MENTAL HEALTH LAWS ARE TROUBLE FOR DEMOCRATS

Instead of always taking incoming fire, how about Republicans start sending some back? It's great that they stopped HillaryCare, but if they had actually fixed health care by forcing health insurance plans to be sold in a competitive free market, there would have been no opportunity for shyster Democrats to foist Obamacare on us.

It's fantastic that we caught the Boston Marathon bombers, but why don't Republicans fix an immigration system that brings foreign terrorists and mass murderers to our country? Let the Democrats explain why we couldn't make room for a Danish surgeon because we needed another Chechnyan terrorist.

And it's terrific that Republicans have managed to block sweeping gun bans after every mass shooting over the past few years -- opposition to new gun restrictions has more than doubled since Newtown -- but how about they actually do something to stop the next mass murder?

All these shootings are united by one clear thread: They all were committed by visibly crazy people, known to be nuts but not institutionalized.

Mental illness was blindingly clear in the cases of Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech), Maj. Nidal Hasan (Fort Hood), Jared Loughner (Arizona shopping mall), James Holmes (Colorado movie theater), and a dozen other mass shootings in the past few decades.

But in every instance, Democrats' response was: Let's ban high-capacity magazines! Let's limit private gun sales! Let's publish the names of everyone who owns a registered gun!

Mass shootings don't correlate with any of these things. They correlate with not locking up crazy people. We're not worried about school kids being systematically gunned down by angry husbands, gang members or antique gun collectors. We're worried about a psychotic showing up in a public place and shooting everyone in sight.

People who are seriously physically sick are currently being "institutionalized", i.e. put in hospitals until they are well.

This is considered a good idea because it is efficient. Put all of the physically sick people in the same building and you can treat them all more efficiently with fewer people and less materiel than if they were all living at home.

This is the way it used to be with those who are mentally ill. Unfortunately we don't have great methods for curing mental illness so the people that go into mental "institutions" tend to hang out there a lot longer before getting cured than those that go into hospitals.

I'm certain that conservatives are generally more supportive of traditional mental institutions than liberals, however I wonder if conservatives would be willing to pay the taxes necessary to keep these institutions going.

A good argument could probably be made that going back to traditional mental institutions will save more money in the long run, i.e. fewer homeless people to deal with and all of the associated drug problems, crime, disease, etc.

But everyone in the US, liberal and conservative, seems more concerned about quick fixes than long term solutions.

I'm sure there are lots of people that will just say it would be more humane to just put certain people out of their misery. Plus it would save tax dollars!

They can't acknowledge mental illness the way they did prior to the 1970s. If they did, they'd be forced to acknowledge homosexuality for the mental illness that it is.

This problem won't go away without a major cultural shift and we are talking about a major epic event to cause that to happen.

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