Killing Rampage in California, Gunman Once Held for Psychiatric Evaluation

by Laura Heffner

John Zawarhi recently shot and killed five people in Santa Monica as he went on a killing spree on the day prior to his twenty-fourth birthday.  He murdered his father, his older brother, a groundskeeper and his young daughter who had just registered for classes at Santa Monica College as well as a random outside of the campus library where Zawarhi had not attended since 2010.  He set his father's home on fire after the shootings where he too had resided.

When he was 16 or 17 years old, law enforcement had been called to his home and had been placed in psychiatric evaluation.  Not many details are available but there was no other psychiatric treatment mentioned.  Zawarhi's parents divorced amidst allegations of verbal and physical abuse of his father toward his mother.  His home life was tumultuous at best. 

The statement that stuck out at me was that a family friend said Zawarhi had a history of mental problems and a frightening fascination with guns.  This seems to be a theme in recent years, mental illness and the shooting rampage in schools, movie theaters, etc.  No where is safe from one plagued with untreated (and even sometimes treated) mental illness.  People want to scream for gun control and never look at the cause.  If you take the guns away there will be no more crazy people shooting up schools.  True.  That is a possibility but has anyone thought that because these people are so mentally ill, that they would do something else such as drive a semi loaded with explosives into a school?  Do we outlaw anything that could be used as a weapon?

I'm not taking a side one way or the other on gun control.  But this view seems short-sighted to me.  What about providing better resources for the mentally ill and their family, especially adult situations.  As a daughter of an alcoholic father who later in life was diagnosed with paranoia schizophrenia, I know all too well the limited resources and lack of help available when you receive a call from the apartment complex your father lives in that he is talking to the vending machines as if they are a person they are angry with.  You are helpless in getting them long-term treatment or any real help.  Or getting them to take their medication without being institutionalized.  I could easily see my father in his last years plotting something as a shooting rampage especially in his condition. 

So, I wonder, when will the powers that be realize it's not so much the guns but the person behind the gun and in many cases their mental illnesses which are truly the killer and not the weapon.   I suppose one could deduce that mental illness is truly the murderer.