Pun seandainya Asperger, bukan itu penyebabnya. Ini masalah bagaimana seseorang yang mempunyai permasalahan dalam meregulasi emosi bisa mendapatkan akses untuk memakai senjata api.
Excerpt:
This subject is important to many of those whose lives are affected by Asperger’s or other forms of Autism Spectrum Disorder. They are troubled and angered by how the topic has been treated in The Times and other news organizations over the past several days.
Joe McGinniss, the well-known author and the father of a son who has Asperger’s, is among the many who wrote to me.
“The suggestion that Asperger’s might be a clue to why this happened is offensive to me,” he said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “It’s misleading to suggest that quiet people who don’t pick up on social cues are more likely to become killers.”
Dr. Ami Klin, an expert on autism at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, said that any tie between the Newtown shootings and Asperger’s or autism “is an enormous disservice” to those whose lives are affected by these developmental disorders, which should not be confused with mental illness.
“Any human condition can coexist with violence,” he said, but no correlation should be drawn.
In fact, he said, those with Asperger’s “are much more likely to be victims rather than victimizers.”
“This is not about autism,” Dr. Klin said. “It’s about mental illness and guns that those with mental illness should have no access to.”
