My take. The conservatives don't want to turn mass murder into a medical issue because that would show them up as a bunch of cheapskates who don't want to use the wealth they accumulate from employing us as wage-slaves to fund adequate healthcare.
Mike B)
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"....during Ronald Reagan’s tenure as governor, the number of mentally ill people in the state hospital system dropped from 26,500 in 1967 to 6,400 in 1974. "
full: http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/38/22/28.1
***************************** Should mental health care be considered a public safety issue? Last weekend's shooting in Tucson certainly suggests that it should. Unfortunately, when such proposals come up, well meaning advocates for the mentally ill frequently jump in to argue that people with brain diseases are no more dangerous than the rest of us. For instance, in the wake of reports suggesting that alleged Tucson shooter Jared Lee Loughner may suffer from schizophrenia or another untreated, serious mental illness, Vaughn Bell insisted in Slate on Sunday that, "the fact that your chance of being murdered by a stranger with schizophrenia is so vanishingly small that a recent study of four Western countries put the figure at one in 14.3 million. To put it in perspective, statistics show you are about three times more likely to be killed by a lightning strike."
And while it's true that Justice Department and other research estimates suggest
that only about 10 percent of the nation's homicides are committed by the mentally ill, it's also true that people with an untreated brain disorder like schizophrenia are far more likely to become violent than someone without one. Refusing to acknowledge this, while instead debating whether or not Congress should bring back the Fairness Doctrine or remove crosshairs from surveyor's equipment, will once again prevent the country from taking the necessary steps to prevent such tragedies in the future.
full: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/01/jared-loughner-tucson-mental-health-reform
*********************************************************************** "With the seizing of the means of production by society production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer." Engels http://wobblytimes.blogspot.com/