What lessons ought we to take from Saturday's shooting in Arizona?

Both sides need to be more responsible with the rhetoric they use. If someone uses provocative and violent rhetoric with regard to a person or group of people - even if their rhetoric was not the direct cause of the tragedy - they should not be surprised when people look their way.

1. A new way to evaluate mentally disturbed people before they act, like this and the shootings in the last year or so at schools, universities and military bases

2. Keep politics out of the actions by mental disturbed people, no one is to blame , except government not setting common sense standards to restrict these people from obtaining any type of weapon, from cars, knifes, swords, guns,etc. and we don't need a 3000 page bill, that only addresses this problem once on page 2999 `````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

We live in a culture of violence and instability. It is not so much political, as a failure to keep families together and love alive, transferring to our children a feelling of respect for others and for our communities. We have some bitter angry people trying to do whatever they want to do. A lot of people have dehumanized people. We have closed most of our mental hospitals for budget reasons. You can see the strange people in a variety of places; living underground with subway tracks, raping children in an abandoned warehouse, shooting up a company because a person was terminated, coming back from war with PTSD and instability, and dropping date rape pills in a young girl's Coke. Movies are violent to the max, video games have characters raping and killing others, and still we ask :why does this happen?" God bless the United States of America and may she bring some motherly love to us quickly because we are about to implode. This is not a 2nd amendment issue, it is much more psychological and sociological than that simple explanation. Amen.

1) That we need to look at the mental health system.

2) That the American Infotainment industry basically sucks.

3) You can spot the political vultures by who descended on this tragedy to take advantage of it.

If background checks were done and guns more regulated, then every legally responsible person that day in that crowd could have had a gun and the shooter wouldn't have been able to get one.

Facts are pretty obvious sometimes.

That early detection is key in treating mental illness and there are dangers to ignoring warning signs.

The cost of living in a free society is sometimes very high.

In a nation with over 300 million people who have easy access to guns, it is inevitable that a nut-case is going to wreak havoc now and then.

Tighter security for political figures. Exercising the right to free speech has it's consequences.

Sounds like there were warning signs with this kid. People need to look into those sorts of things.

Also, watch what you say to a national audience. Joking about guns and using them as metaphors isn't entertaining....it's potentially dangerous. Not everyone is as sane as you are.