Jeremy Stangroom

The next time somebody suggests that smoking causes cancer, I'm expecting the geniuses of Twitter to start posting how they've smoked 3000 cigarettes a day for centuries, and they don't have cancer, so it can't be true.

Look, mental health may or may not be a factor in any particular shooting. But you don't rule it out by showing that it isn't a sufficient condition, and you don't rule it out for particular cases by showing it isn't always (or even often) a necessary condition.

If you're tempted to opine about this stuff, you ought to have a look at some of the literature on counterfactual reasoning, and the link between counterfactual reasoning & causality. It's bloody complicated, and sometimes involves banging on about other possible worlds.

Maybe part of the fear is if you allow mental health as a causal factor then you remove guns, toxic masculinity, etc., as causal factors. But that just isn't true. The latter might be a sufficient condition in some cases, & a necessary but not sufficient condition in others.

Same goes with the fear that if you allow mental health can be a factor you risk demonizing all people with mental health issues. Well no. Mental health might be a necessary but *not sufficient* condition in some cases. Not sufficient means other factors must be in play.

The question isn’t whether mental health is a factor - it certainly is, in some circumstances - but how strong that correlates with violence compared with easy access to guns.