This latest incident just gives more evidence to re-establish the institutionalization of the mentally ill. The shooter, Colt Gray, was clearly mentally ill.

Deinstitutionalization, which commenced during the Kennedy years of the 1960s, emptied and closed most of the psychiatric hospitals and asylums around the country. It was believed that drugs would successfully supplant confinement for the treatment of the psychotic and insane.

Although many patients are helped by drugs, others only further deteriorated. The more than half a million Americans who are currently estimated to be homeless are evidence of this failure. Tragically, the number of mass killers, persons who kill four or more people in a single incident, has escalated from a rarity before 1960 to dozens annually.

Most of the killers were under medical care and prescribed drugs to regulate their behavior. Clearly, institutionalization would have prevented many, if not most, of the killings.