EDITORIAL: Solving gun violence by locking up the mentally ill is just plain crazy

Time for crazy talk again.

Just days after yet another mass shooting, this time in a Washington D.C. naval facility, gun-rights activists are reaching their shrill threats toward anyone pushing for limiting guns and ammo.

It’s the same calls each time. Someone who has no business being around firearms gets incredibly lethal ones and kills a bunch of people. It turns out, again, the shooter had mental problems. Gun rights activists then demand that politicians find ways to handle the country’s mentally ill people and keep far away from Second Amendment issues.

Of course naval yard shooter Aaron Alexis was mentally ill. Just like all the other mass shooters in recent days, including Aurora massacre shooter James Holmes, they’re mentally ill.

National Rifle Association mouthpiece Wayne LaPierre, whose calls have become more shrill than any other, demands that the U.S. government do something to keep crazy people from getting guns and killing people.

The nation’s mental health system is “in complete breakdown,” resulting in not enough of the mentally ill being committed to psychiatric hospitals, National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre told NBC’s “Meet the Press” this week.

“If we leave these homicidal maniacs on the street … they’re going to kill,” he said. “They need to be committed is what they need to be. If they are committed, they’re not at the Naval Yard.”

So which of the 58 million Americans with psychiatric symptoms very much like Alexis’ do we lock up? And where?

Mental health experts are clear in their message that a wide range of psychiatric problems are pretty common in this country. About 1 in 4 Americans have issues that come and go. What’s very rare is when these issues result in massacres.

So when it comes to trying to find a pattern among recent gun massacre types, they are often men who have issues managing their anger, are paranoid, often about the government, and they tend to be antisocial. If that sounds to you a lot like millions and millions of Americans, many demanding gun rights or taking up seats in Congress, it does to us, too.

Unlike many gun-rights activists that say effective gun legislation is just too hard, so none is best, we agree that finding a way to manage mental illness issues for 1 in 4 Americans is complicated and difficult. But it’s not impossible. The most difficult part will be when it comes to first identifying which kinds of mental illness warrant new scrutiny, which Americans to label as mentally ill, and then how to restrict their Second Amendment rights.

If it seems to you that it would be simpler to restrict easy access to military grade weapons capable of exterminating large numbers of people in a fashion that seems to appeal to some mentally ill Americans, than it would be to start locking up or denying rights to a quarter of the population, it does to us, too.

By all means, pursue ways to improve the mental health of all Americans and ensure those who are dangerous to themselves or others get the help they need. But if we’re waiting on effective ways to get future mass shooters off the streets before they strike, American can’t wait that long.