When you say “mentally unwell” though, how do you even define that? Psych hospitals are there to treat psychiatric conditions, eg schizophrenia, major depressive disorder catatonia, or borderline personality disorder, etc. Psych hospitals are not pre-crime units where you send someone who is going to commit a shooting.

By saying the mass shooting problem could be fixed by having more psych hospital beds or bringing back institutionalization means you think either of these would have stopped someone. There is an easy test here…how many mass shooters were sent to a psych hospital before they killed people, were treated for homicidal thoughts, and we’re released due to deinstitutionalization? For how many mass shooters were their homicidal thoughts or plans known, but they didn’t get help at all due to a lack of psych hospitals?

It really easy to dismiss people who commit crimes as automatically mentally ill, but the reality is almost none of them meet criteria for a mental illness. Instead they murdered people because they chose to, and they meet every definition of competent to stand trial after they do it.

This sort of narrative perpetuates the popular thinking that people with a mental illness are scary and dangerous when they actually commit violent crimes at a lower rate than the general population