Now that he is in the county jail, the madman who attempted to assassinate US Representative Gabrielle Giffords, murdering six other people in the process, will get the psychiatric services he needs. Prisons and jails have become the de facto mental health systems in the US. The schools he attended dealt with his frightening behaviour by telling him to stay away. No one – schools, neighbours, his family – took responsibility to stop him. While all countries have madmen, most countries don't make it legal for madmen to purchase handguns and carry them on the streets. That is a much higher order of legislative insanity which, sadly, is not limited to Arizona.
The genocide in Rwanda was in part driven by radio announcers urging people to kill their neighbours. Immersing a madman with a gun in the endless stream of anger and political invective from talk radio seems to be, while not as explicit as Rwanda, in many ways the same thing. The pitchmen of hate demur. ‘Not my fault’ they say and continue to vilify anyone who says otherwise. If the madman is found guilty in a trial, he could be killed, because Arizona still has the death penalty. That would satisfy nobody and doesn't address the problem of a legal system that makes murder easy. Other madmen, also able legally to buy guns and tote them around, are out there being prodded and taunted by demagogues. It just continues.
- © British Journal of General Practice, 2011