美国的杀人犯,也爱说自己有精神病……

A familiar pattern plays out after every mass shooting in the US.

每次美国的大规模枪击案发生后，就会出现一种熟悉的模式。

First, advocates of gun control point out, accurately, that taking guns off the streets and limiting who can buy them will save lives. Then opponents of gun control argue that there are no regulations that can stop a determined shooter and that what we really need is to address mental health.

首先，管控枪支的倡议者精确指出，从街上把枪拿走并限制枪支的购买者能够拯救生命。然后管控枪支的反对者争论，没有什么法规可以阻止坚定的枪手，我们真正需要的是解决精神健康问题。

"This is also a mental illness problem," President Trump said, following the script, after shootings in Dayton and El Paso. "These are people that are very, very seriously mentally ill." "Mental health is a large contributor to any type of violence or shooting violence," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott agreed.

这也是精神疾病的问题。”在代顿和埃尔帕索枪击事件之后，美国总统特朗普按照剧本说道。“那些人的精神病非常非常严重。”“精神健康是任何种类的暴力和枪袭的重要因素。”德州州长格雷格·阿博特同意特朗普的观点。

Then liberal gun control advocates insist they too want better mental health care and that Republican gun control opponents are hypocrites because they oppose expanding access to health insurance that would help people get it.

然后自由党的枪支管控提倡者坚称，他们也希望能有更好的精神医疗保健，共和党的枪支管控反对者都是伪善者，因为他们反对扩大健康保险的覆盖范围，这本可以帮助人们得到医疗保健的。

But the convenient cries of "mental health" after mass shootings are worse than hypocritical. They're factually wrong and stigmatizing to millions of completely nonviolent Americans living with severe mental illness.

但是在大规模枪袭后，这种不费事的“精神健康”口号比伪善更加可怕。它们与事实不符，对数百万患有严重精神疾病的非暴力美国人来说是侮辱性的。

Abbott is wrong: the share of America's violence problem (excluding suicide) that is explainable by diseases like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is tiny.

阿博特错了：可以用精神分裂症和躁郁症解释的美国暴力问题（包括自杀）的份额很小。

If you were to suddenly cure schizophrenia, bipolar, and depression overnight, violent crime in the US would fall by only 4 percent, according to an estimate from Duke University professor Jeffrey Swanson, a sociologist and psychiatric epidemiologist who studies the relationship between violence and mental illness.

根据杜克大学教授杰弗瑞·司万森的估计，如果能一夜之间突然治愈精神分裂症、躁郁症、抑郁症，那么美国的暴力的犯罪事件会下降4个百分点。杰弗瑞·司万森是一位社会学家和精神流行病学家，研究暴力和精神疾病之间的关系。

"People with mental illness are people, and the vast majority aren't any more of a risk than anyone else," Swanson says.

“患精神疾病的人也是人，大部分人遭受的风险不比其他任何人少。”司万森说。

That doesn't mean, he says, that we can't do more to identify people at risk of committing gun violence and prevent them from getting guns — particularly if they are a danger to themselves or others.

他说，这不意味着我们不能做出更多努力，鉴别可能进行枪支暴力的人并阻止他们得到枪支，特别是如果他们对自己和他人都是个危险的时候。

But portraying mass shootings as a mental health problem misrepresents the evidence.

但是把大规模枪袭说成精神问题歪曲了证据。