We have a real problem in this country with how we deal with the mentally ill, starting with a lack of resources to even address their needs. This has grown acute as we've pushed deinstitutionalization to its limits over the decades, it seems to me.

There's also this to consider when it comes to the issue of school shootings, and I firmly believe it: The increase in school shootings is due more to the absence of a civilizing culture these days than to any supposed absence of laws to deal with guns.

As Steve Hawley and I have observed, there were plenty of guns around when we were growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, and plenty of violence on TV as TV westerns and cop shows amply demonstrated. There were even shooting clubs in schools. Yet no one was picking up a gun and shooting up those same schools.

What's changed since those days? That's a question we need to be asking of ourselves, because it sure seems to me that we've greatly loosened or even eliminated the civilizing bonds that once used to serve to prevent these tragedies.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."