The White House is considering adopting a program that would find a way of identifying early signs of violent behavior in people suffering from mental illness in an effort to reduce gun violence, The Washington Post reports.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly cited mental illness as a major cause of gun violence and prefers policies that focus on mental illness over gun control in response to shootings. Only about a quarter of mass shooters have been diagnosed with mental illness, according to studies analyzed by the Post.
Trump reportedly responded "very positively" to a proposal to establish a new agency, the Health Advanced Research Projects Agency, or HARPA, as part of the Health and Human Services Department. This agency would be modeled on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which works with various federal agencies, private companies, and academic institutions on projects for the Pentagon.
The Suzanne Wright Foundation proposed to the White House that HARPA include a "Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes," or "Safe Home," project. This would seek to identify "neurobehavioral signs" of "someone headed toward a violent explosive act" using volunteer data. The four-year project would cost an estimated $40 to $60 million, according to Geoffrey Ling, the founding director of the Biological Technologies Office at DARPA and the lead scientific adviser on HARPA.
"Everybody would be a volunteer," Ling told the Post. "We're not inventing new science here. We're analyzing it so we can develop new approaches."
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