After the school shooting in St. Louis last October, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson responded predictably, insisting that greater attention to mental health, not more gun restrictions, was the solution. "It's just really unfortunate that everyone wants to go to the political point of the guns when you have a tragedy like this," Parson said after a gun-wielding 19-year-old terrorized teachers and students at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School. The gunman's mother had pleaded with police to seize his semiautomatic rifle, noting the young man's mental illness. But police were powerless to intervene because Parson and the Legislature had refused to impose red-flag restrictions on gun ownership.

Parson remains convinced that mental health is the answer. But when it comes to his and Missouri Republican lawmakers' record of actually funding and supporting the mental health sectors that address gun violence — or proving that such a strategy actually works — he'd be better off offering thoughts and prayers as the solution.

"If serious mental illnesses suddenly disappeared, violence would decrease by only about 4%," John Rozel and Jeffrey Swanson wrote in a January opinion piece for the American Association of Medical Colleges. "More than 90% of violent incidents, including homicides, would still occur."

They added that "even mass shooters, who might seem most likely to be driven by mental illness, don't necessarily suffer from major psychiatric disorders." FBI statistics indicate that only 25% of such assailants had a diagnosed mental illness, and fewer than 5% of mass shooters "had a record of a gun-disqualifying mental health adjudication, such as an involuntary commitment to a mental health facility."

There's almost no kind of behavior rooted in mental illness in Missouri that would constitute "gun-disqualifying" under current law. Parson is correct when it comes to using mental-health therapy to prevent suicide by firearm, which accounts for most gun-homicide deaths. But national statistics don't support his position when it comes to mass shootings.

When the Missouri Department of Mental Health asked the Legislature in January for a $300 million increase in social-services funding, lawmakers almost laughed officials out of the room. When the department last year warned of severe understaffing due to low pay, the state's answer was to seek federal help through then-Sen. Roy Blunt rather than solve the problem using billions of dollars in surplus state funds.

One study ranks Missouri among the five lowest states in the country for the amount of funding devoted to therapy, although it ranks 26th in the country for overall per-capita spending on mental health.

Research consistently shows that widespread gun availability, not mental illness, is the culprit. It seems so obvious that the solution is rooted in red-flag laws, universal background checks and passing laws to keep guns out of minors' hands. Mental-health fig leaves have proven excellent at preventing serious discussion of gun-violence solutions, but they're lousy at stopping bullets.

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