“The View” co-hosts got into a near shouting match Monday as they debated the correlation between mental health and gun violence across the U.S.
The panel discussed the shooting in Allen, Texas, on Saturday that left nine victims dead, including the shooter, who died after encountering an armed officer. The shooter, Mauricio Garcia, was discharged from the U.S. Army in 2008 over “physical or mental conditions.”
Co-host Sara Haines said there is a “mental health problem” in the country, and cited studies about a “loneliness epidemic” stemmed by things such as the internet, pornography, and video games.
“We are releasing the humanity, we are taking it away and it makes it so easy to handle this,” Haines said. “So the stat you had, I also had on my card — where as we can say, ‘okay, there’s a mental health component, there’s something not right. We’re lonely. Something’s happening to people, but it’s hard to say there’s a solution as easy as what does that look like on the ground. What could be done simultaneously are some of these things that the majority of this country agrees to do.”
“Because until that point, I just don’t think if we keep going to mental health, that’s an umbrella term, that if I asked them to define it, they’d say, ‘you know, the mental health things,’ what does that look like?” Haines continued.
Co-host Ana Navarro said people watch porn and suffer from mental health all over the world, but the U.S. is the only country with a mass shooting “epidemic.” (RELATED: ‘I Was Skewered’: ‘The View’ Co-Hosts Spar Over Gun Laws)
“The only place where we have an epidemic of war-style weapons is in America and it’s where we have an epidemic of mass shootings,” Navarro said.
“That doesn’t solve anything, that brings us right to the middle,” Haines interjected.
Co-host Sunny Hostin then pointed fingers at Republicans for addressing mental health issues but opposing bans on firearms.
“I have to mention this over and over again and I mention it over and over again,” Hostin began. “People that have mental health issues are much more likely to be the victims of crime than commit crime. I hear Republicans want to talk about everything else other than easy access to guns. They want to talk about undocumented people, they want to talk about immigration, they want to talk about mental health, they want to talk about everything under the sun but they don’t want to talk about the guns. The guns are the problem.”
“We are seeing people shooting people pulling up at the door,” Haines said, talking over Hostin. “Pulling away from their house, something else is going on, Sunny.”
“People are pissed off all over the world, but they’re only killing people here,” Hostin responded.
“Something else is going on here, Sunny,” Haines said.
“You know what’s going on? Guns!” Hostin said.
A study conducted by the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit examined 63 active shooters and found one-quarter of them had been diagnosed with a mental illness, according to the Metrowest Health Foundation. Additional studies found active shooters act out of grievances, anger or depression rather than “impulse,” the foundation continued.
A study published by Columbia University found that approximately 25% of mass shootings are associated with “non-psychotic psychiatric or neurological illnesses,” including depression, and about 23% are associated with substance abuse. The study said that “severe and acute life stressors,” including emptiness, anger, and a desire for notoriety among young men, should be considered a main focus in preventing mass shootings.