摘要：Recent mass shootings have prompted a national dialogue around mental illness and gun policy. To advance an evidence-informed policy agenda on this controversial issue, we formed a consortium of national gun violence prevention and mental health experts. The consortium agreed on a guiding principle for future policy recommendations: restricting firearm access on the basis of certain dangerous behaviors is supported by the evidence; restricting access on the basis of mental illness diagnoses is not. We describe the group’s process and recommendations. In recent years, a spate of mass shootings has prompted a national dialogue about mental illness and gun policy. In many of these shootings—including those at Virginia Tech and in Tucson, Arizona; Aurora, Colorado; Fort Hood, Texas; and Santa Barbara, California—the shooter appears to have had mental illness. In other cases, such as the 2012 Newtown, Connecticut, shooting, the mental health status of the shooter has been unclear. In the aftermath of these highly publicized shootings, policymakers are often faced with conflicting messages not directly informed by research evidence. Many gun violence prevention groups have highlighted the link between mental illness and violence and called for policies to prevent people with mental illness from having guns. By contrast, mental health advocates have often asserted that people with mental illness are no more likely to be violent than other members of the community and that mental illness–focused gun restrictions further stigmatize people with mental illness. 1 Faced with these conflicting messages, policymakers have struggled to implement policies to prevent individuals with a history of violent or reckless behavior from accessing firearms.
