Auburn, Washington State. A lone gunman opens fire in a local casino, wounding 7.

Grand Prairie, Texas. One man draws a gun at a children’s birthday party at a roller rink. 6 dead, 4 wounded.

Oslo, Norway. After setting off several car bombs near the Prime Minister’s office, a solo perpetrator makes his way to a Labour Party Youth Camp on Utøya Island with an assault rifle. 76 people dead, 96 wounded.

It’s the same story that’s been repeated for years. A lone X attacks Y armed with a Z. A dead and B wounded. Solve for X. We just had three of them in the space of a week, and it wasn’t even a full moon. The aftermath is usually the same. The candlelight vigils, the scholarships and charities set up in the victims’ names, not to mention the filing away at civil liberties to prevent future attacks. There might be some debate over the death penalty, if the attacker didn’t have the courtesy to end his own life. For all the anguish that these attacks cause, very little is done to tackle their only common thread. I’m talking, of course, about Mental Health.

These shooters are crazy. It’s not really a debate. They act alone or in small groups. They are often described as quiet and isolated. There are sometimes manifestos, blog posts, and youtube videos discovered after the fact showing just how bad their mental health was.

Why can’t we stop them at this stage, before they take out scores of people with them?

The short answer is the Law. If we could just call up the men in the white coats on someone, it would infringe on a host of civil liberties that make a modern society possible.

However, there is a lot more that we could do for our collective mental health that doesn’t involve Nurse Ratched or lobotomies. We could be checking up on people, making sure they have a connection with the community. We can identify problems and either speak to the person or contact someone who could help. Even perfectly mentally healthy people could get checked up once a year to establish a mental health baseline.

The problem with this is that there is no polite way to do it. You can talk to Miss Manners, Ann Landers, or Dan Savage, if we want to try to get people any kind of mental health, you committing the ultimate dinner party faux pax. It’s not even as simple as a stigma against the mentally ill. No one looks twice if you go to a physician, but If you see a therapist, you are immediately sick until proven healthy! Even if you swallow your pride and decide to bring a fruit basket to the overgrown house down the street, how can you keep from embarrassing yourself? How do THEY keep from embarrassing themselves?

These random acts of violence are becoming a standard hazard in industrialized nations. We’ve focused so much on promoting individuality over society that we have no tools to keep people from shooting up a mall if they really want to. Mental health is still a poorly understood field, but we can’t just cower in fear waiting for the next attack. We have to make our understanding a priority and establish a new social framework. New manners will be chartered and polite boundaries will be redrawn. I’m not sure what form this new society will take, but the debate has to start now.

I thought Monday was going to be surreal, I had no idea to what degree. There was Harper showing up in Abbotsford of all places for an election rally. The Pollyanna in me wants to believe that he was keeping a former stronghold riding from turning into a battleground, but I know this is where he could count on the most supporters to show up. Then there was this business about Jack Layton getting a massage from an establishment that was under investigation for giving out happy endings. The Harper fans that trotted this out must either be stupid, desperate, or both. This can only mean that they think the NDP, of all the other parties, is actually a threat to their government status.

And then they catch Osama freakin’ Bin-Laden.

It sounds like something you’d slip in to conversation if you think the other person’s not listening. My wife does it sometimes. On the one hand, I’m glad they got him, I’m glad he’s dead so we don’t have to deal with a long and embarrassing trial, but DON’T FORGET TO VOTE!

I don’t care if they all seem like the same party, I don’t care if one vote doesn’t matter, and I don’t care if you’re in a stronghold riding like mine. Get out there and show them that you are present. Non-voting is the result of a martyr complex of the worst sort. So your situation, or the country’s, is so bad that no political party could possibly help. By not voting, you are protesting the whole idea of governments and political parties! Your snowflake political opinions are too complex, too nuanced to be summed up in a mere ballot! You might think you’re Che Guevara right there, but no one actually cares if you disengage from the political process. Low voter turnouts only embolden the worst of us to run for office. You can blame the government for not caring about you, but it’s not like you’ve been caring about the government. Your MP probably didn’t even get a stern phone call from you. History is not just written by the winners. It’s written by those who choose to participate in it. Be present this May 2nd and Vote.