It’s not the guns, it’s the pills—right? Nope.
But for as long as I’ve reported on mass shootings (more than 13 years now), an old fringe claim has kept circulating online: Antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs, the idea goes, can turn people violent and are the root cause of America’s shootings epidemic.
It’s just not true. Mental health experts have long examined the theory and found no credible supporting evidence. Frankly, the claim never much struck me as worth writing about—the stuff of Alex Jones rants and strident messages in my inbox.
Until, that is, Trump’s HHS secretary put it on the agenda this fall. RFK Jr. is best known for pushing pseudoscience on vaccines and autism, but he’s been using the same playbook here. He’s now promising “massive” ongoing studies at HHS (which may not actually exist, as I report) to try to prove a failed theory.
In this new piece, I also take apart Kennedy’s comments at a recent Turning Point USA event—a bunch of folksy falsehoods from him about guns and mental health—and talk with violence prevention experts about the potential damage from his latest barrage of misinformation.
—Mark Follman
