Almost one in 10 Americans has a history of impulsive and angry behavior and ready access to guns, new research indicates.
The serious mental health issues that would legally prevent someone from purchasing a gun -- such as involuntary commitment to a psychiatric ward for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder -- only account for about 4 percent of U.S. gun violence, noted study author Jeffrey Swanson.
"There is a potentially much larger group of individuals in our society who struggle with pathological impulsive and destructive anger that would not normally turn up as serious mental illness on a background check," said Swanson, a professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C.
Yet these people -- mostly young or middle-aged men -- break and smash things and get into fights when they get angry, his study found.The study of more than 5,600 adults found that 8.9 percent of them were admittedly short-fused people who had guns at home, "which I would say is something of a wake-up call," Swanson said. And 1.5 percent of them also carried their guns outside the home. Private citizens in the United States own upwards of 310 million firearms, according to background information in the study.
The serious mental health issues that would legally prevent someone from purchasing a gun -- such as involuntary commitment to a psychiatric ward for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder -- only account for about 4 percent of U.S. gun violence, noted study author Jeffrey Swanson.
"There is a potentially much larger group of individuals in our society who struggle with pathological impulsive and destructive anger that would not normally turn up as serious mental illness on a background check," said Swanson, a professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C.
Yet these people -- mostly young or middle-aged men -- break and smash things and get into fights when they get angry, his study found.The study of more than 5,600 adults found that 8.9 percent of them were admittedly short-fused people who had guns at home, "which I would say is something of a wake-up call," Swanson said. And 1.5 percent of them also carried their guns outside the home. Private citizens in the United States own upwards of 310 million firearms, according to background information in the study.