by Joe Klein
Heated rhetoric doesn’t help, but the real need is to reassess policy on guns and the mentally ill.
A U.S. democrat Gabrielle Giffords was shot by Loughner, a mentally ill man. Two questions are involved here: one is that many U.S. citizens are victims of crazy people. In 1950s they were confined to mental hospitals, but 1960s major cities were teeming with the homeless or/and mentally ill. Romanticization of mental illness and the American Civil Liberties Union made it near impossible to put the schizophrenics to a secure facility. The second is the lenient gun control. The National Rifle Association’s campaign and a Supreme Court rule enhanced the right to bear arms. These two problems should be reassessed.
Heated rhetoric doesn’t help, but the real need is to reassess policy on guns and the mentally ill.
A U.S. democrat Gabrielle Giffords was shot by Loughner, a mentally ill man. Two questions are involved here: one is that many U.S. citizens are victims of crazy people. In 1950s they were confined to mental hospitals, but 1960s major cities were teeming with the homeless or/and mentally ill. Romanticization of mental illness and the American Civil Liberties Union made it near impossible to put the schizophrenics to a secure facility. The second is the lenient gun control. The National Rifle Association’s campaign and a Supreme Court rule enhanced the right to bear arms. These two problems should be reassessed.
