http://ironshrink.com/2013/01/how-ou...other-newtown/

"Our elected officials have no meaningful incentive to prevent another murder committed by someone with severe mental illness. It’s not that they want these crimes to continue – our representatives are still human, I think – but they are compelled to do things that will keep them in office. Sadly, the behaviors that maintain their power are sometimes very different from the behaviors that would solve problems.

Revamping our mental health system would be the single most effective thing our representatives could do to prevent another Aurora or Newtown. Since our society began deinstitutionalizing the seriously mentally in the 1960s (partly under the horribly misguided notion that a new class of medication would cheaply solve the problem) prisons have become the de-facto mental health institution for the treatment of violent mental illness."