Robert Card, the shooter in Maine who killed 18 people was another example of "known wolf." He was a person police already had on their list of potential predators.
Card had been diagnosed with a mental disorder by the Army where he was a reservist, and a firearms instructor. According to an AP story at Huff Post, he'd spent two weeks in inpatient treatment for it.
So here is someone mentally ill, heavily armed, and not in treatment. There are probably hundreds like him wandering about, hearing voices and making plans to go out in a blaze of murderous glory.
Once again, we have misinterpreted the balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of his fellow citizens to be safe from his craziness. The sane have rights too.
People like Robert Card belong in asylums. He'd be alive today, as would be his 18 victims, if the authorities who noticed him losing it had had a safe place to stash him, probably for the rest of his life. Unfortunately we aren’t able to “reboot” the human brain.
