Mass Shooting and mental illness: Is there really a link?

Mass shootings happen in this country with alarming regularity. When they happen, there is often an instantaneous blame for the event on mental illness—not easy access to firearms or stalled gun legislation. We frequently hear that it’s not guns that kill people, it’s people who kill people--and all those people are mentally ill. But is that the real problem?
The day after the Uvalde, Texas shooting at Robb Elementary School, the National Alliance on Mental Illness issued a press release in which the organization made it clear how dangerous it is to automatically link the two.
After calling it “incorrect and harmful,” to link gun violence and mental illness, it said:
“Pointing to mental illness doesn’t get us closer as a nation to solving t...