Matthew Jenner
Staff Writer
The issue of gun violence is a hot button issue all around the world, catalyzing a wave of anguish and fear among many people. There are a multitude of reasons why people go on shooting sprees, ranging from psychological illness to revenge or just incredibly unclear motives. However, a new study suggests that most of these tragic incidents have one thing in common – all the attackers had a history of taking powerful prescription drugs.
In the last two decades, the vast majority of people who unleash a wave of violence on an innocent group of people have all had their motives for doing so, but they are all eerily linked in the discovery that they were on psychotropic drugs around the time of the attacks, or they had a history with the medication. These are not simple painkillers – these drugs have been known to cause a variety of side effects, one of which is apparently an increase in violent thoughts and unfortunately (as well as all too clearly common) murderous actions.
The list of people who committed mass public shootings sadly reads like a dictionary of mental anguish, as many of their medical records show they were on major drugs such as antidepressants. What makes reading such reports even more sad and tragic are that there are children as young as 11 or 12 on certain drugs that end up taking guns to school and wounding their classmates and teachers, sometimes even fatally. Even the most recent case of mass shootings committed by Elliot Rodger show that he was on extremely strong anti-depressive medication, and if that altered his state of mind to commit his terrible act remains to be seen.
I just want to make it clear that I don’t believe that we should blame these tragedies on the medications that these people were taking, mainly because even though they may cause side effects, there are still thousands of people who live on them and lead normal lives. The motives for all the mass shootings of the past twenty years cannot in any way be justified by the idea that these people were acting against their own will. However, it has been shown that these pills can cause negative effects on the minds of many people, and the smallest boost in negative brain activity can be the very tipping point that causes someone to lash out and cause a tragedy.
But further research shows that these murderous and violent feelings some people on these drugs don’t always culminate in public murder. Very often it can cause another person to be a victim of these murderous impulses – oneself. Many have needlessly died because they committed suicide while on these drugs. We cannot imagine the internal struggle some of them must feel, and whether taking the lives of others or their own, these people need to be helped and not shunned by society, because many of them feel lonely, rejected, and some help would greatly help in curbing this continuous tragedy.
The fact remains that no matter where you stand on the gun control issue, and how you view these tragedies, too many lives have been needlessly lost to mentally unstable people, and we can only further try to educate and help these people to help on the road to ending this awful human injustice.
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