Shock, horror, grief, candlelight vigil,,,,,,,,
Then,,, complete inaction until the next one.  

There's a thought, Tarnation.  Why not make shooting ranges open and available to these maniacs all by themselves to shoot away at whatever their crazy little selves want to shoot at. 

The gun is king in America. We will take a moment to remember the victims, and then we'll turn back to the gun. 

It's just the way it is.

America worships the gun.
When I saw that the country could bear 26 murdered children and teachers at Newtown, and not do a single thing in response, I knew that we had lost.

Tarnation wrote:

Crazy maniacs is closer to the truth than you may have supposed.

One of the common ingredients of most of the mass shootings of the past decade (think Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook for starters) is that the shooter had severe mental health issues; sometimes undermedicated, sometimes self-medicating with liquid depressants and illegal drugs.

I've posted it before, but once again:  We need more "mental dectors" and less trust in metal detectors.

Interesting comments, Tarnation.

This is an enormous problem. We most definitely should devote more of the nation's resources to the identification and treatment of the mentally ill.

I also think that it is fair to point out that many mental health disorders are not well understood, are chronic, and/or are not completely alleviated by either drugs or psychotherapy. There is no magic wand. There are some very strange, very scary people who will always be strange and scary.

I am all for spending a lot more money on the treatment of those with mental disorders.  But, if we are serious about making progress, that is only part of the solution. After we do all that, we are going to have to face another issue.  There exist some people who should  not have access to guns. We are going to have to have background checks to prevent that. We are going to have to have an aggressive educational program for parents and family members whereby we instill a sense of responsibility into them, they should not provide their ill family member with a gun. We might even have to criminalize providing guns to these people.

Is that possible? I doubt it. There would be an immediate backlash. The unreasonable fear from "responsible gun owners" has repeatedly doomed any effort to make such decisions.


I also think that it is fair to point out that many politicians on the national stage say that we need a better mental health system every time one of these tragedies occur. But, between tragedies, they do nothing to bring that better system into existence. It's just something that they say to spin the issue away from guns. They don't really care.  I hate that.