Composition Essay Contest

The English Department at Western Kentucky University is pleased to announce our second annual Composition Essay Contest. Students should visit https://www.wku.edu/english/essay-contests.php to complete an application and submit a 500-750-word essay (MLA style; pdf format) based on the prompt below. The English Department will invite finalists, their teachers, and family to campus for a reception and ceremony on February 15th where they will be recognized. The winners will receive scholarships if they choose to major or minor in English at WKU and cash prizes whether or not they attend WKU. First Place: $500 Scholarship and $200 cash; Second Place: $300 Scholarship and $100 cash; Third Place: $200 Scholarship and $50 cash. Applications and Essays are due January 17.

Question: After recent deadly mass shootings from Parkland, Florida, to El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, discussions have focused on mental health problems as a significant cause of mass shootings. “Red flag laws” that attempt to take guns from individuals who show signs of possible violence and mental instability have become increasingly popular measures to address the issue, with 17 states now having some version of this type of law.

Carefully read the following six sources, including the introductory information for each source. Then synthesize material from at least three of the sources and incorporate it into a coherent, well-developed essay that defends, challenges, or qualifies the notion that red flag laws can be a beneficial measure to prevent more mass shootings. Your argument should be the focus of your essay. Use the sources on the following pages to develop your argument and explain the reasoning for it. Avoid merely summarizing the sources. Indicate clearly which sources you are drawing from whether through direct quotation, paraphrase, or summary. You may cite the sources by using the descriptions in parentheses below.

Source A (Beck) Source B (Evans) Source C (Gramlich) Source D (Massie) Source E (Walsh) Source F (Williams)

Source A: Beck, Julie. “Untangling Gun Violence from Mental Illness.” The Atlantic. 7 June 2016. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/06/untangling-gun-violence-from-mental-illness/485906/

The following is an excerpt from Julie Beck’s “Untangling Gun Violence from Mental Illness.”

After a shooting, once the dust has settled, and the initial shock and panic has abated somewhat, fearful minds begin to cast about for explanations. Given the frequency with which gun deaths occur in the United States, “Why did this happen?” and “Who could do something like this?” are questions the country faces with grim regularity.

Unfortunately, a consistent and dangerous narrative has emerged—an explanation all-too-readily at hand when a mass shooting or other violent tragedy occurs: The perpetrator must have been mentally ill.

“We have a strong responsibility as researchers who study mental illness to try to debunk that myth,” says Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University. “I say as loudly and as strongly and as frequently as I can, that mental illness is not a very big part of the problem of gun violence in the United States.”

The overwhelming majority of people with mental illnesses are not violent, just like the overwhelming majority of all people are not violent. Only 4 percent of the violence—not just gun violence, but any kind—in the United States is attributable to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression (the three most-cited mental illnesses in conjunction with violence). In other words, 96 percent of the violence in America has nothing to do with mental illness.

A study from 1998 that followed patients released from psychiatric hospitals found that they were no more prone to violence than other people in their communities—unless they also had a substance abuse problem. So mental illness alone was not a risk factor for violence in this study.

Those are the facts. But cultural narratives are often more powerful than facts, and that 4 percent gets overblown in people’s minds.

A new study published in Health Affairs shows how the news perpetuates this narrative, with a look at how several prominent newspapers and broadcast networks covered mental illness from 1995 to 2014. More than half of the stories they looked at during that period—55 percent—mentioned violence in conjunction with mental illness. That proportion was pretty much consistent across the 19 years. But stories connecting mental illness with mass shootings specifically increased from 9 percent between 1994 and 2004 to 22 percent between 2005 and 2014.

It pervades so much so that people speculate about killers’ mental states, even in the absence of any evidence that they were living with any disorder. For example, in an article about the gunman who recently killed a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, New York magazine writes: “Police do not know for sure yet if Sarkar had a history of mental illness.” Why does this particular absence of information bear mentioning? It seems mental illness is so linked to gun violence in people’s minds that we have to address it even when it’s not there. “This is one of the hardest distinctions to make,” McGinty says. “Anyone who kills someone else in a mass shooting scenario or otherwise is not what we would consider mentally healthy. But that does not mean they have a clinical diagnosis and therefore a treatable mental illness. There could be emotional regulation issues related to anger, for example, which are a separate phenomenon. There could be underlying substance use issues. There could be a whole host of other risk factors for violence going on.”

“I think we have a long way to go in terms of brain science to really understand [those] distinctions,” adds Ron Honberg, a senior policy advisor at the National Alliance on Mental Illness

But when the news reinforces these easy narratives, as McGinty’s study shows it often does, that can have serious consequences. Other research shows that reading stories about mass shootings by people with mental illnesses makes people feel more negatively toward the mentally ill. This only heightens stigma, which could lead to more people going untreated.

“Do we not risk creating further barriers?” Honberg asks. “People [may] feel like, ‘Oh my gosh, if I get identified as having a psychiatric diagnosis, people are going to draw certain conclusions.’ It’s hard enough to get people to seek help when they need it.”

Shootings seem to inevitably lead to people calling for better mental health screenings for guns, or for better mental health care generally. Which would be great, lord knows we need it. But again, better mental health care is not going to have much of an impact on interpersonal violence.

This is a misframing of the issue. There is a compelling reason to adjust policy to better keep some seriously mentally ill people from accessing guns. It’s not because they might hurt others, but because they might hurt themselves.

Though big, scary mass shootings get the most attention when it comes to gun violence, 60 percent of deaths caused by firearms are suicides. And another new study in this same issue of Health Affairs emphasizes that suicide, not homicide, is the major public health problem for mentally ill people with guns. In it, Swanson and his colleagues looked at 81,704 people getting public health services for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depressive disorder in two large Florida counties. They tracked these people’s death records, as well as whether they were barred from owning guns.

In that group, the rate of people who died by suicide was four times higher than that of the general population. The violent crime rate was just under two times higher. But consider that this is a group of people receiving government care, who “might have other risk factors for violence, including poverty and social disadvantage, unemployment, residential instability, substance use problems, history of violent victimization, exposure to neighborhood violence, or involvement with the criminal justice system,” the study reads. So you can’t reasonably attribute the higher violent crime rate in this group to mental illness alone.

“It’s a big public health opportunity to limit access to guns,” Swanson says. And it could make a big difference for suicide attempt survival rates. Among people who’ve survived a suicide attempt, more than 90 percent do not go on to kill themselves later. But guns are the most common method of suicide, and people who try to kill themselves with a gun usually succeed—85 percent of the time. “They don’t get that second chance,” Swanson says.

Overall, the study concluded, “[the results] would seem to suggest that suicide, not homicide, should be the crux of gun violence prevention efforts focused on people with serious mental illnesses in public systems of care.”

That is not typically the case, though. Both Honberg and Swanson say that in their experience, people talk about increasing gun background checks for people with mental illness in the context of preventing homicide, not suicide. This is a conversation that plays out in the media and among politicians time and time again after a prominent shooting tragedy, perhaps because talking about mental illness is easier than talking about the guns.

“We’re a pretty violent society here in America and the conversation really ought to focus on what can be done to make America a less violent society,” Honberg says. “But because that discussion is so fraught with emotion and divisiveness and political disagreements, it almost seems like the conversation has devolved to a relatively small subset of people who engage in violence, namely people with mental illness. We can at least agree about what to do with guns and mentally ill people rather than what to do about guns generally. But that’s really passing the buck.”

Source B: Evans, Arthur. “Statement of APA CEO on Gun Violence and Mental Health.” APA 5 Aug. 2019. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/08/gun-violence-mental-health

The following is the statement of the CEO of the American Psychological Association:

Blaming mental illness for the gun violence in our country is simplistic and inaccurate and goes against the scientific evidence currently available.

The United States is a global outlier when it comes to horrific headlines like the ones that consumed us all weekend. Although the United States makes up less than 5% of the world’s population, we are home to 31% of all mass shooters globally, according to a CNN analysis. This difference is not explained by the rate of mental illness in the U.S.

The one stark difference? Access to guns.

Americans own nearly half of the estimated 650 million civilian-owned guns in the world. Access to this final, fatal tool means more deaths that occur more quickly, whether in a mass shooting or in someone’s own home.

As we psychological scientists have said repeatedly, the overwhelming majority of people with mental illness are not violent. And there is no single personality profile that can reliably predict who will resort to gun violence. Based on the research, we know only that a history of violence is the single best predictor of who will commit future violence. And access to more guns, and deadlier guns, means more lives lost.

Based on the psychological science, we know some of the steps we need to take. We need to limit civilians’ access to assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. We need to institute universal background checks. And we should institute red flag laws that remove guns from people who are at high risk of committing violent acts.

And although the president called on the nation to do a ‘better job of identifying and acting on early warning signs,’ that requires research to ensure we are making decisions based on data, not prejudices and fear.

We agree with the president’s call to strengthen background checks. But this falls woefully short of what is needed. We must take a comprehensive public health approach and provide dedicated federal funding to agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, to better understand the causes, contributing factors and solutions to gun violence.

The president clearly said that it is time to stop the hateful rhetoric that is infecting the public discourse. We ask that he use his powerful position to model that behavior. And we ask that the federal government support the research needed to better understand the causes of bigotry and hate, and their association to violence, so that we may devise evidence-based solutions.

Source C: Gramlich, John. “What the Data Says about Gun Deaths in the U.S.” Pew Research Center. 16 Aug.

2019. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/

The following is excerpted from Gramlich’s “What the Data Says about Gun Deaths in the U.S.”:

What share of U.S. gun deaths are murders and what share are suicides?

Though they tend to get less attention than gun-related murders, suicides have long accounted for the majority of U.S. gun deaths. In 2017, six-in-ten gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides (23,854), while 37% were murders (14,542), according to the CDC. The remainder were unintentional (486), involved law enforcement (553) or had undetermined circumstances (338).

What share of all murders and suicides in the U.S. involve a gun?

Three-quarters of all U.S. murders in 2017 – 14,542 out of 19,510 – involved a firearm. About half (51%) of all suicides that year – 23,854 out of 47,173 – involved a gun.

How does the gun death rate in the U.S. compare with other countries?

The gun death rate in the U.S. is much higher than in most other nations, particularly developed nations. But it is still far below the rates in several Latin American nations, according to a study of 195 countries and territories by researchers at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

The U.S. gun death rate was 10.6 per 100,000 people in 2016, the most recent year in the study, which uses a somewhat different methodology from the CDC. That was far higher than in countries such as Canada (2.1 per 100,000) and Australia (1.0), as well as European nations such as France (2.7), Germany (0.9) and Spain (0.6). But the rate in the U.S. was much lower than in El Salvador (39.2 per 100,000 people), Venezuela (38.7), Guatemala (32.3), Colombia (25.9) and Honduras (22.5), the study found. Overall, the U.S. ranked 20th in its gun fatality rate.

How many people are killed in mass shootings in the U.S. every year?

This is a difficult question to answer because there is no single, agreed-upon definition of the term “mass shooting.” Definitions can vary depending on factors including the number of victims and the circumstances of the shooting.

The FBI collects data on “active shooter incidents,” which it defines as “as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.” Using the FBI’s definition, 85 people – excluding the shooters – died in such incidents in 2018.

The Gun Violence Archive, an online database of gun violence incidents in the U.S., defines mass shootings as incidents in which four or more people – excluding the shooter – are shot or killed. Using this definition, 373 people died in these incidents in 2018.

Regardless of the definition being used, fatalities in mass shooting incidents in the U.S. account for a small fraction of all gun murders that occur nationwide each year.

How has the number of mass shootings in the U.S. changed over time?

The same definitional issue that makes it challenging to arrive at an exact number of mass shooting fatalities comes into play when trying to determine the frequency of U.S. mass shootings over time. The unpredictability of these incidents also complicates matters: As Rand Corp. noted in a 2018 research brief, “Chance variability in the annual number of mass shooting incidents makes it challenging to discern a clear trend, and trend estimates will be sensitive to outliers and to the time frame chosen for analysis.”

The FBI found an increase in active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2013. The average number of incidents rose from 6.4 a year in the first seven years of the study to an average of 16.4 a year in the second seven-year period. In subsequent studies, the FBI recorded 20 active shooter incidents per year in 2014 and 2015, followed by 20 incidents in 2016, 30 in 2017 and 27 in 2018.

Source D: Massie, Thomas, and Jim Jordan. “Why Red Flag Laws, Background Checks, and an Assault Weapons Ban Won’t Stop Mass Shootings.” Courier-Journal. 23 Aug. 2019. https://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/2019/08/23/red-flag-laws-universal-background-checks-infringe-constitutional-rights/2088394001/ The following is an excerpt from Massie and Jordan’s opinion piece in the Courier-Journal.

Congress is notorious for passing legislation without reading it, but the urge to rush legislation reached a new level in Washington this month. Some members of Congress have announced support for gun control bills that haven’t even been written yet!

What’s already clear from their vague proposals, however, is that none of these measures would have stopped any recent mass public shooting. For the safety of the general public, perhaps we should have a mandatory waiting period for lawmakers who rush to pass unconstitutional and unhelpful legislation.

Take, for instance, the call for universal background checks, which would ban private transfers of firearms that don’t involve a background check. Every attacker in all of the recent mass public shootings passed a background check and purchased his firearm from a federally licensed firearm dealer.

The cowardly perpetrator of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting didn’t have to pass a background check. His mother passed the background check, and he stole her guns.

Likewise, an underage male perpetrator of the 1999 Columbine shooting obtained a handgun through an older female who acted as a straw purchaser. Using a straw purchaser to obtain a firearm is already illegal.

There’s not a single mass public shooting that would have been prevented by universal background checks.

The other dirty little secret about universal background checks is that the only way to enforce them is to have a universal gun registry, which is a step toward future gun confiscation.

Due to serious defects with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, millions of citizens otherwise eligible to purchase a firearm have been denied the right to do so.

No one should seek to expand a program that has already robbed millions of citizens of their right to self-defense. Criminals and would-be criminals will simply continue to buy guns from each other, use illegal straw purchasers to get guns from lawful dealers or steal guns from relatives and other law-abiding citizens.

Another unserious proposal that will cause more problems than it will solve is forcing states to adopt red flag laws. If states want these laws, states can pass these laws.

The federal government should not be in the business of using taxpayer money to bribe states to adopt unconstitutional laws. In fact, 17 states have already passed red flag laws, and there’s no evidence that these laws have reduced the frequency of mass public shootings. These laws authorize unannounced gun confiscations that are hazardous to both citizens and law enforcement officers.

For example, a man in Maryland was shot and killed in the confusion that ensued when police showed up in the dark, unannounced, to confiscate his legally obtained guns. Tragedies such as this are why the sheriff in Weld County, Colorado, has already announced that he will not order his deputies to participate in these dangerous raids.

Red flag laws are also dangerous because they pressure those who need mental health care to avoid seeking it for fear of having their guns confiscated. Already the Veterans Administration bans veterans from possessing firearms if the veterans merely admit that someone else manages their finances.

The criteria for “red-flagging” a person in the various states are already vague. In some states, the laws allow only police officers, family members, romantic partners and cohabitants to refer someone for gun confiscation. The reality, though, is that anyone can refer someone by first referring him or her to the police. This system is ripe for abuse.

Every state in the union already has a law that allows individuals to be involuntarily confined to a medical facility briefly, on the basis of a mental health professional’s opinion that they are a danger to themselves or others. Whereas these laws seek to treat individuals in need, red flag laws only irritate individuals by taking some of their firearms and leaving them without mental health help. Furthermore, red flag laws don’t require expert testimony, but only suspicion by unqualified individuals.

Universal background checks, red flag laws and the so-called assault weapons ban all have two things in common: They won’t stop mass public shootings, and they will infringe on constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens.

By keeping civilians from providing for their own protection and by causing those who need mental health care not to seek it, these laws will only make the current situation worse.

If these proposals become law they will inevitably fail to produce the intended results and there will be a push for even more gun bans. It’s time to slow down and look at the facts before rushing new laws to the president’s desk.

Source E: Walsh, Colleen. “Want to Stop Mass Shootings?” Harvard Gazette. Interview with David Hemenway. 6 Aug. 2019 https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/08/harvard-professor-of-health-policy-discusses-gun-violence-in-the-wake-of-two-u-s-mass-shootings/ The following is an excerpt from Colleen Walsh’s interview with Harvard public health professor David Hemenway:

GAZETTE: Some gun control opponents have pointed to mental health issues and violent video games as major factors in the number of mass shootings in the United States. Are those two things more prevalent here than in other countries with lower rates of gun violence, and, if so, why?

HEMENWAY: There are a whole range of things that could play a role in prevention, including better parenting, less racism, better education, more job opportunities. All of these things might have some effect on reducing shootings in the U.S. We should improve all those things. But the most cost-effective interventions involve doing something about guns. For example, as far as we can tell, virtually all developed countries have violent video games and people with mental health issues. There’s no evidence that I know of that shows that people in the U.S. have more mental health issues, especially violent mental health issues. Compared to other high-income countries we are just average in terms of non-gun crime and non-gun violence. The elephant in the room, the thing that makes us stand out among the 29 other high-income countries, is our guns and our weak gun laws. As a result, we have many more gun-related problems than any other high-income country. Every other developed country has shown us the way to vastly reduce our problems. Our guns, and our permissive gun laws, are what make us different than France, Italy, the Netherlands, South Korea, New Zealand, you name it.

GAZETTE: Why does it seem many law-abiding American gun owners fear restrictions like background checks and the elimination of high-capacity magazines, bump stocks, and assault rifles? How would most gun owners be affected by such changes?

HEMENWAY: The overwhelming majority of American gun owners favor universal background checks, at least that is what they say on survey after survey. Most favor the elimination of military weapons in everybody’s hands.

In our work at the School of Public Health we are making gun owners part of the solution. My colleague Cathy Barber is working with gun owners, gun advocates, gun trainers, and gun shop owners. Together they are finding common ground and developing solutions. The first area where they have found much common ground is around suicide. The evidence is overwhelming that a gun in the home increases the risk of suicide. More people die from gun suicide than gun homicide, and the people dying are gun owners and their families. Cathy

has helped get gun shops in 20 states to play a role in reducing suicide. One grass-roots education effort includes guidelines on how to avoid selling or renting a firearm to a suicidal customer. To activate gunners, you need the right message and the right messenger. And the right messenger isn’t Harvard or public health professionals, it is responsible gun owners themselves. She is hoping to expand her focus to work on preventing guns from moving from the licit to the illicit market. Gun advocates have great ideas; they know about guns; and they are big into safety, so there are large potential benefits to get them to work together with public health professionals. That’s the goal.

GAZETTE: What is the one most important thing to do?

HEMENWAY: You can’t just do one thing. That’s the whole point. It’s like asking what’s the one thing you can do to reduce cancer in the U.S.? There are many things. Some might say you could ban smoking, but there is a lot of cancer among nonsmokers, and banning smoking wouldn’t stop smoking and will create black markets. It’s a bad policy. Instead the public health approach is focused on harm reduction. So if we are going to have lots of guns — which we clearly are for the next 50 years at least — we have to do lots of things. If I were required to pick one thing we should do that’s semi-feasible I would say licensing of gun owners and all that entails, including strong background checks, and only allowing firearm sales to a licensed owner. More broadly, we need something like a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for guns, which would address the issue in a range of ways.

Source F: Williams, Timothy. “What Are ‘Red Flag’ Gun Laws and How Do They Work?” New York Times 6 Aug. 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/us/red-flag-laws.html The following is an excerpt from Timothy Williams’s article in the New York Times: With one mass shooting after another in recent years, political leaders have debated how to take preventive action without trampling on constitutional rights. Some states have tried, and more have debated, enacting measures called red flag laws, which are intended to restrict potentially dangerous people rather than dangerous weapons. That approach is seen as more likely to attract bipartisan support than many other gun control proposals. Here is what you need to know about those laws. What are red flag laws?

They are state laws that authorize courts to issue a special type of protection order, allowing the police to temporarily confiscate firearms from people who are deemed by a judge to be a danger to themselves or to others.

Often, the request for the order will come from relatives or friends concerned about a loved one who owns one or more guns and has expressed suicidal thoughts or discussed shooting people. The authorities may also request an order.

How long the guns are taken away under these “extreme risk protection orders” depends on the circumstances, and can usually be extended only after another court hearing. The orders also bar the person they cover from purchasing guns.

How many states have one now?

At least 17 states now have approved some version of a red flag law, including Florida, New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana and California. Before the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., only five states had such laws.

Who is against red flag laws, and why?

Many conservatives oppose all restrictions on access to firearms, arguing that they infringe on the Second Amendment. The National Rifle Association has offered support for the concept of keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous people, but it has opposed state red flag laws in practice, arguing that they go too far by allowing courts to confiscate guns from people who have not committed a crime. The organization has also complained that red flag laws in states like Oregon deny the targets of the protective orders due process of law, by allowing orders to be issued without the target having a chance to be heard. The N.R.A. has not supported any state red flag law that has yet been enacted.

Do red flag laws work?

Law enforcement officials say it’s difficult to quantify how effective red flag laws are, because no one can say for certain how many killings were prevented. Officials in several states say they see increases in reports of potentially dangerous people and requests for confiscations after mass shootings in other states make headlines.

Connecticut’s experience shows that the laws are not 100 percent effective: The gunman who killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012 had access to guns even though people who knew him said he had shown troubling signs before the attack.

Red flag measures have been used in situations far different from the mass shooting scenarios they were originally intended to prevent. Most often, guns have been removed from people who were seen as threats to themselves or to their families, or who were suffering from judgment-impairing illnesses like dementia or alcoholism, rather than posing a threat to to large groups or public gatherings.

Several studies suggest that the laws have a substantial effect on suicides, the most common way that guns kill Americans. Research in Connecticut and Indiana found that for every 10 to 20 confiscations under the laws, there was one fewer death than would otherwise have been expected.

The researchers then tracked the people who were subject to the confiscation orders, and found that they were more than 30 times as likely as the average person to commit suicide. “It shows the law is being applied not willy-nilly, but to a group that is really at a high risk of dying,” said Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University, who worked on the research.