If we would do something down here about addressing the crazies (not meant pejoratively when it comes to people with mental health issues) there wouldn't have been this tragedy in the first place. But as I've pointed out previously, since deinstitutionalization in the early 1970s (when it really took off, though we've apparently been doing it since 1955) we as a society have become extremely reluctant to force people with mental health issues into treatment, against their will. I'm sure all of us down here have a story or two about this or that mentally disturbed person who wanders around town or the neighborhood and can be frightening in some cases.

To me, this fellow fit the classic pattern -- just based on public reporting -- of someone who never should have been allowed to purchase a firearm. But was he previously seen for mental health issues or did no one, including his late mother, want to do the hard things and get him seen by medical professionals? We don't know. At any rate, this portion of an article from the New York Times is illustrative of the shooter's life before he turned to ultimate evil:

"Before he was hauled into a jailhouse hearing room on Thursday, head bowed and shackled at the wrists and ankles, Nikolas Cruz had been causing trouble as long as anyone here could remember.

Neighbors said patrol cars were regularly in his mother’s driveway. More recently, Mr. Cruz, 19, had been expelled from his high school. He posted pictures of weapons and dead animals on social media.

Almost immediately after Mr. Cruz turned up at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Wednesday and, the authorities said, killed 17 people with a semiautomatic rifle, the disconnected shards of a difficult life began to come together. Students and neighbors traded stories of their experiences with him and wondered if anything could have been done.

Some of the stories fell within the bands of typical teenage mischief-making. But others — including a comment on YouTube Mr. Cruz may have posted last year saying he wished to be “a professional school shooter” — were considerably more troubling. The comment, left under the name “nikolas cruz,” was reported to the F.B.I. by someone who did not know Mr. Cruz, and the agency said on Thursday that it had been unable to determine who had posted it."

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."