteen year old student in constant fear and anticipation for what could happen at my school, or my brothers’ schools, or my parents’ workplaces next.
Here are my solutions. Studies have shown that the establishment of universal background checks (thus making the process of obtaining firearms more exclusive and difficult) and increase of federal restrictions would significantly decrease the number of mass shootings in the U.S. States like Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Washington State and Oregon that have passed and strengthened their background check laws have learned from experience how important and necessary it is to have guns less accessible to potential killers and therefore less guns in circulation. These states, since the strengthening of their background check laws, have experienced a dramatic decrease in mass shootings.
The gay marriage movement’s strategy to gain legislation from state to state instead of nationwide all at once brought it success. I believe that by implementing comprehensive background check laws from state to state will be equally as successful in lowering instances of mass shootings. In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook tragedy, spokesman for the Republican governor Chris Christie stated that he “signed ten gun control bills into law,” provided his own provisions to “strengthen background checks” and was focused to “fix the cracks in our mental health system.” Christie has recognized the fact that guns are too easily accessible in the United States while also noting that those suffering from undiagnosed or diagnosed mental illnesses carry out a fraction of mass shootings. He is a step ahead, and as a newly registered voter, I appreciate his efforts to find common ground.
Dr. Carson, I believe you would make an empathetic president of the United States of America. I believe you hold values that are true and just, and that would improve this country’s current predominant focus on money and power. But I cannot stand by and watch another handful of peers across this nation die for no reason, and I cannot sit and listen to you and other Republican candidates ask for my thoughts and prayers. If you are going to blame mass shootings on the mental state of the person behind the gun, please do so with accuracy and knowledge; please propose tangible solutions to fix the issue and please do not use offensive and incorrect blanket statements to classify them. In the case that our country experiences yet another mass shooting in the future, which I sincerely hope is never the case, I ask you to use both your heart and your mind in responding to the issues.
Thank you for your time.
“When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.” - Psalms 34: 17-20
Godspeed, Amanda Waggoner
Note: The writer attended a town hall meeting in her hometown of Staten Island on January 4th and was able to ask Ben Carson a question regarding this article's content and hand him her open letter. Check it out!
