My heart goes out to the families of the victims — all of them, including the traumatized children who saw their classmates die, who had to run from a building that should have been a safe haven.
And we owe it to those children to be angry. To face our nation’s problems with violence, guns and a pathetic mental health system with clear eyes.
Enough.
For looking beyond the political rhetoric and making this point about the tragic violence in Tucson:
If the evidence continues as it has, the obvious questions are these: How can we more aggressively treat mentally ill people who are becoming increasingly disruptive? How can we prevent them from getting guns? Do we need to make involuntary treatment easier for authorities to invoke?
Torrey’s book describes a nation that has been unable to come up with a humane mental health policy — one that protects the ill from their own demons and society from their rare but deadly outbursts.
Families of the Mentally Ill 