A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, AUGUST 6 , 2019
not a racist and has only been
expressing his views on issues
such as immigration and urban
policy.
O’Rourke’s team has been qui-
etly allowing the candidate to be
himself and then megaphoning
his words to the country.
When O’Rourke filmed a short
video message before departing
Las Vegas, he did not live-stream
it on Facebook, as he used to do.
Instead, the campaign edited the
clip and added captions before
posting it across O’Rourke’s so-
cial media accounts. David Wy-
song, one of O’Rourke’s closest
advisers, emailed the video to the
campaign’s tens of thousands of
supporters.
O’Rourke has faced accusa-
tions of opportunism from some
Republicans. On Sunday, Repub-
lican National Committee Chair
Ronna McDaniel retweeted a
video of O’Rourke saying on CNN
that Trump is a white nationalist,
adding, “A tragedy like this is not
an opportunity to reboot your
failing presidential campaign.
This is disgusting and wrong.”
O’Rourke campaign manager
Jen O’Malley Dillon responded,
“What’s disgusting and wrong is
carrying water for a racist Presi-
dent whose very words inspired
this violence. A real President
would show leadership to a
grieving community, seek solu-
tions, and speak truth. That’s
what Beto’s doing today.”
O’Rourke said Monday after-
noon that he had not seen the
tweet and declined to comment
on it.
Before donating blood Mon-
day afternoon, O’Rourke shook
hands with other residents doing
the same. Several of them
thanked him for being a voice for
their community.
Lorena Garcia, a sixth-grade
teacher, told him that she is
dreading school starting again
because she is worried about the
emotional toll the shooting has
had on her students.
“Thank you for helping the
community,” she said to him,
“because we really need it right
now.” O’Rourke answered: “Stay
strong.”
[email protected]by what happened in El Paso.
Gone was the starched white
dress shirt he had taken to
wearing on the campaign trail in
a bid to look more formal, re-
placed now by a more casual blue
button-down, part of his signa-
ture look during his unsuccessful
but electrifying run for Senate in
Texas last year.
“Anyone who is surprised is
part of this problem right now,
including members of the media
who ask: ‘Hey, Beto, do you think
the president is racist?’ Well,
Jesus Christ, of course he’s racist.
He’s been racist from day one,”
O’Rourke said. “We are reaping
right now what he has sown and
what his supporters in Congress
have sown.”
Trump’s defenders say he isout at reporters who struggled to
find the right questions.
After visiting a hospital Satur-
day night and meeting some
relatives of the injured, includ-
ing a woman whose husband was
shot in the chest as he manned a
lemonade stand for their daugh-
ter’s soccer team, O’Rourke told
reporters gathered outside that
the president bears some respon-
sibility.
“He is a racist, and he stokes
racism in this country,” O’Rourke
said. “And it does not just offend
our sensibilities; it fundamental-
ly changes the character of this
country and it leads to violence.”
On Monday morning, he stood
before the crime scene to tell
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” hosts
that no one should be surprisedthat s--- on the battlefield.”
In the hours that followed,
O’Rourke rushed home to
El Paso. He filmed a video mes-
sage in the airport, his eyes heavy
and tired: “I just don’t have
words — this is not something
that I can even fully believe has
happened.” Over the weekend, he
met privately with a shooting
victim in an intensive care unit
at her son’s invitation, asked his
supporters to donate to a victims’
fund, conducted media inter-
views in English and Spanish,
marched silently to a vigil, and
spent time with his three young
children.
With the passing hours and
another mass shooting in Ohio,
he struggled less to find the right
words — and eventually lashedAs he made his rounds in
recent days, his former constitu-
ents appeared appreciative. Ar-
riving at the Sunday evening
vigil, he was greeted with hugs,
and a man shouted at him, “Beto,
I like what you said about Presi-
dent Trump. Way to go!” A tran-
script of O’Rourke’s outburst at
reporters has been retweeted
more than 23,000 times, and his
tweet saying that he stands by
those words has been liked by
more than 136,000.
“It’s awesome to have
someone speaking up, saying
that this isn’t what El Paso is,”
Frankie Rivera, a 26-year-old stu-
dent, said to O’Rourke as they
both prepared to donate blood
on Monday afternoon. “It’s love
and family; it’s not this.”
O’Rourke complimented Rivera
on his T-shirt, which featured
flags of other countries and the
slogan “Different is not danger-
ous.”
O’Rourke was in Las Vegas for
a campaign event on Saturday
morning when a gunman opened
fire at a Walmart near a busy
border crossing with Mexico and
killed 22 people, mostly Latinos,
injuring many more. O’Rourke
learned about the shooting from
one of his staff members just
before he was supposed to take
the stage. He quickly called his
wife to make sure that she and
their children were safe, then
addressed the audience of union
members, struggling to find the
right language.
He wheeled his hands around
and around, as if trying to physi-
cally propel himself through
each word. He looked and sound-
ed as many felt.
“Just a real reminder of what’s
most important at the end of the
day for all of us,” he said, often
speaking in fragments, not sen-
tences. “And just that any illusion
that we had that progress is
inevitable or that the change that
we need is going to come of its
own accord, shattered in mo-
ments like these.”
O’Rourke once again called for
gun-control measures that he
has long backed, including a ban
on the sale of assault rifles,
saying the country should “leaveis the city’s most visible spokes-
man, saying aloud what resi-
dents are saying among them-
selves and firmly placing blame
on the president. He no longer
has an elected position from
which he can enact change, so
his role now is to join his neigh-
bors in calling for it.
In an interview Monday,
O’Rourke said that he wants to
“be helpful” to El Paso and its
residents and that he is driven by
“this overriding pride in this
community, the way it’s come
together.”
“It just is so personal to us,” he
said. “This city is everything —
and I just think that, for me,
explains everything.”
The question is whether, in the
age of Trump, this is what voters,
especially Democrats, are look-
ing for in a president — someone
who is willing to unleash anger
and emotion in visceral terms, a
channeler of rage and grief rath-
er than a leader in tight control
of himself and others.
The nation’s sudden focus on
El Paso comes as O’Rourke’s
presidential campaign has been
foundering. Since announcing
his candidacy in March,
O’Rourke, despite early excite-
ment and buzz, has lingered near
the bottom of the polls, and there
have been questions about how
long he can afford to keep his
campaign going.
That has frustrated O’Rourke’s
team, whose members urgently
want voters to meet the candi-
date they admire — the one who,
in his Senate run, eloquently
defended the right of profession-
al football players to kneel in
protest of racial inequality. Still,
the nexus of politics and tragedy
can be sensitive, and O’Rourke
has not escaped complaints from
Republicans that he is politiciz-
ing the killings.
But El Paso is more than
O’Rourke’s hometown; it’s a big
part of his political identity. He
speaks often of coming from a
bicultural community. Now,
El Paso has come under assault
apparently for that very diversi-
ty.
O'ROURKE FROM A
mass shootings in america
BY WILLIAM WAN
AND LINDSEY BEVEREvery time a mass shooting oc-
curs, the country talks about men-
tal health. Many politicians are
quick to point to the shooters’
disturbed minds. News reporters
probe for “loner” tendencies or
signs of instability.
“Mental illness and hatred pull
the trigger. Not the gun,” said Pres-
ident Trump on Monday, after two
mass shootings in less than 24
hours.
So is mental illness to blame for
America’s mass shootings? Not ac-
cording to research.
Some mass shooters have a his-
tory of schizophrenia or psycho-
sis, but most do not. Most studies
of mass shooters have found that
only a small fraction have mental
health issues. And researchers
have noted a host of other factors
that are stronger predictors of
someone becoming a mass shoot-
er: a sense of resentment, desire
for infamy, copycat study of other
shooters, past domestic violence,
narcissism and access to firearms.
“It’s tempting to try to find one
simple solution and point the fin-
ger at that,” said Jeffrey Swanson,
a professor in psychiatry and be-
havioral sciences at Duke Univer-
sity School of Medicine. “The fact
that somebody would go out and
massacre a bunch of strangers,
that’s not the act of a healthy
mind, but that doesn’t mean they
have a mental illness.”
As mass shootings have become
more common in recent years,
their connection to mental health
has been increasingly scrutinized
by the FBI, police departments,
forensic psychiatrists, mental ill-
ness experts and epidemiologists.
In a 2018 report on 63 shooters,
the FBI found that 25 percent had
been diagnosed with a mental ill-
ness. Of those, three had been
diagnosed with a psychotic disor-
der. In a 2015 study that examined
226 men who committed or tried
to commit mass killings, 22 per-
cent could be considered mentally
ill. A report from the conservative
think tank the Heritage Founda-
tion estimated that a majority of
mass shooters have mental ill-
ness, based in part on looser defi-
nitions and retroactive assess-
ments.
Research has long debunked
another common explanation
among politicians: that violent
video games are driving the mass
shooting crisis. The idea was float-ed again by House Minority Lead-
er Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and
Trump, who talked of restricting
“gruesome and grisly video
games.”
There is, however, no statistical
link between playing violent video
games and shooting people, said
Jonathan Metzl, director of the
Center for Medicine, Health and
Society at Vanderbilt University.
A 2004 report conducted by the
Secret Service and the Education
Department found that 12 percent
of perpetrators in more than three
dozen school shootings showed
an interest in violent video games.
Despite a continuing lack of a link,
lawmakers and public figures
continue to blame the gaming in-
dustry.
“When politicians like Presi-
dent Trump perpetuate this nar-
rative, to me, it is the height of
irresponsibility, because it’s per-
petuating a falsehood,” Metzl said.
The eagerness to blame mental
health and video games means
society is searching for answers in
the wrong places, experts say.
Following the Columbine High
School shooting in 1999, a Gallup
poll found that 62 percent of
adults nationwide believed enter-
tainment was the major catalyst
for the tragedy.
Last year, a Post-ABC poll on
mass shootings found that 57 per-
cent of people believed shootings
were a reflection of failures to
identify and treat people with
mental health problems.
“The irony is clearly we do need
more robust mental health sys-
tem,” said Arthur C. Evans Jr., a
psychologist who heads the Amer-
ican Psychological Association.
“But that’s separate and apart
from these shootings.”
Almost 5 percent of the U.S.
population lives with a serious
mental illness in a health-care sys-
tem that most clinicians say se-
verely under-prioritizes mental
health. More than 60 percent of
counties in America don’t have a
single psychiatrist. Only 43 per-
cent of adults in the U.S. with a
mental health condition received
help in the past year.
People with serious mental dis-
orders are 3.6 times more likely toexhibit violent behavior, accord-
ing to the National Epidemiologic
Survey on Alcohol and Related
Conditions. But they are far more
likely to be the victims of violence
— with a 23 times higher risk,
compared with the general popu-
lation. A study published in the
journal Annals of Epidemiology
found that “the large majority of
people with mental disorders do
not engage in violence against
others, and that most violent be-
havior is due to factors other than
mental illness.”
“We like to think that anyone
who kills others is somehow men-
tally ill,” said Phillip Resnick, who
served as a forensic psychiatrist in
cases including Oklahoma City
bomber Timothy McVeigh and
Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. In an
interview last year, Resnick said,
“You have to remember, people
kill for all sorts of reasons. They
kill for profit or love or greed.”
Mental health advocates say
comments such as Trump’s label-
ing shooters as “mentally ill mon-
sters” can exacerbate false stereo-
types about the mentally ill.
“When you blame people with
mental illness for things like mass
shootings, it’s not just untrue,”
said Angela Kimball, head of the
National Alliance on Mental Ill-
ness. “It keeps people from seek-
ing help even when they need it. It
spreads unjustified fears about
the mentally ill and worsens the
stigma around it.”
Researchers point out that oth-
er countries have similar rates of
mental illness and video game use
but a small fraction of America’s
murder rate.
Epidemiologists say that what
sets the United States apart from
the rest of the world is guns.
America has nearly 400 million
civilian-owned firearms, or 120.
guns per 100 residents — meaning
the country has more guns than it
has people. The second closest
country, Yemen, had 52.8 guns per
100 residents, according to the
Small Arms Survey.
“Mental illness is not the real
issue, because mental illness is
something that happens across
the globe. Mass shootings? Not so
much,” Kimball said. “The sad
truth is that in America, it’s easy to
get a gun. It’s very difficult to get
mental health care.”
[email protected]
[email protected]Timothy Bella contributed to this
report.Studies: Mental illness isn’t to blame
MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ/THE WASHINGTON POST
Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke joins hundreds who marched in silence Sunday to
memorialize those killed a day earlier in the mass shooting in El Paso, O’Rourke’s hometown.In El Paso, O’Rourke voices a community’s frustration
Research also shows no
statistical link between
video games, shootings“It’s awesome to have someone speaking up, saying that this isn’t
what El Paso is. It’s love and family; it’s not this.”
Frankie Rivera, 26, thanking Beto O’Rourke for speaking out on behalf of El Paso after the shootingDESIGN. BUILD. INSTALL.
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