I think it’s probably very important to talk about mental illness in this context, but as mental health experts have been pointing out this week, mental illness as a rule does not correlate with violence or gun violence.
Stigma can be a problem for people managing mental illness.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t talk about the shooter’s mental illness, only that we should be careful, because as one expert pointed out yesterday, even if we could wave a magic wand and make it impossible for seriously mentally ill people to acquire assault weapons, the incidence of mass shooting in the United States would barely be affected.