Not long after the shooting deaths of two Virginia television journalists Aug. 26, some in the news media and on social media began speculating that mental illness was the root cause of the shooter’s decision to commit the on-air tragedy. But a Georgia State University College of Law expert says blaming the shooting on mental illness is too simple – and not applicable – to explain what happened.

“Mental illness is being manufactured for an explanation for something that falls into a much larger set of behaviors,” said Paul A. Lombardo, the Bobby Lee Cook Professor of Law at Georgia State and a lawyer/historian who has written extensively about health law, medico-legal history, bioethics and the legal history of the American eugenics movement.

While the suspect, as reported through court filings and human resources documents, has been portrayed as someone with a temper and anger issues, there is no evidence that Vester Flanagan had any interface with the mental health system, Lombardo said.

“Not everyone who shoots another person is mentally ill,” he said. “Mental health seems to be the scapegoat for every time someone shoots another person.”

Lombardo, who formerly directed the Center for Mental Health Law at the University of Virginia, additionally serves as a senior advisor to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, participating in studies regarding the ethics of STD research in Guatemala during the 1940s, human subjects research, and privacy related to whole genome sequencing.

For more about Lombardo, visit http://law.gsu.edu/profile/paul-lombardo/.