Locking up or hospitalizing as we used to do before Reagan emptied all the state hospitals, thinking people would take their psychiatric medications, and thus mute their violent tendencies, is an appealing idea.
My question is: "Are you prepared to pay the additional taxes to wharehouse all the crazy people?"
Estimates for the percentage of "crazy" Americans run as high as 44%, with a low-end figure of 5% for people with "a serious mental illness." https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/government-survey-finds-that-5-percent-of-americans-suffer-from-a-serious-mental-illness/2012/01/18/gIQAjp5h9P_story.html
This means that 12,900,000 Americans (who are adolescent or older) have a "serious mental illness."
The estimated annual cost for imprisoning an American ranges from $35,000.00 to $45,000.00.
If we take the lower of these two numbers -- and multiply it by 12,900,000 -- the total annual cost to warehouse insane Americans would be $451 billion per year, a clearly prohibitive sum.
As a viable alternative, I suggest that the state intervene to take away all guns from anyone with a mental health "red alert" hanging over them, and then -- if anyone in this "forcibly disarmed population" is subsequently found in possession of gun -- those people will be "warehoused" in prisons or mental asylums.
It's not a perfect solution.
But there are very few perfect solutions.
